Chapter 1: Birth of the Rift
(Part 6)
The Mirror Dome was off-limits past midnight.
Officially.
Unofficially, it was where third-year initiates dared each other to sneak in during meteor showers, where upperclassmen kissed behind veils of starlight, and where a handful of bold girls claimed they'd once glimpsed the actual soul-trails of dying angels. No one believed them—except the faculty, who made sure the Dome stayed sealed behind three rotating sigils and a rune-silenced gate.
So when Lynchie slipped past the archway at precisely one minute to midnight and found the gate... unsealed...
She froze.
Not that she hadn't prepared. Her fingers still stung from sketching counter-runes in chalk under her blanket by candlelight. The auric slip from the hall pulsed faintly in her satchel, but it hadn't burned up like a standard heavenly whisper note. It still glowed—barely. She'd memorized every stroke.
But she hadn't expected this.
No guards.
No wards.
No ambient aura fields humming in the stone.
Just silence.
A silence so wide and absolute it felt hungry.
She stepped in.
Immediately, her bootsteps vanished—swallowed by some enchantment deeper than cloaking. Not muffled.
Erased.
The air was still. Thin. Cold in a way that reminded her of funeral rites in the upper spires.
Above, the vast glass dome shimmered with mirrored starlight—dozens of constellations, perfectly arrayed and charted by the academy's observatory mechanisms.
Yet one was missing.
The Northern Spiral, third arc of the Celestial Crown—it had been absent from the sky for weeks, the professors said. But here, inside the dome, it was back. Not sketched. Active. Glowing.
And centered around it: a single unaligned constellation. A broken ring of stars that no one had ever mapped. Or at least… not publicly.
Lynchie stepped forward, her breath barely rising, and took in the entire view.
The constellations pulsed faintly above like slow heartbeats. Then, in the center of the dome, upon the silver-inlaid mirror floor, a ring of twelve stone seats came into focus—long faded from use. One was glowing faint gold.
She moved closer. Her steps echoed this time.
A voice met her halfway.
"You're early."
Lynchie's breath caught in her throat.
The speaker stood half-shadowed, tall and robed in silver-trimmed midnight black. A veil hid the upper half of their face, and their gloved hand held a staff tipped with a rotating astrolabe.
The glyph on their wrist—it pulsed in mirror-runes.
She instinctively stepped back. "You sent the note."
They tilted their head. "No. The mirror did. But I heard it whisper through the glass and knew you'd come. You felt it, didn't you?"
"The voice," she said. Her whisper trembled. "The mirror."
The figure's voice softened, warm and curious. "You saw it. That means the glyph accepted you. It chose you. You can't unsee the reflection now."
"What is it?" she demanded, though her voice faltered. "That chamber—it tried to—"
"Birth is always violent," they said. "Even for those not yet born."
She stared.
"Who are you?" Lynchie asked.
The figure lowered the veil.
Her breath stopped.
It was a woman—older, face lined with elegance and fatigue, her eyes impossibly pale.
Eyes that saw too much.
"Professor Salareth," Lynchie whispered. "You teach—"
"Dream Law and Astral Theory," the woman finished, nodding. "But I'm not here as your professor."
She took a step forward, boots barely brushing the mirror floor.
"I'm here," she said, "as a Synod agent. One of the Twelve entrusted to monitor mirrored awakenings."
Lynchie's heart pounded. "Synod…? That's—"
"A lie. A safeguard. A desperate hope, depending on whom you ask." Salareth's eyes flicked to the stars overhead. "But what you glimpsed in the rift chamber—what the Mirror showed you—was not your imagination. It was your lineage calling back."
"I don't understand," Lynchie said.
"You don't have to. Not yet. All you need to know is that the Rift marked you. It always chooses one in each generation."
She moved to the center, where the stars overhead seemed to align above her hand.
"In your case," Salareth continued, "it woke too soon. And now... others will come."
"Others?"
"Not all mirrors reflect light. Some reflect hunger. And the one you awakened tonight—" she held up a palm "—has already been seen. Traced. Whispered through."
Lynchie shivered. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Salareth said, "that something from the Hollow-Breed just crossed into our skies."
Lynchie felt it before she heard it—a crackle in the dome above, the sound of breaking crystal across vast silence.
Then a low, shrieking rumble shook the glass floor.
A single fracture spiraled outward across the celestial dome.
One star—just one—fell.
Not from the sky.
From inside the dome.
It shattered upon impact, and from the cracks of its dust, something moved.
Salareth didn't blink. She lifted her staff, voice hardening.
"We have company."