They left before dawn.
Lareth slept lightly, her streets never empty, her eyes always half-open. But in the cold hours before morning bells, when only archivists and whisper-watchers stirred, Serapha and Caelum passed unnoticed.
Eryth had given no clear directions—only a fragment of a map, drawn in invisible ink, revealed only by exposure to breath-chilled mana. On it was the sigil again, half-formed: a circle sundered by a vertical line, drawn over the eastern ridge of the lowlands beyond the floating city's base.
A place marked simply: Aestra's Breath.
Caelum hadn't heard of it before. Serapha had.
"It was an old monastery," she said. "The monks there trained in the Breath—a philosophy that used controlled external mana to see echoes of possibility. They weren't combatants. They were dreamers."
"Why was it buried?"
Serapha's eyes darkened. "Because dreamers become dangerous when their dreams are clear."
They reached the base of the high cliffs just past midday.
What remained of Aestra's Breath was a collapsed dome overgrown with frostbark vines. The stone entrance was half-sealed, buried by fallen masonry and soot-glass—signs of magical detonation. Whatever had destroyed it had come not from without, but within.
It took them hours to clear a path.
Inside, the air was dead.
The Weave here was thinner. Caelum felt it immediately—like something taut had been snapped long ago. There was no hum of mana. No pull in his veins. Only a stillness that tasted like ash.
They lit glyph-lamps and entered.
The monastery's central hall had once been circular, surrounded by alcoves filled with memory niches—stone cavities that once held dream-stones or thought-crystals. Now, they were all shattered. Dust lay thick across the floor, as if time had stopped rather than passed.
At the center of the room stood a single, intact pedestal.
And on it: a shard of polished obsidian.
It pulsed faintly.
Caelum approached first.
The sigil behind his eyes flickered—and the obsidian shard responded.
It lit from within, casting a pale, inverted glow across the chamber. The walls rippled. The air thickened with resonance. And then—
The world changed.
He stood in the same hall.
But it was whole.
The walls were unbroken. The lamps lit. Monks in slate robes moved quietly, chanting not with voices but with gestures—silent rhythms traced in the air. A soft bell rang from above.
Caelum reached out, but his hand passed through them.
This was a memory echo. A deep one.
One of the monks turned—and looked directly at him.
Caelum froze.
The monk had no face. Only a swirling veil of light where features should be.
But the eyes—the eyes were like his.
"You are not ready," the monk said.
Caelum tried to speak, but his voice failed him.
The monk raised a hand, and the hall rippled again. Images spun around him—cities burning, skies torn, Weave scars spreading like fractures in glass.
"You will be a wound, or a balm."
The vision shattered.
He collapsed back into himself, coughing.
Serapha caught him.
"What did you see?"
"Memories," he rasped. "People. A monk saw me. Spoke to me."
"That's not possible. Dream echoes aren't aware."
"I know what I saw."
Serapha frowned. She turned to the shard—but now, it was dark again. Dormant.
"We'll take it," she said. "We'll study it in Lareth."
But even as she wrapped it in cloth and sealed it in a containment scroll, Caelum knew: the shard wasn't finished with him.
He could still hear it.
And it was whispering in a voice he hadn't heard since childhood.
His mother's.
That night, back in Lareth, Caelum couldn't sleep.
Serapha placed the shard in a vault warded by seven-tier sigils. But it didn't help.
When he closed his eyes, he stood again in that perfect hall.
And the faceless monk waited.
"Do you want to know what you are?" the monk asked.
Caelum hesitated. "Yes."
"You are unwritten. A thread pulled from the Weave, never knotted. Your path is not prophecy. It is potential."
"What does that mean?"
The monk raised a hand, and suddenly Caelum stood on a cliff, watching as cities crumbled, their mana cores ruptured. Not by force—but by absence.
"They will fear you," the monk said. "Because they cannot control what is not bound."
"Am I like the Nullforms?"
"No. The Nullforms were silences. You are a question."
Then, the monk leaned closer.
"Be careful who answers."
Caelum awoke with a gasp.
Serapha was already at his bedside, her hand on a dagger. "What happened?"
"I saw him again. The monk. He said I'm unwritten. That I'm not fate, but potential."
Serapha's eyes narrowed. "He spoke to you again?"
"Yes. I don't think it was just an echo. I think it was… alive."
She stood, pacing. "This changes things. We need to consult someone higher in the Archive."
"Won't that risk exposure?"
She shook her head. "Not if I go alone. There's one seer I trust. Old friend. Archivist Emera. She helped me once during the border wars."
Caelum frowned. "What should I do?"
"Rest. Try to remember everything he said. Dreams are fickle. And tomorrow—"
She hesitated.
"Tomorrow, you begin learning how to listen back."