The wind had returned to Odessyus.
But it no longer whistled with urgency or howled through shattered stone. It drifted now, soft and empty. A wind without voice. Without purpose. It brought no storm, no scent of rain—only the faint scent of ash, long cooled.
Tom leaned against the balcony railing outside the western tower, gazing down at the garden below. Workers were rebuilding the crystal wall that had collapsed during Kazakare's final strike. Children ran among the scaffolding, chasing echoes of a city slowly waking from a nightmare.
But even amid the laughter, something gnawed at him. He'd woken that morning drenched in sweat, his dreams filled with flickering shapes—three shadows, never clear, never close. But always there. Watching.
Jack stepped up beside him, tossing an apple in the air. "You're quiet. That's usually my job."
Tom didn't laugh. "Does it feel real to you? The peace?"
Jack bit into the apple. "Nah. Feels like someone covered a burning wound with snow and called it healed."
Tom nodded slowly. "Same."
Jack stared out across the city. "We've fought gods. Burned through glyphs. Bled. Lost friends. And yet… I can't shake the feeling that the fire didn't go out. It just sank deeper."
Tom looked at him. "You felt it too?"
Jack gave a slow nod. "Every night since. Same dream. Three doors. All locked. But I can hear what's behind them."
Tom turned back to the horizon. "What do they say?"
Jack's voice dropped. "They don't speak. They hum."
---
Elsewhere in the city, Susan was cataloging damaged glyphs recovered from beneath the eastern trenches. She'd set up a temporary lab in one of the old towers. The walls were lined with glyph scrolls—some cracked, some intact, all humming faintly with residual energy.
She unrolled one of the older scrolls retrieved from the trench edge. It looked ordinary at first. Simple barrier glyphs, timeworn but readable. But the moment her hand touched the ink, it shuddered. Lines began to rewrite themselves. Shapes reversed. One of the glyphs twisted itself into an impossible loop.
Susan recoiled. "What in—"
She leaned in again. Her crystal lens flickered. She adjusted the settings.
The scroll was rewriting itself in real-time.
Glyphs didn't do that.
Not unless someone—or something—was influencing them remotely.
She stood, grabbed a sealing vial, and immediately locked the scroll inside.
As she turned to leave, her shadow on the wall elongated unnaturally for a split second—stretching toward her like a hand—then snapped back into place.
---
Kitty sat on the eastern gate, legs dangling over the city edge. Her wings folded neatly behind her back, but her posture was stiff. She wasn't enjoying the view. She was listening.
The wind here was strange. It spoke in layered tones, like whispers overlapping. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard it more clearly.
She focused now, eyes shut, hands on her knees.
A faint voice brushed her ear. Too quiet to understand, but clear enough to know it was intentional.
Kitty opened her eyes slowly. "You're not wind."
She stood up and stepped back from the edge.
"I don't know who you are… but I hear you."
Far below, in the trees beyond the wall, something moved. Not fast. Not loud. But unnaturally.
---
Neolin was in the Archive's third level, sorting relics with Frank. The place had become quieter since the war ended, but only on the surface. Beneath, glyph anomalies had been steadily increasing.
Frank handed Neolin a fractured glyph tablet. "Another one from the mirror caves. Inscribed with reverse glyphs. They loop."
Neolin took it carefully. "Looping glyphs are dangerous. They trap meaning in endless cycles."
Frank narrowed his eyes. "Kind of like how we've been seeing the same signs repeating? Three marks. Three anomalies. Three corrupted scrolls."
Neolin exhaled slowly. "The Trio."
Frank nodded. "It's not coincidence anymore."
He stepped closer to a stone plinth, where another artifact rested—one they hadn't dared to open yet.
It was a black stone cube. No markings. No edges. It looked smooth at first, but up close it rippled, like it was slightly out of sync with the world.
"What is it?" Frank asked.
Neolin stared at it. "We don't know. But it was sealed under the Caldris ruins. Buried deep, under three glyph rings… all cracked."
Frank turned away, arms crossed. "Whatever it is, it's waking up."
---
That night, the Seven gathered in the sky garden—a high platform where starlight touched the earth.
No mission. No war meeting. Just… a need to be together.
Peter leaned on the railing, tossing pebbles into the wind. "The peace is too quiet."
Lucy sat cross-legged on the grass, her eyes closed. "It's not peace. It's pause."
Jack nodded. "Like a breath before a scream."
Kitty looked toward the forest. "I heard them. Not words. But presence."
Susan unrolled a scroll onto the stone table. "I saw glyphs rewriting themselves. Live."
Tom stepped forward. "Three doors. Three dreams. Three shadows."
Frank looked around at them all.
"We all feel it, don't we?"
Everyone nodded.
Lucy opened her eyes. "It's already started."
Silence fell over them. Not empty silence—but thick, heavy, like something listening.
Frank spoke last. "Then the war didn't end. It just changed shape."
They didn't know it yet. But far beneath the soil of the eastern plains, where the old glyph vaults had been long forgotten, something moved.
Three presences, sealed for centuries, were stretching their limbs for the first time in generations.
The Monster Trio…
Was beginning to wake.