It was quiet when Kael woke—too quiet.
The dormitory's creaking rafters, normally filled with snoring or whispered arguments between roommates, seemed deadened by an invisible pressure. His body felt heavier, like he'd slept under wet blankets instead of a threadbare quilt.
Then he remembered the dream. The same dream again.
The three rings, suspended in dark water. A figure without a face, drawing sigils not on paper—but in flesh. And that voice:"You must break to ascend."
He exhaled slowly and pushed himself up, knuckles white around the edge of his bunk.
Rin's bed was empty. Not unusual. She often woke before dawn to practice with her quarterstaff or study in the old annex where no one would bother her. But this time, something itched beneath Kael's skin.
His sigil burned faintly on his shoulder blade, like a smoldering coal. Not painful—just… alert.
Downstairs, the mess hall was half-empty. The smell of burnt barley and weak tea hung in the air, but the usual chatter was missing. Only hushed murmurs remained, like the walls had been warned to listen.
Kael spotted two silhouettes in the corner—Fenn and Jora. They stopped talking the moment he entered.
"Something happened," Jora said without preamble as Kael approached. Her tone wasn't curious—it was wary. "Old Master Verren's gone."
Kael frowned. "Gone where?"
"No one knows," Fenn muttered, not meeting his gaze. "He left his quarters wide open. Books on the floor. Sigil tools... shattered."
A cold finger ran down Kael's spine. "Did anyone see—?"
"Nothing," Jora said. "Not a trace. It's like he was... erased."
Back in the archives, Kael paced between ancient scrolls and dust-choked ledgers, trying to suppress the tight knot in his chest. Verren had been the only master who didn't look at Kael like a cracked mirror. The only one who believed the sigils could still be understood—controlled, maybe even changed.
And now he was gone.
Kael's fingers found the journal he'd hidden beneath a loose tile. Verren's last gift. Its leather was worn, its ink faded in places, but the sigils inside weren't standard. They were wrong—twisted.
Or advanced.
He turned to the last page. For the first time, he noticed something hidden in the margins: a pattern of dots, barely inked. Seven on one side. Three on the other.
A code?
Later, as dusk crawled in and torches flickered awake along the courtyard, Kael found Rin. She was sharpening her staff by the garden wall, expression grim.
"They're going to say he abandoned us," she said before he could speak.
Kael sat beside her on the low stone ledge. "He didn't."
"No." Rin's voice cracked, but she didn't stop sharpening. "But it'll be easier for them to believe that. No one wants to admit we're being hunted."
Kael didn't ask by what.
Instead, he opened the journal to the coded page and held it out. Rin's brow furrowed, and her hands stilled.
"Verren left this for you?"
Kael nodded. "And it wasn't in here before. I checked."
She traced the dots with one finger. "They're sigil coordinates. Advanced ones. Not ones I've ever seen."
Kael grinned. "That's why I have you."
Her lips twitched. "You're using me."
"I prefer partnering with your superior intellect."
She gave him a mock-glare. "Sarcasm doesn't hide fear, Kael."
He shrugged. "It makes it more tolerable."
That night, as they snuck into the restricted tower Verren once guarded—a place full of forbidden sigils and relics from the Lost Civilisation—they discovered the first truth.
Beneath a false floor in the master's quarters was a sigil carved into iron. It pulsed when Kael touched it. The air smelled of ozone and metal. His sigil flared on his back, the lines glowing for a moment before fading.
Rin stepped away. "That's not part of our records."
"No," Kael said, crouching. "It's older."
"What does it do?"
He looked up at her, heart hammering. "I think… it remembers."
The moment he said the word, the sigil shivered.
Then it spoke—not in words, but in memory.
Kael was no longer standing. He was falling.
Through visions, fragmented and raw. A city made of light and obsidian. People with glowing sigils etched into their skin like tattoos—but pulsing with life. A massive tree in the center of their city—alive, sentient, growing with their strength.
Then: war.
Fire consuming sky. Sigils shattered into screaming stars. Voices crying for the "Origin Flame."
And finally… silence.
He gasped awake on the floor. Rin's face swam into view, eyes wide and frightened.
"You were gone for five minutes," she whispered.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
"It was them," he said hoarsely. "The ones who made the sigils. They didn't just use them. They were them. The power wasn't a tool—it was identity."
Rin swallowed hard. "And what happened to them?"
Kael looked at the iron, now dim.
"They broke themselves… trying to ascend."
But not all of them had died.
Some, Kael knew, had survived. Hidden themselves. Maybe… waiting.
And one of them had left that sigil.
Which meant they weren't done with the world.
Or him.