Scarhold was breathing again.
Not alive — not yet. But the threads were stirring. Reweaving. Reacting.
Elian moved low across fractured bridges and old data stacks, keeping to the edge of the zone. His Threadsense guided him like a second skin, tracking faint pulses left by the three masked Seedborne.
They were smart.
Disciplined.
Their footprints left no heat. Their threads left no resonance.
But they weren't Lucid.
Elian followed them from a distance, never drawing close enough to trigger awareness. He didn't want to fight them.
He wanted to learn from them.
Because anyone watching him meant someone was watching them, too.
They led him deeper into Scarhold's lower tiers — down into the sunken hub beneath the plaza, where the old transmission veins still pulsed with ghost signals.
Elian crouched near the ceiling, hidden in an old maintenance shaft, as the trio gathered around a projection node.
The smallest one, a woman with a mask carved from obsidian threadbone, activated the interface.
A floating map formed in the air — not a full region, but a slice of it. Zone designations. Anomaly hotspots. His Threadbreak site marked in red.
"Node B-43 collapse confirmed," she said. "Thread disjunction lasted forty-seven minutes. Longest null field since the Gravespine Event."
Another responded. "Persistent Anomaly confirmed. Probably unaware of scale."
"No," the third said, voice quiet. "He knew what he was doing. The sequence was intentional. And he didn't just disrupt the tether…"
He zoomed in on a lower point of the map.
"…he severed a signal chain."
Elian's eyes narrowed.
That wasn't in the system logs.
He'd broken more than he realized.
The woman leaned back. "Do we engage?"
"Not yet," the third answered. "We watch. We report. If he's truly unbound… the Architects will want him alive."
Elian's breath caught.
Architects?
Another layer.
Another force.
Another game.
The masked trio stood, the projection fading.
Elian didn't move. Not until they vanished into the dark again.
Only then did he whisper:
"Good."
He wasn't the only one playing with knives.
But now he had a direction.
A name.
And if these "Architects" wanted to find him?
He'd find them first.
[Lucid Trait Sync: 23% → 24%]
[New Entity Logged: Architect-Class Observation Layer]
[Passive Threadpath Updated: Paradox Signals – Infiltration Possible]
The Veiled Hunt wasn't coming for him.
It had already begun.