The Eclipsera Codex

5. Cassian

The Array always gets too quiet after a recall.

Day shift’s loud — officers, techs, drones, comms. Night shift’s worse. Everything goes half-power and you can hear the Veins under the floor, like the whole structure is humming to itself. Tonight it’s extra bad because she’s here again, which means every resonance panel is tuned a little tighter.

I take the corner stairs two at a time and head for the common room we always end up in when we’re about to do something stupid.

Lights are low. Glass panels glow blue. Kaien’s at the holo table, posture perfect, like someone carved “commander” into his bones. Theron’s sprawled on the couch in full “I don’t care” mode, boots up, chewing on a stim like it owes him money. Eryndor’s at the far end, sitting so still the shadows actually like him.

Yeah. Feels right.

“Look who finally showed,” Theron says without looking up. “Starboy made it.”

“It’s endearing how much you miss me,” I say, dropping into the seat across from Kaien. “We doing this or are we staring at glowy pictures for fun?”

“We’re doing this,” Kaien says. “You’re late.”

“Fashionably.”

Theron grins. “I said that.”

“Yeah, but it sounds better when I do,” I fire back.

Kaien gives us both a look — the one that says “I tolerate you because you’re useful.” Then he taps the holo and the glyphs I’ve been thinking about all day rotate up in the air between us — ten symbols, mirrored lines, the last one half-formed and twitching.

“There,” he says. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”

Even in low light, they hum.

I lean forward, elbows on knees. “You ever notice how it always looks like it’s trying to finish a circle but can’t?”

“That’s what ‘half-formed’ means,” Theron says.

“That’s what ‘incomplete’ means,” I correct. “Half-formed would imply it has the other half. This one’s still hunting.”

Eryndor speaks, voice low and smooth. “Hunting what.”

“Us,” I say. “Or more specifically, the frequencies it already used.”

“Nyra,” Kaien says.

“And us,” I say. “Can’t have a Tower repeat without the original idiots.”

Theron jerks his chin at the glyphs. “Walk it again. I wanna make sure what Command said matches what you heard.”

“Sure.” I stand — I talk better moving — and swipe through the air. The holo magnifies the first symbol. “This is Veyra. It always starts there. Call, revelation, ping — whatever word you like. It’s the Codex saying ‘listen.’”

I swipe again. “Then Skynor. That one’s the bridge. It’s how the Codex links two or more frequencies. Think of it like resonance hand-holding.”

Theron smirks. “So that’s the horny one.”

“It’s the cooperative one,” I say, but yeah, he’s not wrong.

Next. “Nameris. That’s where it went to s**t last time. Collapse, fall, break. Good news, it’s predictable. Bad news, it hurts.”

Kaien’s gaze is on the holo, but I can tell he’s not seeing light — he’s seeing the Tower, same as me. Jaw’s tighter. Shoulders too.

“And then,” I say, pulling up the last glyph, “Ecliphane.” It flickers, like it’s trying to settle. “Unity. Completion. Full chord. Whatever this thing is doing, it wants this one. We didn’t let it get there before. It remembers.”

“So it’s mad,” Theron says.

“It’s insistent,” I say. “Like a song stuck in your head.”

Eryndor tilts his head. “And you think it’s using Nyra to push to full alignment.”

“She’s the only one who can hear the whole scale,” I say. “We just ride the parts we’re good at. She can actually sing it.”

Theron blows out a breath, loud. “Two years gone and they still only have one person for ‘don’t let magic eat the world.’”

“Two years gone and she still came,” I say. “That’s the part you’re skipping.”

Kaien finally looks at me. “You think that was voluntary?”

I shrug. “I think Nyra doesn’t know how to leave a problem unfixed.”

That shuts us up for a second.

Because yeah — we all saw her in the debrief. Boots steady, hair in that practical braid, Aetherion black back on like she never took it off. Face calm. Eyes everywhere but on us. She does that when she’s barely holding the resonance line inside — controls the body so the power doesn’t leak.

Theron kicks his boots down. “She was ignoring the s**t out of us.”

“Yeah,” I say, grinning. “It was adorable.”

Kaien: “It was necessary.”

“Sure it was,” I say. “Definitely not because she still wants to yell at us for almost dying.”

“She almost died,” Eryndor says.

“Exactly,” I say. “Lot of ‘almost’ that day.”

That day.

The room goes a little quieter. The Array hum fills in the space. We all know what “that day” means without saying it.

Kaien taps the table. “Mission first. We’ll deal with whatever’s unresolved when we have breathing room.”

