The corridors of Dawnspire Academy had never felt so strange.
Elias walked them as he had done countless times before—past the high arched windows that overlooked the valley, past the murmuring fountains in the inner cloisters, past groups of students rushing between lectures—but everything was different now.
Eyes lingered on him.
Not just curious glances from fellow apprentices.
Measured, evaluating stares.
Some held open fascination.
Some hidden fear.
Some a hint of greedy calculation.
Word traveled fast in a place like this. Even if the Council had tried to contain the news, whispers would have spilled out like water through cracked stone.
The boy who faced the Council and walked out alive.
The boy with the forbidden talent.
The boy the Head Magus herself guarded.
Elias tugged his cloak tighter around himself, feeling the weight of those stares like fingers brushing his thoughts. He anchored—gently, quietly—keeping the whispers in his mind muted.
Look at them, the Eye murmured faintly. See what they want. See how they imagine you. Fear, envy, awe… so many flavors.
He ignored it.
Or tried to.
"You're frowning too hard," Lena said from beside him. "They'll think you're about to curse them."
"I'm just walking," Elias muttered.
"You're brooding. There's a difference."
She walked with hands laced behind her head, entirely unconcerned by all the attention. If anything, she seemed to lean into it, glaring back at anyone who stared too long.
He sighed.
"Lena. Threatening the entire student body is not helping my reputation."
"I'm not threatening all of them," she said. "Just the ones with punchable faces."
"That's… a worrying number, apparently."
She smirked.
"Get used to it," she said. "You're a public danger now. Or a public miracle. Depends who you ask."
"That's exactly what worries me."
They turned into a quieter wing of the academy—toward a tower Elias had never been allowed to enter before. The stone here was older, darker, carved with dense, flowing scripts that most students never learned.
Elowen had summoned him here after the council trial, with a simple message:
> Come at midmorning. Alone or with Lena. Aldric will meet you.
Lena had, predictably, chosen to come.
Aldric stood at the base of the tower steps, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. His warded armor gleamed faintly in the cool light. He straightened as they approached.
"You're on time," he said. "Good. Head Magus hates tardiness."
"I've gathered," Elias said dryly.
Aldric's gaze swept over him, assessing.
"You look… tired," the Spellwarden remarked.
Elias shrugged. "I nearly lost my mind twice in three days. It takes a toll."
Aldric's lips twitched.
"That it does."
He turned to the tower door, pressing his hand against the rune plate. Seals lit up in slow sequence, heavy bolts withdrawing one by one with muffled thuds.
Lena let out a low whistle.
"Secure much?"
"This tower houses restricted studies and volatile artifacts," Aldric said. "And now, apparently, you."
"Comforting," Elias muttered.
The door opened.
Cold air flowed out, tinged with the faint scent of ink, old paper, and mana crystals.
"Come," Aldric said. "The Head Magus is waiting."
---
The interior of the tower felt simultaneously sparse and heavy. Each floor was a circular room filled with bookcases, alchemical benches, etched crystals, and shelves of neatly labeled relics. The air hummed faintly with suppressed power.
They climbed a spiral staircase.
At the third landing, Lena nudged Elias with her elbow.
"You know," she said softly, "this could have been worse. They could have thrown you into a dungeon instead."
"That's a very low bar for 'better.'"
"Still counts."
He snorted.
The stairs ended at a thick oak door bound in silver. It opened before Aldric could knock.
Elowen stood within, framed by tall windows and shelves of books. Sunlight caught the strands of her silver hair, turning them almost white-gold. She wore no ceremonial robes today—only a simple mage's coat, sleeves rolled to reveal wrist runes faintly glowing.
"Come in," she said.
They entered.
The room felt like a blend between a study and a war chamber. A large table lay in the center, covered in maps, scrolls, and crystalline models of spell matrices. A round scrying basin sat near the window, its surface blank and still.
A single, high-backed chair stood near a desk piled with neatly organized documents.
Elowen gestured to it.
"This," she said, "will be your workspace."
Elias stared.
"I… get a room like this?"
"Not a room," Elowen corrected. "A tower floor. Consider it your… controlled environment."
Lena's eyes widened.
"You're giving him a private research floor?"
"Under heavy wards," Aldric said. "And with locked access."
"So… a gilded cage," Elias murmured.
Elowen's gaze softened.
"A protected one," she said. "Not a prison. Not yet. What happens next depends on you."
He looked around slowly.
"This is… for what?"
"For studying your talent," Elowen said. "For research. For learning how to use your insight in ways that do not destroy you—or anyone else."
She stepped closer.
