Darkness swallowed the vault.
The ambient glow of glyph-lanterns had vanished, replaced by a creeping cold that curled between the ancient stones. Arin steadied his breath. Somewhere nearby, Mira whispered a sigil under her breath, her eye lens glowing faintly as it tried to pierce the gloom.
"Stay still," Lucien said quietly. "Something's waking up."
Arin could hear it too—a whispering hiss, like ink seeping through cracks in time. The rune on the ancient scroll still glowed faintly, its lines pulsing, synchronized with a rhythm buried deep in the walls.
Then, as suddenly as it had fallen, the darkness retreated. The lanterns sputtered back to life, casting sickly pale light across the chamber. But the feeling did not leave. It lingered, like breath on the back of his neck.
"What was that?" Mira asked, visibly shaken. Her voice, though steady, quivered at the edges.
Lucien approached the scroll. "That rune didn't just activate itself. Someone—or something—responded."
Mira stepped closer to Arin. "Are you alright?"
He nodded slowly. "It's not the first time I've felt that… pull. Like something underneath the vault is listening."
Lucien studied the scroll again. "This place is built atop deeper ruins. Precursor layers. Older than the Academy itself."
"Magic doesn't sleep forever," Mira whispered. Her eye shimmered, focusing beyond the visible. "It's restless here."
Arin glanced down at the scroll, and something caught his eye. A second rune, nearly invisible, hidden beneath the first. It pulsed dimly—a response, or perhaps a warning.
"It's forming something," he muttered.
Lucien knelt beside him, studying the faded lines. "This rune... it's not in any lexicon I've read. It's like a key fragment."
"A key to what?" Mira asked.
The room answered her. A hum rolled through the stone, low and resonant. The floor beneath their feet glowed faintly with thread-like veins of light, forming intricate patterns.
Arin took a breath and reached toward the scroll. The moment his fingertips brushed the glowing rune, the light surged upward, projecting symbols into the air. Geometric glyphs spun and rearranged into what resembled a map.
"Aetherion," Lucien breathed. "But not as it is now."
The projection revealed seven glowing points scattered across the land. One pulsed directly beneath their feet. The others blinked from distant mountains, forgotten ruins, and remote academies.
"Nodes," Mira said. "Or fragments?"
Lucien looked to Arin. "Does this mean anything to you?"
Arin hesitated. He couldn't speak the full truth—not yet. But this wasn't the first time he'd seen these symbols. They had appeared before, half-formed, in his dreams. Etched across places he'd never been.
"They're connected to something old," he said. "Something waiting to be found."
Mira's gaze flicked toward the vault entrance. "We're not alone."
Lucien's expression sharpened. "They're coming."
The vault door pulsed. Glyphs across its frame began to flicker, warping under pressure. A presence pushed from the other side—one that felt neither alive nor dead.
"Get behind me," Lucien said, activating a ward. The spell took shape, silver and angular, forming a fragile barrier.
"Too late," Mira whispered.
The door didn't break. It unraveled. Threads of light pulled apart like silk under fire, and from the breach stepped a figure cloaked in shadow. Its face was obscured by a veil of shifting glyphs, and its eyes—if they were eyes—burned with voidlight.
It lifted a hand.
And pointed at Arin.
"You should not exist," it whispered. "The song remembers a different verse."
A wave of pressure slammed into them. Mira cried out, forced to her knees. Lucien gritted his teeth, pouring mana into his ward, but it shattered like glass.
Arin stepped forward, instincts overriding thought. The presence bore down on him, like standing before a storm that had no beginning.
And yet—something inside him answered. A resonance. A spark of recognition.
"You remember me," Arin said quietly.
The shadow flinched.
"You're bound to this vault. But you were once something else."
It hissed, raising its arm again—but Mira intervened. She threw a sigil scroll into the air, which exploded in a flare of radiant light, momentarily disorienting the figure.
"Move!" Lucien yelled, grabbing Arin by the shoulder. They sprinted toward a hidden stairwell Mira had spotted earlier—a narrow passage descending into the undercrypts.
As they ran, Arin looked back once. The shadow stood in the vault, watching. Not following.
Not yet.
Down the steps they went, into flickering torchlight and the scent of stone and iron. The echoes of the vault faded behind them, replaced by the steady drip of ancient water and the murmur of enchantments left untouched for centuries.
They paused at a landing. Mira collapsed onto the floor, breathing hard. Lucien leaned against the wall, sweat beading at his brow.
"What was that thing?" Mira asked.
"A warden," Lucien said. "Or a memory pretending to be one."
Arin stared into the dark. "It knew me. Or it knew something I carry."
Lucien glanced at him. "Whatever you've stepped into… it's not just old magic. It's something trying to rewrite itself. And you're in the center of it."
Arin said nothing. His thoughts raced.
The scroll had disintegrated. The map burned into his memory. The shadow that called him an anomaly.
He had come to Aetherion to find answers.
Now, the questions were multiplying faster than he could ask them.
But one thing was certain:
This was only the beginning.