Morning came anyway.
It always did.
Even when it shouldn't.
Even when, hours before dawn, a Proto-Sigil tried to unfurl in the chest of a boy who wasn't supposed to exist, over a ravine carved by a dead Transcendent's corpse, while an entity beneath the academy whispered and the Stitching groaned.
The sun rose.
The sky went pale.
Sigil-lamps flickered off one by one.
And Ashthorne Academy pretended nothing had happened.
The Lie of Routine
Lira sat at the edge of her bed, fingers pressed to her sternum.
The bond hummed quietly under her skin. Not loud. Not burning. Just… present.
Present in a way it hadn't been before last night.
She had felt Caelum on the edge of something huge, felt him tip, felt reality itself shiver around him like a fabric about to rip—and then she'd screamed his name and dragged him back.
Her throat was still raw.
Her nerves were still singing.
She had slept, technically.
If lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, feeling someone else's pulse echo through your soul counted as sleep.
Marenne barged into her room without knocking.
Lira didn't even flinch.
"You look awful," Marenne said.
"I feel worse," Lira muttered.
"Good. That means you're perceiving reality correctly." Marenne shoved a steaming mug into her hands. "Drink."
Lira eyed it warily. "This is not that Edevra mind-tea again, is it?"
"No. That was soul-stabilization tea." Marenne sniffed. "This is just coffee."
Lira took a cautious sip.
Immediately choked.
"This is not just coffee," she wheezed.
Marenne shrugged. "It's academy coffee. Industrial strength. If it doesn't wake you up, it kills you."
Jalen appeared in the doorway, hugging his blanket like a trauma shield.
"I had a dream that Caelum sneezed and the west wing collapsed," he said dully. "Was that a dream or a prediction?"
"Yes," Marenne said.
Lira set the mug down before she spilled it.
Her hand was shaking.
Not from fear.
From the memory of threads whipping around Caelum like a storm.
"Is he okay?" she whispered.
Marenne's gaze softened, just a little.
"He was upright and not actively unraveling when I left the ravine," she said. "So, for him? Excellent."
Jalen slumped against the doorframe. "We all saw his eyes, right? That wasn't some shared hallucination? They were—" He wiggled his fingers vaguely. "Threadful. Wrong. Weird. I'm running out of adjectives for 'I think our friend is becoming an eldritch concept.'"
Lira stared at her hands.
Last night, when she'd grabbed him, when she'd screamed his name, when his Proto-Sigil had flared fully—
she'd felt him move.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Like he was slipping sideways, away from human and toward something else.
She whispered, "He's still Caelum."
Marenne tilted her head. "You sound like you're trying to convince yourself."
"I'm informing myself," Lira said. "There's a difference."
"Is there?" Jalen asked faintly.
Lira stood.
Her legs still felt rubbery.
But the bond pulsed steady under her ribs when she thought about walking.
About moving forward.
About going to him.
"I need to see him," she said.
Marenne nodded. "Obviously."
Jalen groaned. "Obviously," he echoed, dragging his blanket along like a defeated specter.
The Monster at the Table
Caelum was sitting at the same breakfast table as always.
That was almost worse.
He wasn't floating.
He wasn't glowing.
He wasn't surrounded by crackling sigil-light or chanting cultists.
He was just there.
Bread on plate. Mug beside. Back straight. Eyes calm.
The only wrong thing was the feeling.
Students filled the hall, whispering about exam scores, instructors, noble politics.
But underneath their noise—
the academy hummed.
Subtle.
Low.
Uneasy.
Like its wards were whispering to each other.
Like the building itself knew something had shifted.
Lira walked toward him on autopilot.
He looked up as she approached.
The glow in his eyes was gone.
Almost.
If she hadn't seen it last night, she would have missed the faint shimmer at the edges of his pupils when the light caught just right.
"Lira," he said.
Her heart, traitor that it was, relaxed.
"Morn—" her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. "Morning."
Marenne slid into the seat across from Caelum and dropped her notebook on the table with a heavy thud. "So," she said, "you evolved."
Conversations from nearby tables abruptly quieted.
Jalen sat down and put his head on the table. "I want to go back to bed," he mumbled.
Caelum broke a piece off his bread. "Yes."
Marenne squinted. "That's it? 'Yes'?"
He considered. "Also: it was… unpleasant."
Lira gave a shaky laugh. "That's one word for it."
He watched her.
"Any adverse effects?" he asked.
She blinked. "On me?"
