The bells tolled softly across the east wing, their low hum echoing through the corridors like the breath of a slumbering beast. Kaelen sat in the deep alcove of the Arcanum Library, bathed in twilight shadow and the muted glow of glyph-lit chandeliers. A tome lay open in front of him, old and brittle around the edges, its ink faded with time. His fingers traced the diagrams absently, but his thoughts weren't with the page.
Mira had gone silent since the duel. Professors were locking down their lectures. Certain tomes were suddenly restricted. A new rule about after-hours curfew had been posted, but no one spoke of it aloud.
The Tower hadn't moved. Not yet. But the pressure was building.
They don't act until a Pattern Master confirms the glyph lineage. Until then, I'm noise, not threat. Mira's warning returned to him again and again, more like a ward than wisdom.
But that lie was unraveling.
A table away, Seraphine turned another page, her expression unreadable. Her hair, usually pinned with crystalline precision, was left loose tonight. It caught the firelight like fine silk. She hadn't spoken to him since class ended, and she didn't need to—her silence said more than words ever could.
Still, Kaelen noticed the twitch of her foot beneath the table, the subtle way her thumb brushed the same spot on the parchment over and over. A nervous rhythm.
He leaned back, letting his eyes rest on her without staring. "You're quieter than usual."
She didn't look up. "So are you."
"That's fair," he admitted, his voice softer now. "But you look like you're reading the same paragraph for the third time."
"I'm not counting," she muttered.
The corners of his lips tugged upward, but the smile didn't last.
"How long do you think I have?"
This time, her gaze met his. There was no pretense in her eyes, no wall of mockery or cold detachment—just tired truth.
"I give it a week. Maybe less."
Kaelen nodded slowly. "And you? You going to report me?"
Seraphine tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable. "I haven't decided."
Something tight unwound in his chest. It wasn't relief. Just… something that made breathing easier for a moment.
"I thought you liked rules."
"I like the ones that make sense," she replied. "This academy's full of ones that don't."
She closed her book gently. The sound felt louder than it should have in the quiet. Then, after a moment: "If the Tower comes, don't wait to run."
Kaelen studied her. There was something underneath those words—more than warning. Maybe fear. Maybe… something else.
"You're not afraid of me anymore."
"No," she said softly. "But I'm afraid of what you're becoming."
He exhaled slowly, then stepped closer, keeping his voice low. "Then help me steer it."
Seraphine's gaze didn't waver. "Don't ask me to steer it away from who I need to be."
Far above the campus, wind whipped over stone as Selene stood atop the Observatory, her eyes fixed not on the stars, but on the world below.
She had been trying to ignore the weight in her chest for days now. A name spoken too casually. A face she had only seen in family portraits and war memorials.
Seraphine.
There were too many resemblances. Too many shared threads to dismiss. And Kaelen hadn't noticed—of course he hadn't. He was too busy stumbling through a world that no longer obeyed the rules.
But Selene noticed.
A chill settled into her bones, and she wasn't sure if it came from the wind or the thought forming in the back of her mind: What if she remembers him too?
Footsteps approached. She didn't need to turn to know who it was.
Professor Thellin stepped beside her, robes lined with thread that shimmered subtly—Tower markings, veiled but present.
"You asked about glyph-memory resonance."
She nodded once. "And dream echoes. How far can a glyph remember?"
He studied her for a long moment. "Far enough to cross lifetimes."
Her voice was quiet. "If his glyph remembers… what if it remembers someone who isn't me?"
"You think another bond has carried over," Thellin said. "Another thread."
Selene said nothing, but her silence confirmed it.
"Then you'd better hope it forgets before he chooses it again."
Later that night, Kaelen walked Seraphine back toward the eastern dorms. They passed beneath the old tower arches, where flickering glyph-lights danced along the walls.
She slowed her pace without speaking, then stopped just before the dorm gates.
"You're different from when I first met you."
Kaelen raised a brow. "More dangerous?"
"More… real." She paused. "And more reckless."
"I don't know how to be anything else. Not anymore."
The air between them held weight. It wasn't like before—the sharp banter, the barbed comments. This was quieter, heavier.
She reached out, just briefly, and touched the edge of his sleeve.
"I'm not here to save you from what you are," she said. "But I don't want to lose the version of you that still cares."
Kaelen looked at her for a long time, trying to put words to the feeling pressing behind his ribs. In the end, he said nothing.
She didn't wait for him to.
Seraphine turned and stepped through the ward-gate. The glyph shimmered behind her, and she was gone.
Beneath the Academy, in the oldest archives few remembered existed, a ward flared.
The glyph array trembled, and a recording rune lit itself for the first time in decades.
Two figures stood in the shadows beyond it.
"The Veritas Line is active."
A hand moved through the dark and extinguished the light.
"Then begin the culling."