Somewhere beyond the monitored frequencies, past containment sectors, beyond the sweep of surveillance satellites, a signal began to move.
It wasn't announced, no label, no flags, it simply existed as if it had always been there, waiting for the right moment to rise. It slipped past systems built to catch it: most machines ignored it while a few logged it without comment. But two people, distant and unconnected, not yet bound by role or fate, noticed.
Saejin didn't actually hear it. His monitors were clean. But beneath the neat lines of data, something stirred. It pressed lightly at the edge of his awareness, a presence caught between tasks, in moments overlapping faster than he could catch. It was like a breath he hadn't known he was holding, a sort of stillness he hadn't meant to find.
He didn't name it. Didn't log it. Because sometimes, recognizing a thing is the same as letting it in, and Saejin had learned to keep most things out.
Far away, behind checkpoints and fortified towers, Yuwon felt it too.
He was trained to read anomalies: data spikes, broken patterns, warning signs, but this didn't behave like any of those. It made no demand, it simply passed through.
Between sedation and waking, it moved across him, a thread beneath the surface of thought. A kind of unspoken presence, almost familiar. Like the outline of a memory that hadn't happened yet.
They had never met. Never spoken. Never synced. But when they finally did, it changed everything. Because those two frequencies, long apart, had finally found the shape they were always meant to become.