The staircase descended in a spiral of glass and impossible geometry. No footsteps echoed. No breath dared linger.
Glyphs pulsed dimly along the walls, faint as candle smoke—unwritten spells clinging to the edge of awareness. Some whispered in forgotten tongues. Others merely watched.
Caelum's sigil glowed without warmth.
Rheia walked beside him, reading the glyphs silently, lips moving faster than his eyes could track.
Ahead of them, the masked boy—the self-declared wound—moved with unsettling ease. Like he belonged in this place. Like he'd been waiting.
The corridor narrowed. Then widened. Then curved back on itself, violating space.
"This shouldn't exist," Rheia muttered. "This isn't just magic—this is intent manifest."
They reached a chamber carved in mirrored stone.
And the air changed.
The room was circular, inscribed with seven floating runes that hovered, pulsing slowly like hearts made of light.
A pedestal stood in the center.
Upon it: a small, threadbare journal bound in blood-thread.
The masked boy was already there, fingers hovering just shy of the pages.
"I should kill you both," he said without turning. "But something here says wait."
"You're not going to open that alone," Rheia said, drawing a thin memory-thread sigil in the air.
"Try to stop me and see what happens," he said.
Caelum stepped forward. "What do you even want?"
"I want to know why the world forgot Elarion," the boy said, voice sharp and hungry. "Why his name was stripped from the Weave. Why the most powerful channeler in recorded history is now just a ghost in a cracked tomb."
Caelum said nothing.
The masked boy turned to him.
"You carry his mark. But you don't remember him. Not truly. That's why you're weak."
He reached down.
Touched the journal.
And the runes exploded.
Light filled the chamber.
But not light made by fire or sun.
This was memory light—woven from half-lost stories and burned-away fates.
Caelum cried out as it pierced his sigil.
Images poured in.
A city built on song. A boy who spoke with stars. A betrayal not by an enemy—but a friend.
A cathedral collapsing inward, not from spellfire—but from grief.
Rheia clutched her head. Her mind flooded with equations, glyphforms she didn't know she knew.
The masked boy screamed.
Blood ran from his eyes.
"He was right—he was right—they weren't ready to remember—"
And then the light collapsed.
Caelum stood at the center of it all, arms outstretched, chest bare, the sigil on his skin now flickering like a dying star.
The journal hovered before him.
He opened it.
Pages fluttered.
Blank.
Except for one.
A single line, scrawled in ink not ink:
"The first unmaking begins not with death—but with memory denied."
They left the chamber in silence.
Even the masked boy.
He said nothing, but stared at Caelum like seeing him for the first time.
"I still don't trust you," he muttered. "But you're not lying. That's worse."
"What's your name?" Caelum asked.
The boy hesitated.
"…Lior."
Then he vanished into the spiraling path behind them.
Back in the Arcanum, a storm was brewing.
Class Nine's fifth student—the red-auraed boy—collapsed mid-lecture.
His eyes turned black.
Then mirrored.
He screamed not in pain, but in reverberation—a resonance that echoed off the soul itself.
Instructrix Vale snapped her fingers.
A memory ward shot into place.
Too late.
The scar had taken root.
Glyphs appeared across his chest.
Not his own.
Elarion's.
Only twisted.
Feral.
Incomplete.
Serapha found Caelum and Rheia waiting outside the Cathedral steps, pale and silent.
"What did you find?" she asked.
Caelum handed her the journal.
"Answers," he said.
"Or maybe just… more locks."
Rheia added quietly, "And someone's already trying to force them open."
Serapha looked down at the sigil on Caelum's chest.
It was no longer dormant.
It hummed.
And the city above—ancient, proud, and layered in secrets—seemed to listen.