The dream didn't come softly this time.
It crashed into Kaelen's mind like a wave through glass—shards of memory and meaning slicing through him before he could scream.
He stood in a field of ash. The sky above twisted like torn cloth, stars stitched wrong into constellations he almost remembered. Around him, stone pillars jutted from the earth like broken teeth. On each one, a name had been carved in a language he didn't know… but somehow understood.
Kaelen.Eris.Lioren.Auren.
Each name echoed in his bones like old truths returning home.
But it was the voice that undid him.
Not the words—but the weight of it. Ancient. Grieving. Familiar.
"You were the anchor once. You are again."
He turned.
Atop the last pillar stood a boy, maybe twelve. Pale silver hair, robes of violet and ivory, and eyes like hollow moons. But it wasn't the boy's appearance that rooted Kaelen in place—it was the mark glowing across his chest.
The same Veritas sigil.
But older. Deeper. Braided with runes he didn't recognize.
"You're not real," Kaelen said aloud.
The boy only tilted his head.
"Neither are you. Not yet."
The world around them cracked. Fire bloomed at the edges of the vision, swallowing the ash field in tongues of violet flame.
Kaelen shouted—but no sound left his throat.
And then he woke.
His body jolted upright. Chest heaving. Shirt soaked.
A soft rustle broke the stillness.
Seraphine sat across the room, eyes wide. "You were glowing."
Kaelen blinked. "What?"
"Your glyph. While you slept—it was fully awakened. And then…"
She hesitated.
"It fractured."
He tried to speak, but the pressure in his head hadn't faded. The boy's eyes still lingered in his mind like smoke.
"I think I saw my past self," he finally said. "But it wasn't just a vision. It knew me."
Seraphine rose and crossed the space between them slowly, gently placing her hand on his shoulder. Not romantic. Not intimate.
Grounding.
"You're unraveling," she whispered. "Not breaking. There's a difference."
Kaelen managed a breath. "Are you sure?"
"No." She gave a shaky laugh. "But I'm still here."
They stayed like that for a while. Close. Silent. The air between them humming with something unsaid. Something that could become more.
But before it did, Seraphine pulled away.
"I need to show you something."
Selene closed the hidden passage behind her with a sharp click, eyes narrowed against the torchlight.
The hall she entered was old. Forgotten by most. And worse—traced with glyphs of a lineage long erased from Tower archives. She moved carefully, cloak brushing against the carved stone, fingers brushing the sigil etched into her pendant.
The message she'd sent was risky. But necessary.
If the Tower was coming—and they were—then Kaelen had to vanish. Disappear from the academy before the next envoy made contact. Even if it meant leaving everything behind.
Her plan had three steps.
Break into the old sigil registry and erase the latest vision report.
Steal one of the outbound transit tokens from the Veiled Vault.
Convince Kaelen to trust her over Seraphine.
Step one was done. The warded seal she left behind would erase all resonance signatures for the last 72 hours.
Step two was harder. She only had one chance to slip in during Mira's next stargazer calibration, when the Vault wards shifted for a few minutes.
Step three…
She wasn't sure it was even possible anymore.
Seraphine led Kaelen into the library's restricted west wing—where only professors and sanctioned Tower students were allowed.
"No one guards this section?"
"They do," she said, pushing open the door with a flick of her glyphlight. "But I'm not exactly on the banned list."
Kaelen raised a brow. "You've been here before."
"Enough times to know what you need to see."
They stopped before a sealed wall. Not a door. A wall.
She pressed her hand against the stone, her sigil flaring faintly. The glyph lines trembled, resisting.
"I don't have full clearance," she muttered. "But if I overlay yours with mine…"
"You want to use my glyph?" he asked.
"No," she said, quietly. "I want you to trust me with it."
Kaelen hesitated.
Then reached out—and placed his hand beside hers.
Their glyphs flared.
Not violently. Not like before.
This time, they harmonized.
A gentle hum passed through the wall, and it rippled like water. Slowly, the stone shimmered into glass—and beyond it, a chamber full of preserved scrolls, etched crystal, and something else.
A broken mirror.
Its frame was wrought of old sigilsteel, and its surface shimmered with faint starlight. A name was etched into the glass—but only the first half remained legible.
Kae—
Kaelen stepped closer, breath caught in his throat.
"This belonged to the Veritas line," Seraphine said. "But it's older than the Tower. No one knows where it came from."
Kaelen stared at his own reflection in the fractured mirror—and for a second, he didn't see himself.
He saw the boy again.
Smiling.
Waiting.
Selene stood outside the dorm hall, hand clenched at her side.
She'd come to tell him. To say it plainly—that they had to leave, now, tonight.
But she saw the door already slightly open.
And inside, Kaelen was standing close to Seraphine. Their glyphs still faintly aglow. No words between them, but a closeness.
Not physical.
Worse.
Emotional.
Selene turned without knocking. Her footsteps echoed too loud in the corridor.
And she didn't look back.