The storm outside wasn't ordinary. Rain didn't usually carry sigil echoes.
Kaelen pressed his palm to the windowpane and felt the vibration along his bones. The Tower always responded to magic, but tonight… it whispered.
"The chains are waking," he muttered.
Selene turned toward him from across the study room. Her long braid was undone, her uniform half-soaked from when they'd raced back inside. They'd been caught in it together—accidentally.
But neither had rushed to leave.
"What did you say?" she asked softly.
Kaelen didn't answer. His eyes were locked on the glyphline now visible in the sky—faint, silvery script threading through the clouds.
He recognized the language.
Veritas.
"There's another like me," he said finally. "She's bound."
Selene's lips parted slightly. Her expression—uncertain. But not surprised.
"You're talking about the girl in the dream," she said.
That startled him.
"You saw her too?"
Selene nodded.
"Chains. A mask of light. And screaming… like it was in my own throat."
Kaelen swallowed.
They weren't just connected.
They were being pulled.
Selene led him toward a wing of the Academy few dared enter after dark—the old Archives. Technically sealed off after the war, but Selene had stolen a sigil key weeks ago.
She didn't say how.
Kaelen followed her past cracked stone corridors and shuttered vaults until they reached a circular door half-swallowed by tree roots and glyphstone rot.
"She's under here," Selene whispered. "I've seen her in dreams since I was ten."
Kaelen placed his hand on the stone. The glyph flared.
It opened.
They descended in silence.
The room was cold. Too cold.
Chains hung from the ceiling—some real, some illusions flickering in and out. In the center, a stasis crystal flickered with a girl's silhouette inside.
She didn't look more than fifteen.
Hair like flame. Eyes closed. Breathing slow. A chain of light wrapped around her chest and limbs, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Kaelen couldn't move at first.
"Who is she?" he asked.
Selene's voice trembled. "They called her 'The Origin.' She was the first to manifest Veritas. And she's been trapped ever since."
"How long?"
"Seventy-six years."
Kaelen stumbled back.
This was older than him. Older than the Academy's current Council.
And something in the girl's aura pulled at him like gravity.
"She's dreaming," Selene whispered. "But not hers."
"Ours."
Kaelen knelt beside the stasis crystal.
He closed his eyes.
Touched the glyph burned into his palm against the sigil barrier.
And the world snapped sideways.
He was in a white void now.
No floor. No sky.
Just chains—drifting through air, looping endlessly. And in the center, a girl floated. Eyes open, glowing. She turned to him.
"You're late," she said.
Kaelen tried to speak, but couldn't.
"They're coming for you. They always come when two awaken," the girl murmured. Her chains rattled like teeth.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She just smiled.
"I am the truth they buried. I am the question no one answers."
Lightning split the void.
And he was falling—
Kaelen woke with Selene's hands gripping his shoulders.
"You stopped breathing," she whispered.
He gasped, lungs burning.
They sat there, shivering.
Then Selene did something unexpected.
She pulled him into an embrace.
"Don't break," she whispered. "You're the only one who listens. Even when you lie."
Kaelen's arms wrapped around her automatically. And for a long moment, neither of them moved.
He didn't know if it was love.
But it was something like gravity.
High above, on the upper balconies of the Tower, Seraphine stood beneath a dripping arch.
Her glyphstone spy charm dimmed.
She had seen everything.
And her fists clenched tighter than ever before.
"Selene," she murmured. "Don't get in his way."
Kaelen returns to his room. Another message waits.
"You've opened the door. The Watchers are coming. Burn this."
The paper dissolves in his hands.