Somewhere beyond the monitored frequencies, past containment sectors, beyond the sweep of surveillance satellites, a signal began to move.
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.
For Saejin it pressed lightly at the edge of his awareness, a sensation caught between his tasks as a Guide. 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 fortified checkpoints, 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 simply passed through. An 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.