Kaley didn't remember falling asleep.
One moment, she was standing by the window, watching that single glyph fade into the glass. The next, she was somewhere else—floating, weightless, not quite dreaming.
This space didn't feel like a dream.
It felt older.
The Void wasn't loud tonight. It was... still. Expectant. Like a chapel before prayer. Like breath drawn in but never released.
Glyphs drifted like stars across a black-violet sky. Not on paper. Not carved. Just suspended. Waiting.
She could feel them humming in the back of her head, like memories that weren't hers. They didn't speak. They existed. And that was enough.
One pulsed brighter than the rest.
Thread.
It shimmered like a tear in the fabric of reality. A visible connection. A promise not yet made.
Kaley reached for it.
As her fingers brushed the symbol, a pulse rippled outward—not sound, but presence. A moment of pure contact. Her chest fluttered, as if someone had gently plucked the string of her soul.
A whisper came—not words, but knowing:
"She dreams of you too."
Kaley blinked.
When her eyes opened, she was back in her bed. The room was dim and quiet, shadows stretching across the walls like lazy cats. Her heart beat steadily, but her skin buzzed like the echo of thunder.
She rolled onto her side, pulling the blanket up with small fingers, and stared at the window.
Outside, nestled into the corner of the fence line, half-hidden by a bush and deeper shadow, a girl with gold eyes blinked back.
Kaley didn't move.
Neither did the girl.
But something between them tightened.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Just awareness.
Recognition.
Himiko had never slept so well.
Not exactly sleep. More like slipping between thoughts. Tasting light. Catching pieces of her in places where no one looked.
She'd curled beneath the collapsed edge of a rusted playground slide. The ground was cold. The wind whispered lullabies through old metal.
And when she woke—everything felt different.
A symbol glowed faintly on the dirt beneath her cheek. Not etched. Not carved.
Imprinted.
Thread.
Her heart beat faster, like it was remembering something her mind hadn't caught up to.
"You reached back," she whispered.
She sat up slowly. Her knees were muddy, her fingers tinged with dried blood, but she felt cleaner. Lighter. Not a better person—just someone who had finally been seen.
"She's closer now," she said to no one, though the pigeon had vanished.
But the emptiness that usually gnawed at her bones had gone quiet.
Instead, something new hummed beneath her skin. A warmth, distant and flickering, like a fire she couldn't sit beside—but could finally see.
She stood and stretched, her joints creaking from the cold. She didn't mind.
It was the best night she could remember.
Back at home, Kaley's mother sat at her desk, a forgotten cup of coffee cooling by her elbow, fingers tapping out an unconscious rhythm on the wood. Tap. Tap-tap. Pause.
She hadn't noticed she was drawing until she looked down.
There, in the corner of a form she didn't remember printing, a glyph waited.
Thread. Thread. Thread.
Her pen. Her handwriting. But not her hand.
She stared at it.
Not surprised.
Not confused.
Just tired.
Then she reached for the phone.
"I told you—no contact unless necessary," said the voice on the other end. Crisp. Controlled.
"It's necessary."
A pause.
"She's syncing."
A longer pause. The sound of a breath held on the other end of the line.
"Proceed with caution."
Click.
She didn't hang up. Just lowered the receiver and stared at the glyph.
"I always do," she whispered.
Far away—or maybe far too close—a monitor blinked in a room lined with silent wires and endless static.
A child.
Two glyphs.
Three anomalies in a single night.
The data scrolled faster than the eye could track. Symbols, spikes, emotional fluctuations. Clearance levels. Bio-signal noise.
Then a single line glowed brighter than the rest:
"Covenant."
The screen dimmed.
And in the corner of the room, a shadow moved.
Not a person.
Not exactly.
Something watching. Recording. Smiling.
Kaley didn't speak of the dream.
Not the next morning. Not during breakfast. Not even when her spoon floated off the table and hovered midair for two seconds before plummeting into her juice.
She simply pressed her finger to the window where the glyph had burned the night before.
The glass was cool.
But the hum remained.
She could feel it. Not in the room. Not in her mind. In her thread.
It stretched outward.
And someone else—someone with wild eyes and crooked smiles and blood-crusted fingertips—was gently tugging back.
And for the first time, Kaley didn't feel strange.
She felt connected.