"Yes. Headaches. Thread-bleed. Visual distortion. Entity whispers. Unusual dreams."
"That's… specific," she muttered.
His expression didn't change.
"It's important."
She swallowed.
"I… woke up fast," she said. "Bond was loud. Heart was racing. But no whispers. No thread hallucinations. Just the normal level of existential dread."
"Good," Caelum said.
"That's good?" Jalen croaked from the table.
"Yes."
Marenne tapped her notebook. "So. Officially: you reached a new state. Unofficially: you nearly snapped."
Caelum didn't deny it.
"I misjudged the internal pressure," he said. "The entity pushed harder than expected."
"And you didn't tell anyone you were going to do that," Lira said quietly.
He met her gaze.
"I wasn't going to involve you," he said. "It was supposed to be… contained."
She stared at him.
"Newsflash," she said. "You are no longer a contained phenomenon."
His eyes softened the barest fraction.
"And yet," he said, "you contained me."
Her chest tightened.
"I just screamed your name," she muttered.
"Yes," he said.
"That shouldn't work."
"It did."
She swallowed.
"Why?"
He tilted his head slightly.
"Because names contain patterns," he said. "And because some part of me still responds more to your voice than to the entity's."
The cafeteria went very quiet.
Marenne slowly lowered her notebook. "I'm writing that down under 'Terrifyingly Romantic Things Monsters Say.'"
Jalen made a small noise that might have been "help."
Lira's cheeks burned.
She looked down at her plate.
Her hands had stopped shaking.
The bond hummed, warm and steady.
Maybe she could live with that.
The Academy Notices Anyway
They didn't get two bites into breakfast before a shadow fell over the table.
Not a metaphorical one.
An actual one.
Lira looked up.
A Dominion agent stood beside them.
Ash-gray cloak. Silver insignia. Blank expression.
"Caelum Veylor," he said. "Lira Ainsworth. You're requested in the Headmaster's office."
Marenne muttered, "Of course you are."
Jalen put his head back down. "Tell the Headmaster to write my will."
Caelum finished his bite, set his bread down, and rose.
"Now?" he asked.
"Immediately," the agent confirmed.
Caelum nodded.
He looked at Lira.
"You don't have to come," he said.
She snorted.
"That's adorable," she said shakily. "You think I'd let you go without me."
His eyes lingered on her for a second longer than necessary.
Then he nodded.
"Let's go."
The Headmaster of a Dying Stitch
The Headmaster's office was high in the central tower, overlooking the quadrangle and the distant Blackspire range.
Lira had never been inside.
She had expected… chaos.
Skulls. Forbidden sigil maps. Screaming wards.
Instead, it was… quiet.
Bookshelves lined the walls. A massive sigil-glass window framed the far side, looking out into the sky. A single desk dominated the center, covered with neatly stacked files and a complex moving sigil-map of the academy.
And behind the desk—
Headmaster Serath Vengeance.
He didn't look like a headmaster.
He looked like a statue that had decided to move.
Tall.
Still.
Outrageously calm.
His hair was silver-black. His eyes were impossible to look at for too long—not because they glowed, but because there was too much in them.
Weight.
Years.
Understanding.
Restraint.
He glanced at Caelum.
Then at Lira.
The glance was enough to make her spine lock.
He wasn't using aura.
He wasn't using killing intent.
He was just… there.
"Close the door," he said.
The Dominion agent obeyed, then stepped outside.
Only three people remained.
Serath.
Caelum.
Lira.
The Headmaster didn't ask them to sit.
He didn't tell them to stand.
He simply regarded Caelum for a long, quiet moment.
Then said, mildly:
"You shook the Stitching last night."
Lira's mouth went dry.
Caelum didn't deny it.
"Yes," he said.
Serath's gaze shifted to Lira.
"And you held him," the Headmaster said.
It wasn't a question.
Lira swallowed.
"I— I tried."
Serath's eyes softened.
"Child," he said. "If you had not tried, I'd be speaking to your corpses and the ruins of this tower."
Her heart stuttered.
She didn't know what to do with that information, so she stored it in the "'Do Not Process Now' section of her mind.
Serath's attention returned to Caelum.
"The entity grew excited," the Headmaster said. "Excited entities are never good news."
"It was testing a boundary," Caelum said. "It would have done so eventually."
"Yes," Serath agreed. "It would have."
He folded his hands on the desk.
"But you gave it something interesting to push against. Your evolution accelerated the strain."
"Would you have preferred me weaker?" Caelum asked.