“Oh, absolutely,” I say. “Because we’re great at talking about things.”

Theron snorts. “Says the man who makes jokes when he’s scared.”

“Says the man who makes explosions when he’s scared,” I shoot back.

“Those are different.”

“They really aren’t.”

“Children,” Eryndor says, soft, and somehow that’s enough to level us.

I drag the glyphs into a line. “All right. You wanted it simple for when we brief Nyra on the parts Command skipped? Here.” I start ticking them off, one finger at a time. “Eclipsera has five major Veins. The Codex is riding all of them now because we didn’t kill the signal at the Tower. Instead, we forced it to sleep. Now it’s waking up and going, ‘oh, right, those five idiots who let me in — let me ring them again.’”

Theron grins. “We’re its favourites.”

“We’re its conduits,” I correct. “Not flattering.”

“A little flattering.”

I ignore him. “Because we were the ones in the room, it remembers our signatures. Kaien’s earthbound. You’re storm. Eryndor’s shadow. I’m Celestium. And Nyra’s the damn key. So what’s happening now is it’s throwing the glyphs out worldwide hoping we’ll line up again.”

“Like a recall,” Kaien says.

“Exactly,” I say. “Command made it official. The Codex made it mystical.”

“How many glyphs does it need to finish?” Theron asks.

“Ten in the lexicon we’ve seen,” I say. “But Ecliphane is the important one. That’s the ‘we’ve formed the Fifth Chord, thanks for playing’ moment.”

Eryndor’s eyes flicker. “Fifth.”

“Mm-hm.”

“As in five frequencies,” he says.

“As in five frequencies,” I echo. “Four of us. One of her. We’re the chord.”

Theron sits up straighter. “So we were right.”

“About what?” I ask.

“That she was always supposed to be with us,” he says, like it’s obvious. “That the five of us made sense because the magic said so, not because we were all horny and bored.”

I laugh. “Those were contributing factors.”

“Those were excellent factors,” he says.

Kaien gives us both a look. “Focus.”

But he doesn’t argue.

Because he knows it too. We all do. Even before Command pulled us apart after the Tower, it was there — the way we moved better when she was in the room, the way our magic synced faster, the way our stupid, chaotic, not-supposed-to-be-a-harem team actually worked. Command called it “attunement.” I call it obvious.

Eryndor steeples his fingers. “If the Codex is pushing for completion, it’s not only because of its own evolution. It’s because the circle is together again.” He pauses. “It might escalate faster this time.”

“Then we beat it faster this time,” Theron says.

I grin at him. “Look at you. Growth.”

“Shut up.”

Kaien turns back to me. “What’s your read on her baseline?”

“Nyra’s?”

He nods.

I lean back, thinking of her in the debrief room — chin up, dampener ring on, pretending the four of us weren’t in her space.

“She’s tighter,” I say. “Less bleed. She’s been training. Probably doing Aelorian soundstone work. She can hold resonance longer without flaring now.”

“Good,” Kaien says. “Because I’m not letting her burn out again.”

Theron mutters, “You and me both.”

Eryndor’s gaze flicks up. “She won’t trust that.”

“I know,” Kaien says. “We show her.”

I shake my head, smiling a little. “You realize we all sound like men who’ve been waiting two years for her to walk through that door.”

Theron shrugs. “We have.”

He’s not even embarrassed. That’s the thing about us — when it comes to her, we don’t pretend we weren’t gone on her. It’s not new. It’s just true.

I flick the holo off so we can actually breathe without glyphs in our faces.

“All right. Enough mission. We gonna talk about how every single one of us stared at her like we hadn’t eaten in months?”

Theron snorts. “You stared the hardest.”

“Objectively untrue,” I say. “You looked at her like you wanted to pin her against the Array docks.”

“That was after she ignored me.”

“Right. Retaliation lust.”

Kaien pinches the bridge of his nose. “We’re not doing this.”

“We are absolutely doing this,” I say. “Because if we pretend there wasn’t something already in motion before the Tower, we’re just going to trip over it in the field.”

Eryndor nods once. “Better to acknowledge it.”

Kaien glares at him like he betrayed him. “You too?”

“It affects resonance,” Eryndor says simply. “Emotional proximity strengthens it. We’d be idiots to ignore that.”

“See?” I say. “Science.”

Theron laughs.

I let them settle, then I let the quiet come — just a little — because I know they’re all circling the same memory I am. You can tell when four men stop talking at once: their eyes go distant. Their shoulders shift like they remember weight.

So I say it, because someone has to.

“Tower,” I say. “Let’s run it once.”

