The glyph-creature loomed—towering, twisted. Like a memory that had been shattered and forced to walk again.
Its body was cracked stone etched with glowing symbols. Some of them Kaelen recognized from Elowen's lecture. Others… he knew by instinct alone.
Its voice, raw and fractured, echoed:
"The Tower has chosen. The price… is one heart… or one soul."
Selene pulled her shortblade, firelight crackling along its edge. Seraphine spread her arms, drawing glyphlight from the air—sun-gold and ice-white at once.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The creature struck—faster than its size should allow. Its hand of stone smashed through a tree as the girls dove opposite ways.
Selene hurled flame darts—only to watch them fizzle, sucked into the creature's body. Glyphs twisted, reshaping into a counter-spell.
"Echo-mimic," Seraphine muttered. "It remembers what it sees."
"Good," Selene growled. "So let's show it something new."
They attacked in tandem. Seraphine danced forward, her movements a blur, carving symbols mid-air. A blast of sharp wind followed.
Selene came from behind, slamming fire into the base of the monster's leg.
The creature shuddered.
Seraphine shouted, "Now!"
Selene hesitated.
She didn't want to trust her. But—
She leapt, vaulting off Seraphine's spell-circle mid-air, slamming her blade into the core of the glyph-creature's chest.
Cracks split the runes.
The creature screamed—a dozen voices, male and female, young and old. Then—
BOOM.
It exploded into raw light.
They lay on the cracked stone ground, panting, hands bruised, cloaks scorched.
Silence fell, broken only by the wind through the ruined trees.
Seraphine turned her head, voice soft. "That was… good teamwork."
Selene stared up at the fading sky.
"I don't hate you," she said.
Seraphine blinked.
Selene continued, quieter now. "I did. I thought you were always one step ahead. But it's not you. It's him. He makes me want to fight for something."
Seraphine nodded, throat tight. "Yeah."
Neither said Kaelen's name.
But it hung there between them.
Meanwhile, back at the academy, Kaelen jolted upright in his bunk.
Sweat slicked his back. The glyph shard pulsed in his hand—awake.
A whisper in his mind:
Come to the observatory. Now.
Professor Elowen's voice.
The chamber was a dome of silver mirrors and stars etched into the ceiling. Elowen stood at the center, barefoot, robes unfastened at the collar, glyphs glowing along her arms.
"You said you wanted truth," she said. "Then see it. As they did."
She pressed her palm to his forehead.
The world flipped.
Fire.
Screams.
The Tower stood in ruin, and men in robes of gold and black fell in battle.
Kaelen stood—older, stronger, dressed in a mantle of white etched with the sigil of Veritas.
He raised a hand.
Glyphs obeyed.
He turned to the others behind him—mages, rebels, a woman with silver hair and tear-streaked eyes.
"This is the last echo," he heard himself say. "If I fall… remember why we rose."
Then the ground split beneath him. The glyph shattered.
And darkness claimed the dream.
Kaelen gasped.
Elowen knelt beside him.
"You were there," she whispered.
Kaelen looked at his hand.
The glyph had changed.
New lines, once faint, now glowed clearly beneath the skin.
"I need answers," he whispered.
"You are the answer," Elowen replied. "Or you will be. If you survive the price."
Later that night, Selene and Seraphine sat beside the ruined glyph-crater, a fire crackling between them.
Selene stared into the flames. "He's changing."
Seraphine nodded. "So are we."
Selene finally smiled, small but real. "We should write the report as if we hated each other."
"Oh?" Seraphine asked, amused.
Selene shrugged. "Just to keep him confused."
Their laughter echoed across the ruins.
And somewhere far above, the stars shifted—
And the Tower watched.
Back at the academy, Kaelen's glyph reshapes again in his sleep—and carves a new sigil into the wood of his bedside. One that wasn't in any book. One that hums with two names.
Selene.Seraphine.
And one word etched below:"Choice."