The codestone pulsed like a slumbering heart.
Ari stood before it, breath steady, fingers tracing the ancient fractal patterns etched along its surface. The Obelmar Crest Shard—the key—glowed faintly in his hand.
"This isn't just a tomb," he whispered. "It's a wake-up call."
He pressed the crest into the codestone.
The moment it touched, the chamber ignited. Every rune, tablet, and obsidian fragment lit up like constellations realigning themselves. Gravity warped—syntax vibrated in the air like hymns sung by the world itself.
"Recognition Sequence Initiated."
A voice. Not from the stone—but from the System.
But it wasn't the System Ari had come to know.
This one was older. Unfiltered. Devoid of synthetic bounds. And it remembered him.
"Bloodline: Originis — Threadless Core. Identity Match: 97.3%."
"Seal unlocking. Initiating First Memory Layer."
A pulse blasted through him—not of pain, but memory. Not only his own—but theirs.
Visions exploded behind Ari's eyes. Fields of silver glass. Castles of light suspended in folded space. People—men, women, children—who looked nothing like nobility, but held power that bent reality around their fingertips.
They wrote magic, not cast it. Their language wove spells into existence—pure, logical, beautiful.
And then came the collapse.
A council of the Six. Fear. Treachery. Mass deletion of syntax from the world's magical architecture. Whole threads rewritten. Families wiped from history.
But some… survived.
"They fractured the Originis Lineage," the voice said. "Erased their memories. Dispersed their blood into the general populace to avoid suspicion. But blood remembers…"
Images flared—
A boy with golden eyes healing a tree instinctively.
A girl who accidentally bent time around her tears.
A teenager who sketched runes in the sand and brought shadows to life.
A woman in a library of light... whispering dreams that changed prophecy itself.
"They are scattered. Unknowing. Dormant. But they are yours."
Ari stumbled back as the stone released its glow.
He saw faces now. Real ones. From Sanctum. From his life.
Eluin: Dreamscript affinity. Her spells sometimes triggered effects she never studied. A whisper of origin.
Cerys: Brilliant with sigils beyond her own Thread. Too precise. Too attuned.
Even the princess—her control of Luxthread had anomalies. Her system once corrected mid-cast using code that predated Signum.
They weren't anomalies.They were forgotten descendants of Originis—fragments of a lineage broken by fear.
The voice of the ancient system faded, leaving Ari in the dead silence of the chamber.
He stared at his reflection in a floating shard of obsidian.
"You weren't the only one," he whispered. "They're all around me… my kin."
He reached out and grabbed the core fragment of the codestone. It shimmered and reshaped itself—becoming a small crystal ring of raw syntax.
"We didn't die. We were rewritten."
His System pinged, and for the first time, it did not overwrite his input. It accepted it. His magic syntax was now classified as: Root-Origin.
Ari returned in silence. His gaze flickered toward the towers of Sanctum where his friends slept.
He saw Eluin's window, glowing faintly as she studied.
He saw Cerys, practicing motion spells in the training grounds under moonlight.
Even the princess, her silhouette by the balcony—restless, thoughtful.
"I don't just carry the burden," he murmured. "I carry a family."
And tomorrow, he would begin unlocking the truth for each of them—starting with the ones who unknowingly shared the blood of gods.