Kaien’s gaze snaps to me. “There’s no need—”

“There is,” I say, not backing down. “Because at some point on this mission she’s going to flare. And when she does, every single one of us is going to remember that room whether we want to or not. Better to walk through it while we’re calm.”

Theron’s smirk is gone now. “Fine.”

Eryndor inclines his head. “Go on.”

I take a breath.

“It was worse than Command put in the report,” I say. “They said ‘resonance breach, contained.’ That’s not what happened.”

“No,” Kaien says quietly. “It isn’t.”

“It started clean,” I say, closing my eyes for a second so I can see it right. “We had the circle. We had the Vein map. Nyra tuned in, did her thing — took the Codex through her voice, stabilized the first three glyphs. You,” I nod at Theron, “were holding the stormfield so we didn’t get hit with backwash. You,” to Eryndor, “were locking down shadows so it didn’t jump realms. Kaien was command anchor. And I was monitoring the pattern.”

“And then it pushed back,” Eryndor says.

“And then it pushed back,” I echo. “Hard.”

I don’t go deeper.

For now, I let it sit.

Kaien stands. “We deploy soon. Get some rest.”

Theron groans. “You always end on the responsible line.”

“Someone has to.”

“Not true,” I say. “We could all end irresponsibly.”

“Cassian,” Kaien says in that warning tone.

I grin. “Yes, Commander.”

He shakes his head — but there’s the ghost of a smile there. He heads for the door.

Eryndor goes next, dissolving into the hall like he was never there.

Theron lingers. “You gonna sleep?” he asks me.

“Eventually.”

“You gonna think about her?”

“Definitely.”

He grins. “Good. Then we’re all on the same page.”

He claps me on the shoulder and leaves.

The room goes quiet.

I stand there in the blue glow, watching the reflection of the dead glyphs on the glass, and yeah — I can feel it. The way her presence shook the whole damn Array today. The way my magic perked up like, oh, we’re doing this again?

We didn’t imagine it, back then. The pull. The way she fit with us.

We were always supposed to be five.

And now that she’s back, the magic’s just trying to close the circle.

One second I’m staring at the blue glass reflection of the glyphs; the next, the light tilts—frequency shift, heartbeat skipping—and I’m there again.

The Tower.

Air thick enough to chew.

Walls thrumming with power.

Every instrument singing the same wrong note.

I taste metal before I see light. The whole chamber glows gold-white where the containment seals pulse against the storm outside. Kaien’s voice is already barking orders—steady, sharp, grounding. Theron’s sparks light the upper rafters, stormlight crawling along the conduits. Eryndor’s shadow field creeps around the floor like a living thing, swallowing stray resonance.

And Nyra stands in the center of it all.

She’s barefoot on the stone circle, palms out, eyes bright enough to blind. The resonance glyphs crawl up her arms like veins made of light. The sound coming out of her isn’t a word—it’s a chord, layered and alive, a language no one’s meant to pronounce. Every time her breath hits the air, the Codex symbols around her shift and re-form.

“Stabilize the fourth conduit!” Kaien shouts.

“I’m on it!” I slam a palm to the panel. The feedback bites—electric, hot—but the glyph lines smooth for half a second.

Theron’s voice crackles over the comm. “Wind shields up! You’re getting storm bleed from the upper vents!”

“Copy,” Kaien snaps. “Eryndor, contain lower resonance!”

“Trying,” Eryndor grits out. “It’s…multiplying.”

That’s when I see it—the shimmer above Nyra’s head twisting into a spiral. It’s not the Codex anymore. It’s something watching through it.

“Nyra!” I yell. “Cut the channel!”

She doesn’t hear me—or she does and ignores it. Her body’s shaking, but she keeps singing, voice raw and beautiful and terrifying. The glyphs rise from the floor, spinning around her like a crown.

Then the frequency spikes.

Pain rips through the room. The panels burst in a shower of sparks. Kaien’s anchor rod glows red. Theron swears. Eryndor’s shadows flare violet. I hit the ground, palms pressed to my ears, but the sound’s not in the air—it’s inside my skull.

Nyra screams, and everything fractures.

I lunge forward. Eryndor grabs my arm. “Don’t—”

“She’ll burn out!” I wrench free, cross the circle, grab her wrist. Her skin’s fire-hot. “Nyra, stop—”

Her eyes snap to mine, wide and wild, glowing like twin suns. For one heartbeat the resonance between us clicks—perfect, impossible harmony—and I feel everything: her fear, her fury, her need to save us. Then the Codex pushes through her.

Light detonates.

