Over the last year, Unto a Golden Dawn (or whatever we end up calling it) has evolved from a story about recursion and grief into something more: a dossier of hauntings, broken memories, and fractured identities. But along the way, some scenes—some fragments—never quite found their way into the final manuscript.
This is one of those fragments.
It’s not canon, but it is part of the world. A bleed-through from an earlier draft. A memory that wasn’t supposed to survive.
It features Caldwell Thorne (Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena) as he first crosses into the veil, receives his Dream-Encoded Summons, and begins documenting the phenomena that will eventually threaten to rewrite him—and the reader.
This isn’t backstory. It’s a field entry.
The file is labeled ACTIVE.
And the mirror is already watching.
Field Guide: ENTRY 0001- INITIATION
Filed under: Veil Induction / Dream-Encoded Summons Compiled by: Caldwell Thorne, Division VII – O.A.P.
You’ve come this far—either because you believe in the work, or because something inside you refused to let go.
Either way, I won’t reassure you.
Recursion is deepening. Mirrors no longer reflect—they remember. And the Veil—the boundary that once kept madness from memory—is fraying faster than we can document.
What follows is not a definitive manual. It’s a living index. A patchwork of fragments, field logs, and pattern recognition.
Treat it as a guide. A map, maybe.
But don’t trust it completely.
Because the moment you think you understand this archive… it writes you back.
They don’t call. They don’t write. They dream into you.
Veil Induction isn’t hypnosis. It isn’t meditation. It’s a threshold—crossed only when memory folds the right way. It usually happens during sleep, but not always. I’ve known it to strike during trauma, grief, déjà vu. You don’t go looking for the veil. It finds a crack in you and pours through.
Dream-Encoded Summons is their term for it. Their way of saying: we left the door unlocked, and you walked through. You’ll know it worked if you wake up remembering things you haven’t done yet.
That’s how it started for me.
I wasn’t recruited.
I was called.
It began with a letter—burned at the corners, delivered without postage, sealed with a spiral that folded in on itself. Too many arms. Too many loops. Inside: one name.
Office of Anomalous Phenomena.
Though sometimes they call themselves other things. The Order Against the Profane. The Office of Applied Paradox. The titles shift, like reality hasn’t quite decided what they are.
The message inside was simple. They believed I could see things others couldn’t. I was told to report to the old station in Brighton. Pack nothing. Ask no questions.
So I went.
The station didn’t exist on any map. Not anymore.
But the train was waiting. Dark metal. Windows blacked out. No tracks visible in either direction.
I boarded.
They were already inside. Six silhouettes. None of them spoke aloud. But I heard them just the same.
They said I had seen the veil, but I didn’t yet know how to listen to it.
They showed me photographs:
A castle in Warwickshire, shattered and reassembling itself every full moon. A girl in a wheelchair, smiling across timelines. A field of mirrors that hummed when no one watched. A house that existed in five places, belonging to a man who no longer remembered his name.
And always… a boy. Watching. Waiting.
The man across from me handed me a sealed file. It was marked:
CLASSIFIED – RECURSION EVENT CANDIDATE: ANDERSON, F.
His other hand rested on a mirror. The reflection blinked before he did.
Then came the question. It always comes.
They asked what I believed evil was.
I told them I didn’t believe in evil. I believed in fear. In damage. In people who couldn’t make the right choice in the fog of pain. Evil, I said, is the word we use when we stop trying to understand what broke someone.
The room didn’t stir.
But I felt it.
That ripple of agreement.
They told me that’s why I was perfect.
They sent me into the field with no weapon.
Only a journal.
And a shard of mirror.
I started at the Castle. A resonance anchor where Poe once wept blood onto the stone. The windows reflected stars that hadn’t existed for centuries.
Then the Hollow House. A childhood memory made solid in bone and grief. Elizabeth was there. She didn’t speak—but her reflection did.
Then the Warehouse. The place no one claims to know but everyone dreams of. Its shelves held dates that hadn’t happened yet. One crate bore my initials.
I didn’t open it.
Not yet.
It was inside the veil that I learned how to listen.
It’s not sound. It’s pressure. A thought folded backward. A memory bending its edges.
I slipped under during an encoded mirror ritual. And I asked a question.
Where is evil?
Something answered.
Not a voice.
A presence.
A shape burning itself into the inside of my skull.
One word: Salazar.
I don’t know how I knew it was a name. But I did.
Worse—I recognized it.
Like something I had once promised to forget.
I asked again.
Who is Salazar?
And the mirror showed me my own face.
Laughing. Weeping. Fractured into three expressions I didn’t recognize.
They pulled me back when my nose started bleeding.
No one spoke on the train ride home.
They didn’t need to.
I’d been marked.
Witnessed.
Filed.
They say I’ll see Salazar again.
Maybe in the mirrors.
Maybe in myself.
I still don’t believe in evil.
But I believe in the name the veil gave me.
And that is enough.
—Caldwell Division VII, Active Inquiry [Filed as FIELD ENTRY 0001 – Archive Initiation: ACTIVE]
Why I’m Sharing This
This entry was originally part of a larger lore system for the novel—a system that included recursive train rides, haunted castles, and fractured timelines that didn’t make the final cut. But the tone and texture of this piece still capture the spirit of the world.
So rather than delete it… I’m letting it breathe.
Think of it as a classified memo from a world that doesn’t trust its own documentation. A peek behind the recursion. A whisper from the mirrors.
And maybe—just maybe—something I’ll return to if the veil opens again.
—Frank
Fulcrum & Axis Press
🕯️
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
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