Lira winced.
Serath didn't.
"No," he said simply. "I prefer my anomalies competent."
He let that settle.
Then:
"The Dominion Council wants to classify you as a Stage Two Threat," Serath said. "I told them no."
Lira flinched.
"The— Stage Two— that sounds— that sounds like 'put him in a box,'" she blurted.
"Close," Serath said. "That classification would put you under near-constant lockdown. No unsupervised field work. No free movement. No unsupervised training."
"And?" Caelum asked.
"And," Serath said, "I told them that if they tried to cage something the Stitching had already failed to categorize, it would end badly."
Lira realized, belatedly, that her nails were digging into her palms.
"You… defended us," she said.
Serath looked at her.
"I defended the academy," he said. "At the moment, those are the same thing."
His gaze turned back to Caelum.
"I will not chain you," Serath said. "Not yet. But I need you to understand something, Caelum Veylor."
His aura shifted.
Not outward.
Inward.
Lira felt it—the weight of his attention, like someone had set the entire tower on his shoulders and he'd simply grown to match it.
"You are not the only anomaly here," Serath said.
The air chilled.
"The entity is watching," he continued. "The Transcendent corpse is leaking. The Stitching is fraying. The nobles are playing their petty games. The Dominion is panicking. And now, atop all this, I have a Proto-Sigil Threadbearer evolving ahead of schedule."
Schedule.
Lira didn't like that word.
It implied someone had a plan.
"So no," Serath said quietly. "I will not chain you. That would be a waste of a resource the world is already spending blood to create. But I will also not pretend you are harmless."
Caelum nodded.
"I'm not."
"Good," Serath said.
He rose from his chair.
The tower seemed to rise with him.
"You will continue your studies," he said. "You will continue your training. You will continue to evolve. The academy will watch. The Dominion will document. I will… mitigate."
He stepped around the desk.
Stood in front of them.
"Yes," he said. "I will mitigate you, Caelum Veylor. Not with shackles. With tasks."
Lira shivered.
"Tasks?" she repeated.
Serath nodded.
"The Stitching is failing in more places than the Dominion knows," he said. "Cracks in the wards. Thin spaces. Places where reality is starting to remember how it broke the first time."
He looked at Caelum.
"You will go to those places," he said. "With your anchor. Under my orders. Under my wards. Under specific conditions. You will stabilize them. Or learn why you can't."
Lira's blood ran cold.
"That sounds— that sounds like we're being used as… as anomaly bait," she said.
"Yes," Serath said calmly.
"At least you're honest," she muttered weakly.
"I find lying to people who stand near active voids is counterproductive," Serath said dryly.
He fixed Caelum with a steady look.
"You want control," he said. "The Dominion wants containment. The entity wants freedom. I want this academy standing through the year."
His voice softened, barely.
"If you break," he said, "you take down more than yourself. If you hold, you may keep the Stitching intact long enough for us to find another way."
Caelum considered that.
Then inclined his head.
"I accept," he said.
Lira whipped toward him.
"What?" she hissed. "Caelum—!"
He met her eyes.
"We knew this was coming," he said. "This only accelerates it."
"That doesn't make me feel better!"
"It shouldn't."
Serath watched them.
"Lira Ainsworth," he said. "You may decline participation."
She stared.
"What?"
"You may refuse," he said. "Remain in standard coursework. The bond will strain, but not break. You will live longer that way."
Caelum didn't speak.
He didn't even look at her.
He let the choice sit between them.
Like a blade laid on a table.
Lira inhaled.
Exhaled.
Her voice shook.
"I chose," she said. "Already."
Serath's eyes narrowed.
"And you stand by it knowing this?" he asked.
"Yes."
"No hesitation?"
"Plenty," she said. "But I'm still here."
The Headmaster studied her for a long, quiet moment.
Then he nodded once.
"Very well," he said. "Then I will not insult either of you by pretending you are anything less than what you are."
"What… are we?" she asked.
Serath turned toward the sigil-glass window.
Outside, clouds twisted over the mountains.
"A Threadbearer," he said softly.
"And the anchor keeping him on this side."
Assignment: The First Official Fracture
Serath lifted his hand.
The sigil-map on his desk stirred.
Lines of light traced through the miniature academy, highlighting specific locations: dorms, towers, training yards, libraries.
Then—
one spot burned brighter.
Near the Weeping Forest border.
"There," Serath said.
Lira squinted.
"That's outside the main walls," she said. "Why is that glowing?"