I hit the floor ten feet back. Can’t see. Can’t breathe. Every cell in my body hums with leftover energy.

Somewhere, Theron is yelling her name. Kaien’s dragging Nyra upright. The storm field collapses, leaving only silence.

And in the middle of it all—Nyra, on her knees, hair smoking, glyphs fading from her skin.

She looks at me once. Just once. Then the expression breaks—shame, disbelief, heartbreak—and she’s gone.

Not vanished—walked. Out.

I jolt awake before the memory can loop again.

The barracks are quiet. The lights have dimmed to silver haze. My pulse is still hammering.

Two years, and it still plays like that. Same smell of ozone. Same flash of her eyes before she left. Command called it burnout. I call it heartbreak with extra physics.

I throw an arm over my face and exhale. The glyphs on the wall display flicker faintly, like they know I’m remembering.

“Ecliphane,” I whisper.

Unity. Completion. The missing note.

* * *

The Array starts humming early. Deployment day always feels like the edge before lightning—everything too still, everyone pretending not to be afraid.

Kaien’s already up when I walk into the hangar, checking the resonance stabilizers on the transport skiff. Eryndor’s calibrating shadow seals; Theron’s arguing with the techs about the weapon charge limits.

“Morning,” I say, grabbing my gloves.

Theron glances over. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”

“I didn’t.”

“Nightmares?”

“Dreams,” I correct. “The ones that don’t stop.”

He tosses me a ration bar. “Eat. You’ll need it.”

Kaien’s tone carries from across the bay. “We move in ten. Nyra’s joining us for calibration in flight.”

That hits like a shot of adrenaline. I keep my face neutral. “Copy.”

Eryndor shuts the last panel. “You’ll behave.”

“Define behave.”

“Don’t make her leave again.”

That lands harder than it should. I nod once.

The hangar doors open. The Celadryn sky floods in—silver light, moving clouds, that high keening wind that always sounds like distant singing. The resonance cores underfoot flare gold, matching heartbeat to heartbeat.

Nyra appears at the far end of the platform, coat snapping around her, hair braided tight, dampener ring glinting in the light. She’s all clean lines and control, like she’s daring the world to remember she used to burn.

Theron mutters, “Still impossible.”

Kaien gives him a look. “Focus.”

But even he’s watching her walk.

She reaches us, posture perfect, eyes unreadable. “Command said you’d brief me en route.”

Kaien inclines his head. “We’ll sync frequencies once we’re airborne.”

Her gaze flicks across each of us, pauses on me for a fraction longer than it should, then moves on. “Fine.”

No hello. No smile. Just steel.

Still, the air hums the second she’s within range. Our magic recognizes hers before we do. My chest tightens.

We board.

* * *

In flight, the skiff’s resonance fields shimmer with our combined signatures—gold, silver, shadow, and storm twining around the cockpit like auroras. Nyra takes the seat across from me, adjusting the calibrator cuffs on her wrists.

Kaien monitors. Theron jokes. Eryndor watches the sky.

I just feel. Every shift in the air between us. Every pulse of energy that brushes my skin when she exhales. She’s pretending not to feel it. We’re pretending not to notice.

Theron finally breaks the silence. “So, Codex girl—what’s the plan when it starts singing again?”

Nyra doesn’t look up. “We listen.”

“Then what?”

“Then we stop it from finishing the song.”

He grins. “Still bossy.”

She flicks him a look sharp enough to cut. “Still loud.”

Kaien hides a smile behind his glove. “We’ll take readings at each Vein junction. Cassian will handle the glyph analysis.”

I nod, tapping the holo. “Already mapped the patterns. Veyra and Skynor are stable. Nameris is fluctuating. Ecliphane’s forming faster than expected.”

Nyra’s eyes narrow. “How fast.”

“Fifty-three percent,” I say. “Maybe less now that you’re—” I stop.

Her brow lifts. “Now that I’m what?”

“Back,” I finish. “Now that you’re back.”

She leans back, expression unreadable. “You think I’m the variable.”

“I know you are.”

She huffs a breath, half a laugh. “Always the optimist.”

“You call it optimism,” I say. “I call it math.”

Eryndor’s voice drifts from the cockpit. “You call everything math.”

“It’s easier that way.”

Nyra’s gaze holds mine for a beat longer than it should. The hum between us spikes. Then she looks away.

The skiff banks toward the Veinline, light flaring off the shields. The Codex glyphs on my wrist comm pulse once—quiet, like a heartbeat.

Ecliphane is coming together.

So are we.

And for the first time in two years, I’m not sure which is more dangerous.