Sirens carved of divine light howled across the campus. Upon the intruder's departure, the holy academy dissolved into a flurry of order veiled in panic.
Teachers barked at the new initiates, hands weaving emergency circles mid-air. They were mostly creating shields, carving out whatever they can to protect the students in the face of this unknown but inarguably dangerous threat. Some scrawled glyphs across dormitory thresholds, sealing the traces of those who walked those paths. Others levitated toward the skyline, where glyph-weavers struggled to seal divine cracks spiderwebbing the celestial dome.
Nostradi Santo, head of the academy's Defense and Sealing Circle Division pushed Damien aside as he walked on in a hurry. There was something weirdly urgent in his strides, as if the rest of the world didn't quite matter to him at that point.
The translucent dome protecting the school was crafted by the first Grand Warden of this civilisation. The seal was even titled the Imperial Seal, as it was almost unanimously agreed upon to be impenetrable. Yet, the void now present in their perfection was visible from afar.
Students — rows upon rows of them — were herded back into their chambers, white robes fluttering behind them like unsettled snow. Voiced fear had no place in their formation, no-one cried out any noise, but the silence said it all.
Passing by a window along the upper corridor, Damien watched it all with a blank stare, frost breathing against the glass.
Inside, he was still.
Still — but burning.
"The man didn't escape," he thought. "He vanished."
No rush of wind. No breach of sigil. Just gone.
"Was he a herald? A body housing something worse?"
"A calamity in human skin?"
The man's voice hadn't been grand. His mana hadn't even flared — and yet Solence itself withdrew at his presence. The chamber hadn't been broken into, it had been rewritten.
"No glyph should collapse Solence. But he did."
Then there was his sheer talent to consider. A sixth circle mage was held at the highest esteem in this corner of the world, so a seventh circle mage going unheard of until now was simply unimaginable. Having the ability to summon a near impenetrable shield needs immense command over the arcane forces.
He exhaled slowly. Cold. Controlled. His thoughts folded into neat lines, like blades being sheathed. There would be no answers here. Not yet.
Damien was following the Celestial Accords on his way back to his rooms. The man who posed this decree was also the person leading this chorus of students, Orion Silverspear.
Well in front of anyone else, Valen walked ahead of Orion— fast, angry, his fists clenched by his sides. His white hair was the only feature that caught the reflection of nearby torches, but the expression on his face felt readable through movement alone.
Orion followed a few paces behind, arms loose, lips unmoving. No words chased the boy.
Above them, the divine dome flickered quietly, signifying that a fracture was present. Where once concentric rings of Solence had shimmered like a second sky, now there were cracks — not full breaches, but places where light faltered, like thin spots in stained glass.
A passing exorcist below muttered, "Did you hear word? The intruder apparently broke through the imperial seal."
His companion scoffed. "That thing's dense with at least six layers of consecrated command. It's impossible to even shake it, let alone fracture it! Impossible!"
Damien's attention sharpened. Seals. Cracks. Solence shaking.
And something else.
A hum. Dull and faint — like a memory gnawing from behind a closed door.
He turned.
———————————————————————
When nightfall arrived, Damien made his way to the outer plaza where the glyph dome's largest rupture had once flared. The teachers were gone now, ordered to come by occasionally instead of staying posed at the entrance. Security patrols orbited the main corridors — no one watched the side Damien found himself to be.
Damien looked up with his eyes narrowed. He placed a first canticle glyph near his eyes to analyse the wither that floated across the surface of the barrier.
A ring of divine residue still lingered around the point of impact, covered with wither mist — but something felt off. The fracture curled outward. Glyph lines didn't warp inward as they should have if broken from outside.
"If struck from outside, celestial barriers warp inward.
If ruptured from within… the fracture bends outward."
He pressed two fingers against his temple. .
Canticle Senses, Witherflow, shine for me like the forbidden sun.
The divine shimmer faded slowly, and the world dimmed. Beneath the Solence glyphs, layered, was something else. A corrosion pattern spiraled into the dome's structure, eating inward, not pressed from outside. Like rust growing within steel, unseen until the collapse. They sung the echoes of an unknown name, someone left their signature within these threads.
Damien realised that to reach the upper face of the dome, one must cast a glyph from a place that could have their chants pierce the heavens itself. He looked at the different fractures scattered across the dome and tried to map lines out of the corrosion leading towards them, to see if they would lead to a single point. Soon enough, he started to see the patterns.
The remnants of the infernal mana cascaded downwards and stopped near a grand structure: the stone tower facing the Eastern plateau.
He closed his eyes quietly.
This wasn't a break. It was an opening.
His hand trembled, just slightly.
He glanced over his shoulder. Alone.
A silent ripple pulsed through his skin.
Not a break.
A decay.
His heart stilled.
Damien pinched the strands of hair that neatly scattered against his forehead, his fingers still cold.
"My suspicions were right. He didn't break in."
"He was permitted inside."
"And someone here, in this academy…let him in"
———————————————————————
Far beneath the sacred grounds of the empire, past the last lit altar, the world inside the celestial fracture burned with chaos. .
The floors there were not carved out of stone, but of molten sin— layers of calcified thought, forgotten prayers, and burnt glass that screamed when stepped upon. Souls painted the skyline like a canvas covered in death. Monolithic statues lined the chasm walls, their faces locked in perpetual agony, mouths wide as if in permanent worship of the things that shall never see grace.
Ash floated upward from the infernal grounds, as if reality itself was being exhaled from the mouths of devils.
The academy's intruder emerged at the base of a crumbled archway, robes frayed by the passing Solence. He knelt, steam still coiling from his cloak like memory shedding form.
A figure stood before him.
Tall. Cloaked in shadow darker than the flame surrounding them. No face. Just eyes — two spheres of deep red, patient and watching.
The intruder bowed.
"His blade couldn't cut me," he murmured. "The empire's finest sword. Your blessing works."
A silence fell between them, as thick as molten wax.
The figure didn't answer. It didn't need to.
"And the Sainted child..." he continued, rising slowly, voice now sharp with satisfaction.
"He bears the mark. There is no doubt. He is the one."
The red eyes narrowed.
A sound, like a smirk unspoken, moved through the air.
The intruder looked up at the figure, face half-lit by the burning chasm, half-swallowed by shadow.
"When the Prophecy comes to play," he whispered,
"We shall shine the brightest, Lord Mamon."
The eyes did not blink.
But the flame behind them grew.