The house was quiet, as it always was in the early hours. Outside, the orchard was still cloaked in mist, the trees standing like patient shadows beneath a sky not yet blue. A few finches stirred in the hedgerow, but their songs were faint, as if hesitant to disturb the hush.
Inside, Lucien sat at the kitchen table, tea untouched before him, eyes fixed on the wooden paneling across the room. His hand hovered near the cup, but he hadn't moved in minutes. The sigil had vanished, but its presence still clung to the space—like a fingerprint left on glass.
Kai stood by the stove, stirring honey into a second cup, his gaze flicking between Lucien and the shelf. The wards hadn't flared again, but both of them had felt it: the brief tremble in the walls, the way the house had exhaled something cold. Lucien broke the silence. "It wasn't just residual magic. Something reached through."
Kai didn't argue. He only set down the second cup beside Lucien, fingers brushing his arm.
Across the garden, Rhydian and Caelan were finishing their morning training. The boy laughed at something Rhydian said, then darted toward the house, wooden sword slung over his shoulder. Lucien watched them through the window, jaw tight."He's good with him," Kai said gently.
Lucien gave no reply.
Later, after Caelan had been sent upstairs to clean the mud off his boots and Rhydian returned to the garden to cool the spell-shielding wards, Lucien remained in the sitting room, hands trailing lightly along the shelf. He pressed his palm to the spot where the sigil had appeared.
Cold.
The wood held a damp, metallic residue—like rain soaked in starlight. He leaned in, eyes narrowing. The faintest etching remained—not visible, but felt. His fingers brushed a seam. A draft whispered against his skin. There was a hidden panel. Lucien knelt and pressed harder. A soft click answered him, and a section of the bookshelf gave way. Behind it, nestled in dust and velvet-darkness, lay a thin, weathered journal.
He pulled it free.
The leather was cracked, the edges of the pages worn. No title marked the cover, only a faint sigil stamped into the leather—the same spiral he had seen burned into the air hours before. His stomach dropped. He opened the journal slowly. The handwriting was old, fluid and cramped, written in a blend of common and starlit glyphs—symbols used by seers and Watchers, predating most modern magical codices. The ink shimmered faintly, still alive with residual magic.
He flipped to the first page.
They told me it was a gift.
But dreams don't leave scars like this.
—A.M.
Lucien's breath caught.
By nightfall, the journal had consumed his thoughts. He didn't speak of it—not to Kai, not to Rhydian. Not even when Kai curled against him in bed, arm draped gently across his waist, asking softly if the tension in him had faded.
Lucien lied and said yes. But the truth was written in the lines under his eyes, and in the silence that stretched between their breaths. The journal lay hidden beneath the bed, bound in a wrap of linen and quiet fear. He waited until Kai's breathing slowed, deepened. Sleep took him gently, as it always did. Lucien slipped free from the sheets and padded barefoot across the floor, moving toward the window.
The night outside was unusually still. But something was wrong. The orchard no longer looked like the orchard. Where there should have been apple trees and garden rows, a ruined city stood beneath a violet sky. Cracked towers. Broken stone bridges. Stars spiraling too fast above.
Lucien blinked.
The orchard returned. Moonlight filtered through mist. But the feeling remained. As if his eyes had caught the edge of a memory that wasn't his. He turned. The room was wrong now, too. Not drastically. But undeniably. The angles were ever so slightly off. The shadows longer. The ceiling higher than it should have been. His mirror reflected the space—but not his figure. For a long moment, it showed the bed as empty.
When he stepped toward it, his reflection snapped into place—but just a second too late. The candle on the dresser flickered. Then whispered. Words. Low. Soft. In the voice of someone he didn't know.
"You carry the echo.
The spiral remembers."
Lucien recoiled. The whisper stopped. The flame returned to normal. And on the ceiling above the bed, etched faintly in silver-blue starlight, the sigil returned. This time, it did not vanish.
Downstairs, Rhydian woke from a dreamless sleep, sensing the ripple in the wards. He rose without hesitation, moving toward the upper landing, where the magic was thin and stretched like a net pulled too tight. He followed the source. He didn't knock when he opened Lucien's door.
Lucien stood by the mirror, pale and silent, one hand braced against the dresser.
Rhydian saw the sigil first—then the candle. Then Lucien.
"What did you do?" he asked, voice hushed. Lucien didn't look at him. "I didn't cast anything."
"Then something used you to open a door."
Lucien didn't respond. He stared at the mirror, unmoving, as if hoping the candle would whisper again. Rhydian crossed the room with quiet steps, gaze lifting to the sigil still pulsing faintly above the bed. It had a soft, silver glow now, as though light were bleeding through from somewhere deeper—another layer beneath reality.
