The snow whispered against the glass as the enchanted classroom shimmered with ambient heat. Outside, white flakes fell in an almost deliberate rhythm, cloaking the towers of Arcanum Academy in frost and silence.
Inside, chaos brewed slowly. As always.
The lecture hall was filled with a rare blend of Year 1,2 and Year 3 students, seated in uneasy proximity. The course: Spatial-Reality Ethics & Design.
Professor Mirein stood tall before the glyph board, her voice sharp as crystal. "Today's topic is: the theoretical limits of perception folding and space entrapment. Any student caught sleeping will be spatially duplicated into detention."
Lucien Drex didn't even open his eyes.
"That's bold of you to assume I'd attend detention," he murmured, lounging across the curved wood desk like gravity was optional.
Mirein raised a brow but said nothing. The room chuckled nervously.
Across the aisle, Ira Moress was feeding a sugar quill into her mouth like it owed her rent. She had drawn three dancing cats in her notes, a banana wielding a wand, and something that vaguely resembled Professor Mirein being chased by spatial frogs.
Caelum Virell sat nearby, impassive. But alert. Always alert.
Lucien stretched lazily. Then, with an almost bored flick of the wrist, he slid a strange metallic cube across the table to Ira.
"Try solving that," he said casually. "It's broken. But you might like it."
Ira caught it with one hand, blinking at the object's strange runes and seam-etched faces.
"Oooh. Forbidden Obsidian cube? Weird... but interesting," she grinned.
And without hesitation, she activated it.
The cube spun. Glowed. Clicked.
Then unfolded.
A low hum filled the room. One wall stretched—visibly elongated by five meters, as though space itself had taken a long breath. The desks warped like taffy, slow-motion waves undulating beneath startled students. A soft, layered echo played across reality, as if time had skipped a beat.
Then it happened.
Etched in frost on the back wall behind Ira, a sigil appeared.
Not just any sigil.
The sigil from Page Six.
Lucien's eyes snapped open. Caelum's pupils narrowed.
Ira? She just blinked.
"Huh," she muttered, tilting her head. "That's new. Did I break it, or did I fix it too hard?"
The class exploded into screams.
Professor Mirein looked moments away from drawing her wand. "Deactivate that object now!"
Ira nodded solemnly. "Right. My bad. Back to reality you go, little buddy~"
She twisted the cube. The room snapped back. Desks reformed. Students blinked away nausea. But the sigil…
It lingered.
Lucien, already scribbling in his black notebook, murmured under his breath:
"Confirmed. She's syncing with Page Six architecture. Coordinate X proximity effect confirmed."
---
Later that day…
Lucien and Caelum stood beneath the archway of the old Tower Six, snow slipping in through the cracked ceiling. This was where forgotten things went to whisper. Where Lucien went when he didn't want to be found.
Caelum said nothing for a while. Then finally:
"You saw the frost symbol."
Lucien leaned against the pillar, chewing the last of a burnt biscuit. "Hard to miss. You'd think reality would try not to write classified sigils on itself."
Caelum nodded. "Was that a trap she triggered?"
Lucien smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Worse. That wasn't a trap. That was a hello."
---
That evening, somewhere near the House Umbra path
Ira skipped along the empty halls, humming. Her head tilted. She paused.
Someone was following her.
A masked student.
Without missing a beat, she ducked into an enchanted candy shop, warped the spatial field, and sealed the shop in a recursive loop. Gumdrop clones appeared instantly — each with bubble swords.
"Interrogation time!" she sang.
The masked student was calm. Almost too calm.
"You're more than they told us. You're not just ranked. You're marked."
Then he vanished — not teleported. Just... folded away.
Ira blinked. Scratched her head.
"Weird... but interesting."
---
Midnight. Restricted Archive.
Lucien stood alone, a small magical flame casting flickering shadows over ancient files.
He pulled a dusty leather-bound journal free — marked with the Obsidian Project sigil.
Inside were drawings of a young girl with wide, familiar eyes… bending space around her like a bubble.
Next to the sketch:
> Subject 05 – Spatial Gate Alpha: Do NOT trigger near Coordinate X.
And below that:
> Failsafe: Architect override only.
Lucien stared.
Then smiled.
"So that's what you are, Ira."
He turned.
Behind him, the Obsidian cube on the desk glowed softly — a new glyph forming on its surface.
He tapped it gently.
"Page Six just said hello to Ira Moress. I wonder who else it's calling."
What is Page Six?
> Page Six is a restricted page from Lucien's childhood sigil notebook — created before or during the Obsidian Project.
It contains a non-linear trap sigil, so advanced it folds space, memory, and causality. It was:
Too dangerous to test
Never decoded by faculty
Burned out the last magical simulation that tried to read it
It's nicknamed "Page Six" because the actual page number was never catalogued — it always appears as Page 6, even when stored in different files. It's basically a living trap blueprint, connected to the Labyrinth, and only responds to those with deep anchor points like Lucien… or maybe Ira.