"You are not just a risk, Elias," she said. "You are an opportunity. For knowledge. For prevention. Perhaps even for salvation. There are events in our world—omens, distortions, anomalies—that no diviner or seer can understand. You might."
Elias swallowed.
"And in the process," he said quietly, "I might go mad."
"Which," Elowen said, "is why we do this carefully."
"And why I'm here," Aldric added from the doorway.
Lena crossed her arms. "And me?"
"You," Elowen said dryly, "are apparently not deterred by cosmic horror. So you may stay. Within limits."
Lena grinned.
Elias gave Elowen a cautious look.
"What… limits?"
Elowen's expression hardened slightly.
"You will never activate your Ominous Wisdom without supervision. Not even in this tower. If I am not available, you wait. If you feel the Eye pressing, you anchor and disengage. If you lose time—if you ever realize you don't remember your own actions—you report it immediately. Is that clear?"
He hesitated.
That last condition scared him.
Because he knew it was possible.
"…Clear," he whispered.
"Good." Elowen nodded.
She tapped the table.
"Come."
He stepped up beside her.
On the table lay a single item: a black stone disk, about the size of his palm, etched with a sigil he did not recognize. It pulsed faintly with purple light.
"What is that?" Lena asked.
"A memory scar," Elowen said. "Recovered from a battlefield in the northern frontier."
Elias frowned. "A… what?"
"A fragment of crystallized trauma," Elowen explained. "When a powerful mage dies violently, sometimes the shock imprints on nearby stone. It can preserve scattered echoes of what happened—but they are usually fractured, useless."
She looked at Elias.
"Unless someone with unnatural insight examines them."
He understood immediately.
"You want me to… read it."
"Yes," Elowen said. "Carefully. Lightly. We do not want a repeat of the mirror incident."
Aldric shifted his weight slightly, hand drifting to his sword again.
"Is it dangerous?" Elias asked.
"Yes," Elowen said bluntly. "But not as dangerous as letting you go untested."
He sighed.
"Of course."
Lena stepped closer, brows drawn. "What if it… pushes too much?"
"Then I pull him out," Elowen said calmly. "Or Aldric intervenes. Or we run."
"Reassuring," Elias muttered.
Elowen gestured to the disk.
"Hand only," she said. "Gently. Anchor first."
He nodded.
He took a deep breath.
Closed his eyes.
Summoned the anchor light, bright and solid in his mind's center.
Then he reached out and placed his fingertips on the cold stone.
---
The world tilted.
Not violently—not like the Eye.
More like stepping into a corridor made of frozen screams.
A wind howled soundlessly across a barren mental landscape. The disk's memory unfolded—not as clear images, but as flashes: a cliff under a blood-colored sky, a circle of robed figures, a glyph drawn in the air with violet fire.
And something else.
Something wrong.
Elias's heart pounded.
He kept the anchor bright.
He did not open the Eye.
He let only a trickle of his talent leak into the scar.
The memory sharpened.
A voice shouted in an unknown tongue. The glyph burned brighter, warped, twisted… and then exploded outward as if something on the other side had pushed back.
Elias saw a glimpse of that something—
A jagged tear in the world. Not an Eye. A wound. Bleeding light.
For a heartbeat, he felt it looking for him, like a blind animal sniffing for blood.
He jerked his hand away, gasping.
The tower room snapped back into focus.
Lena's hands were on his shoulders immediately.
"Elowen!" she yelled. "He—"
"I'm all right," Elias choked out. "I pulled back."
Elowen's eyes were sharp, but she did not look surprised.
"What did you see?" she asked.
He swallowed hard.
"A… ritual," he said slowly. "On a cliff. A group of mages. They were drawing… something. A gate, maybe. But it… pushed back. Whatever they tried to summon, or touch, it resisted. Violently."
Elowen's gaze darkened.
"Could you identify the location?"
He shook his head. "Too fragmented."
"Language? Symbols? Anything?" Aldric asked.
Elias closed his eyes briefly, replaying the memory.
"The sigil they drew," he said slowly, "it wasn't like our runes. It was… sharper. Symmetrical. Wrong."
Lena frowned.
"Wrong how?"
"Like it wasn't meant for human hands," he said softly. "Like they were copying something they didn't fully understand."
Elowen and Aldric exchanged a glance.
"What?" Elias demanded. "What does that mean?"
Elowen tapped the table with a finger.
"There have been… incidents in the northern territories," she said. "Spontaneous distortions. People claiming to see things that aren't there. Areas where magic behaves unpredictably."
Lena's face went pale.
"You think this ritual caused that?"