"It's not just a mark," Rhydian murmured. "It's an anchor." Lucien finally turned to him. His eyes were wide, unreadable. "For what?" "I don't know yet." Kai's footsteps sounded in the hallway. He arrived at the door seconds later, breath tight with concern, hair still damp with sleep. He froze when he saw the ceiling . "Lucien," he whispered. "Why didn't you wake me?"
"I thought it was just another dream," Lucien said. "Until it wasn't." Kai stepped beside him, instinctively reaching for his hand. "This isn't like the last time. This feels… older. Wrong." m "It's the same sigil I saw earlier. On the shelf." Kai turned to Rhydian. "Can you dispel it?" Rhydian studied the glow. "No. It's not an active spell. It's not doing anything right now. It's just… present."
"Then it's a warning," Kai said. "A sign." Lucien hesitated. Then crossed the room, knelt beside the bed, and reached underneath. He pulled out the journal. The three of them sat in the sitting room as the first light of dawn bled through the curtains. Caelan was still asleep upstairs, the world around them holding its breath. Lucien laid the journal across the table. Its cracked leather binding looked even older now in the golden light. The sigil on its cover gleamed faintly.
He opened it to the first entry.
They told me it was a gift.
But dreams don't leave scars like this.
I have seen three worlds die in my sleep. One was mine. The other two were stranger. But the stars were always the same—watching.
—A.M., Year Unknown.
Kai exhaled slowly, fingers running through his hair. Rhydian leaned forward. "Who's A.M.?" "I don't know," Lucien said. "But they had the Eye. Or something like it." They turned the pages together. The entries were erratic, sometimes written days apart, sometimes full of frantic symbols and glyphs. Others were lucid, methodical—describing sigils, dreams, sky patterns, and mirror rituals.
One passage stood out:
They come first in dreams.
Then through mirrors.
Then through the walls.
The house remembers. The spiral opens.
Lucien's fingers froze on the page. Kai whispered, "That's what's happening now." Rhydian leaned over the journal, reading another note:
Do not draw the Sigil of Binding Stars unless you are prepared to seal something in or out. The Eye listens. Even in silence.
"That's what you saw on the ceiling," Kai said. "The Binding Stars." Lucien nodded. "I didn't draw it. It… appeared." Rhydian's eyes narrowed. "Then it's responding to you. Not just passively. You're not its vessel anymore, Lucien. You're its compass. It's coming through you."
A long silence.
Lucien whispered, "Then I need to understand what it wants."
By midmorning, the house had fallen into a strange hush. Caelan came downstairs for breakfast, unaware of the night's events, and was gently ushered back to the orchard under Rhydian's careful guidance.
Kai and Lucien stayed behind, pouring over the journal.
One of the later entries chilled them both:
The mirror ritual worked. But I don't know what I brought back with me.
Something is following. I see it in reflections now. Not me. Not anymore.
It knows I'm watching. It wants to be seen.
I sealed the sigil into the bones of the house. Maybe that will hold it. Maybe it will drift into another version of me.
—A.M.
Lucien touched the page slowly. "The bones of the house. This journal was part of the ward. Hidden behind the shelf." Kai looked up. "So whoever lived here before us—" "Was a Starseer too," Lucien said quietly. "Or something close to it." The realization hung between them. What if this house—what they thought was their sanctuary—had always been a vessel?
Not just for peace.
But for containment.
That night, Lucien couldn't sleep.
Not for lack of trying. The bed was warm beside Kai, the sheets familiar, but his body thrummed with something colder than anxiety. The house felt too still. Too perfect. At some point, he rose again. This time, he didn't go to the mirror.
He went to the sitting room.
The sigil had reappeared—not glowing this time, but etched into the very floorboards where he'd first seen it days ago. Like it had always been there, waiting for eyes to adjust. Lucien knelt over it. He whispered the glyphs from the journal. The sigil pulsed. A ripple passed through the air. The room blurred.
When he looked up—the windows no longer showed the orchard. They showed a city of ash and starlight. Just like the dream. Kai found him there at dawn—kneeling over the wood, eyes glowing faintly with the reflection of something vast.
"Lucien," he said, crossing to him. "What did you see?" Lucien's voice was soft. Hollow. "A doorway." Kai touched his shoulder. Lucien turned to him slowly. "The Eye isn't just giving me visions. It's reaching. From a place that doesn't exist yet." Kai knelt beside him. "What place?"
Lucien looked at the sigil. "The future."
Dawn burned low on the horizon. The orchard looked unchanged—rows of apple trees cloaked in dew, their leaves gently stirring in the wind—but the house no longer felt anchored to that calm. Something had shifted.
Downstairs, the sigil remained, seared faintly into the floorboards of the sitting room. Kai had tried to trace it with his magic—carefully, reverently—but his enchantments only skated across its surface, like oil on water. Nothing stuck. It was as though the sigil did not exist in this world alone.