"Because the Weeping Forest is remembering it was once a battlefield," the Headmaster replied. "Something is waking up in the roots."
The map zoomed in.
Lira saw:
—old stone
—abandoned watch posts
—traces of sealing sigils
—an underground chamber marker
"An old ritual site," Serath said. "Used during the Age of Ash. The Dominion sealed it. Poorly."
Caelum's eyes flickered.
"An anomaly?" he asked.
"A bleed," Serath said. "Threads are leaking. The forest is reacting. The Dominion wants to send a standard suppression team."
"I assume you disagree," Caelum said.
"I believe," Serath said, "that this is an… educational opportunity."
Lira's stomach knotted.
"Educational," she echoed faintly.
Serath looked at them.
"You will go under the guise of a practical Strategy-Forbidden combined assessment," he said. "Valen will approve the strategic relevance. Artheon will justify the eldritch oversight. Officially, you are students undergoing supervised field exposure."
"Unofficially?" Caelum asked.
Serath's mouth thinned.
"Unofficially," he said, "I am putting a Proto-Sigil anomaly and his reality-bound anchor directly on top of a wound in the Stitching to see if you make it worse or better."
Jalen, if he'd been there, would have fainted again.
Lira's hands trembled.
"When?" Caelum asked.
"Three days," Serath said. "Use them well."
Caelum nodded.
"Understood."
Serath's gaze softened at last.
"You will not be alone," he said.
Lira blinked. "We… won't?"
"Kael Dravos will handle external security," Serath said. "Artheon the Bound will monitor internal anomaly fluctuations. You will not be without support."
Lira exhaled.
That helped.
A little.
Maybe.
"Dismissed," Serath said. "And Caelum—"
They paused at the door.
Caelum looked back.
Serath studied him.
"Last night," the Headmaster said, "you came close to stepping somewhere you can't return from."
"Yes," Caelum said.
"If you go there too early," Serath said, "you won't come back as anything useful to anyone. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Good," Serath said. "Because if you are going to become a monster, Veylor—"
His eyes darkened.
"—I would prefer you become one on purpose."
After: The Quiet Between Decisions
They left the tower in silence.
The courtyard wind felt colder.
Students milled around, arguing about instructors and sigils and exam results completely unaware their Headmaster was assigning anomalies to sit on top of reality wounds like patches.
Lira stopped beneath an archway and pressed a hand to her face.
"I am never going to get used to conversations where people calmly discuss us like we're walking experimental wards," she said.
Caelum hummed.
"You could have said no," he reminded her.
She peeked at him through her fingers.
"Stop," she said weakly. "We both know I wasn't going to."
"Yes," he said. "We both knew."
Silence.
She dropped her hand.
"Three days," she said.
"Yes."
"To prepare for our first official 'go sit on an ancient magical landmine and see what happens' assignment."
"Yes."
She exhaled.
"Alright," she said. "Then we need a plan."
"A plan," he agreed.
"You're not going to argue? Or say you already have ten and don't need my input?"
"I already have three," he said. "But I need your input."
Her heart did a weird little flip.
"Why?" she asked.
"You're the one who feels the bond," he said. "You're the one who stabilizes when threads move wrong. Strategy is not just numbers and sigils. It's pressure. And you perceive pressure differently than I do."
She blinked.
"Are you… saying I'm useful?"
"Yes," he said calmly.
"I—" She swallowed. "That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
He thought about it.
"I told you you're necessary," he said. "That might be nicer."
Her face went hot.
"Stop."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know where to put those feelings," she muttered.
He tilted his head.
"Keep them," he said. "You may need them."
She groaned.
"You make everything sound like battle prep."
"It is," he said.
"The Weeping Forest isn't just an assignment."
He looked toward the distant dark line of trees beyond the outer walls.
"It's the first step," he said softly.
"Toward what?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
Yet.
But the threads under Ashthorne's stone were shivering, and the entity was listening, and the Stitching was loosening thread by thread—
and somewhere in the roots of the Weeping Forest, something old and angry was waking up.
Waiting.
Far below the academy, in the sealed chamber, the entity smiled without a mouth.
"…forest wakes…
…threads bleed…
…little bearer walks toward the wound…
…little anchor follows…"
It pressed lightly against its chains.
They groaned.
"…good…
…let them see…
…what happens…
…when a Threadbearer pulls on the wrong root…"
The Stitching vibrated.
The academy held.
For now.
Three days.
Then the real lessons would begin.