Lucien stood at the edge of it, barefoot and tense, fingers twitching unconsciously at his side. "It showed me the city again. But I don't think it's a dream. Not anymore." Kai watched him from the doorway. "You think it's… real? A place we could reach?"
"Or that's trying to reach us."
Rhydian appeared behind them, arms folded. "Then we need to reinforce the mirror wards. Now. If something is using you as a channel, Lucien, we have to cut it off before it opens anything wider." Lucien didn't answer right away. His eyes remained on the sigil. "The journal mentioned a ritual. A mirror ritual. A way to look across the boundary. That may be our only chance to understand what it wants."
Rhydian's voice hardened. "Or to invite it in."
Kai's jaw tightened, but he stayed quiet.
Rhydian continued, "This entity—whatever it is—has already bypassed every defensive layer we built around this house. It's not asking permission. It's leaving signatures." "And yet," Lucien said, voice low, "it hasn't harmed us. It hasn't attacked. It hasn't taken Caelan. Maybe it's trying to communicate."
"You sound like you trust it."
"No," Lucien said softly. "I just think ignoring it would be worse."
By midday, they had pulled every mirror in the house into the spell chamber.
Lucien sat cross-legged before the largest one—a wide, silver-framed oval polished until it gleamed like the surface of a calm lake. Around him, the sigils from A.M.'s journal had been carefully copied onto the floor in chalk and crystal powder. The ceiling shimmered faintly with warding glyphs. Kai paced outside the circle, reading over the ritual again. His voice was tight with worry.
"'Speak no truths aloud. Offer no names. Mark only what is mirrored, not what is real.' That's the journal's instruction. If anything speaks back, Lucien, you do not answer."
Lucien nodded.
Rhydian adjusted the boundary line—anchoring the spell field with stone runes and water-blessed iron. "If this goes sideways," he said, "I'm pulling you out by force." Lucien's voice was calm. "Understood." He exhaled and placed both palms against the mirror. The world shuddered.
At first, nothing changed. Just his reflection, steady and familiar. Pale skin, tired eyes, dark hair falling slightly across his brow.
Then—
A flicker. The reflection blinked out of sync. Lucien's hands began to glow faintly—star-light seeping from beneath his skin. Behind his reflection, a city took shape. Black stone. Spiraling towers. Bridges broken into nothing. The stars above it spun too fast, their light folding inward. The mirror darkened.
Lucien saw himself standing alone on the edge of that broken city. His reflection looked older. Weathered. Eyes burning like suns. A long scar ran from the base of his throat to the corner of his jaw.
The reflection tilted its head. And smiled. Lucien flinched.
A voice—neither a whisper nor a sound—spoke in the air around him.
"You have woken the spiral."
Kai called out. "Lucien—step back!"
Lucien didn't move.
The voice continued.
"We remember. We reach. You carry what he could not."
Lucien's lips parted. "Who?"
The mirror pulsed.
"A.M.
The First Watcher.
The one who closed the door—and left it ajar."
Suddenly the reflection changed. The city burned. The towers crumbled into themselves. The stars bled red. And behind it all—emerging from the heart of the sigil—something moved. A figure. Shifting. Faceless. Wrapped in robes of moving starlight and shadow. Its hand extended toward Lucien's mirror.
Kai shouted, spell-flare rushing toward the circle. But Rhydian was faster. He crossed into the ritual space and yanked Lucien bodily back. The mirror shattered. Glass exploded outward in a ring of force. Kai threw up a shield just in time. Shards ricocheted across the room, embedding into stone and wood. Lucien collapsed in Rhydian's arms, unconscious.
It took hours for Lucien to wake. When he did, Kai was beside him, brushing his fingers gently along Lucien's temple.
"Hey," he said softly. "You're back." Lucien blinked. "How long?"
"Half a day."
He tried to sit up, and immediately winced. His arms ached. His skin tingled—like cold fire still pulsed in his veins.
"I saw… someone," Lucien murmured. "A reflection of myself. But wrong. Or future. I don't know." Kai's expression darkened. "You said a name, too. A.M. They said he was the first Watcher. That he tried to seal the Eye—and left it open." Lucien sat fully upright now. "Then the sigil isn't a message. It's a lock. Or a wound."
He looked down at his hands. "And I think I've torn it wider."
That night, Kai sat by the fireplace, turning the journal over in his hands. Rhydian stood by the window, watching the orchard.
"It wants something from him," Rhydian said. Kai nodded. "A choice. Maybe more than one."
"And you still trust him to make it?" Kai turned slowly, voice quiet but firm. "Lucien isn't the one I'm doubting."
From the garden outside, unseen by any of them, the sigil reappeared—this time in the sky. Not glowing. Not burning.
Just present.
A spiral of faint, white starlight etched into the clouds above their home.
Waiting.
Watching.
Remembering.