"We think," Aldric said grimly, "that someone has been experimenting with forces they shouldn't. Perhaps the same… domain… your Eye belongs to."
The room went very still.
Elias's spine prickled.
"You mean," he said, "this isn't just about me?"
Elowen gave a humorless smile.
"It was never just about you."
He swallowed.
"What happens when whoever did that ritual tries again?" he asked.
Elowen looked at the scar disk.
"Then we may need someone who understands multiple kinds of wrongness," she said quietly. "Someone who can see where others are blind."
"You mean me," Elias said.
"Yes," Elowen replied simply.
He looked down at his hands.
"They will use you," the whispers crooned faintly. "They will send you into wounds and horrors and call it duty."
He anchored.
He pushed them back.
He looked Elowen in the eyes.
"Fine," he said. "I'll help."
Lena stared at him.
"Elias—"
"I'm not doing it for the Council," he added. "Or for the kingdom. I'm doing it because… if no one understands this, more people could die like whoever left that scar."
He pictured a mage on a cliff, torn apart by forces they didn't understand.
He could have been that mage—if his awakening had gone slightly differently.
"And I can't… not look," he said. "Not if I can stop something worse."
Lena exhaled sharply, anger and fear warring in her eyes.
"You're going to get yourself killed," she muttered.
"Probably," he said.
She smacked his arm.
"Don't joke about that!"
He smiled weakly.
"I'm not joking."
Elowen watched him quietly.
"You are changing," she said. "Faster than I expected."
He looked at her.
"Is that… good?"
"It is necessary," she replied.
---
The rest of the day blurred into a haze of new patterns.
Elowen outlined his new schedule: regular mental discipline sessions with her; limited, supervised examinations of restricted artifacts; standard magical theory lectures, but with stricter wards; periodic assessments by the Council's representatives.
"You are no longer just a student," she said. "You are a classified asset. That comes with privileges… and chains."
"What kind of privileges?" Lena asked suspiciously.
"A personal tower floor," Elowen said. "Access to restricted texts. Direct mentorship from the Head Magus. Possibly someday an advisory voice in certain matters, if he survives that long."
"And the chains?" Elias asked.
Elowen's eyes hardened.
"You will be watched," she said. "Always. You will be required to report any mental anomalies. You will not leave the academy without authorization. And if you show signs of losing yourself…"
She didn't finish.
She didn't need to.
Aldric's presence was explanation enough.
Elias nodded slowly.
"I understand."
Lena grabbed his sleeve.
"I don't like this," she muttered. "They talk about chains too easily."
"I'd prefer them over a sealed cell," he said.
"Low bar again."
"Still counts."
She glared at him, then sighed.
"Fine. If they're chaining you, they're chaining me too."
He blinked. "Lena, you don't have to—"
"Yes, I do," she snapped. "Who else is going to hit you over the head when you start listening to cosmic whispers?"
He opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
A slow, genuine smile spread across his face.
"Then… I'm glad," he said. "Very glad."
She looked away quickly.
"Yeah, well. Someone has to keep you human."
---
That night, Elias lay on the narrow bed now placed in a side alcove of "his" tower floor. The room was quiet, lit only by a single hovering mana-lamp. Shelves of books loomed like watching sentinels.
He stared at the ceiling.
"You heard all that," he whispered into the stillness. "Didn't you?"
The Eye stirred faintly.
I hear everything you touch.
He exhaled slowly.
"I'm going to be used," he said. "By them. By you. Maybe by others."
All minds are used, the whisper responded. By gods, by kings, by desires, by fear. You are not unique, little mortal.
He frowned.
"Then what makes me different?"
The Eye's presence grew a fraction closer.
You know you are being used.
He fell silent.
The whisper went on.
And you choose. That is the only power mortals ever truly have.
He thought of the Council.
Of Virand's demand.
Of refusing to look.
Of this tower.
Of the memory scar.
Of Lena's stubborn loyalty.
He thought of the scar in the world.
The ritual.
The wound.
He thought of what Elowen had said—that it was never just about him.
He closed his eyes.
The anchor glowed softly in his mind.
He held onto it.
"I choose to stay me," he whispered. "No matter who pulls. No matter what you offer."
The Eye's vast amusement brushed against his soul.
Then this will be… entertaining.
Elias turned onto his side.
For the first time since his awakening, he did not feel like he was falling.
He still stood at the edge of a precipice.
But he wasn't alone.
He had a tower.
He had a teacher.
He had a watcher with a sword.
He had a friend who refused to leave.
And he had a talent that might save or doom them all.
He let his eyes drift shut.
The whispers did not vanish.
But they did not surge.
Not tonight.
Tonight, they listened.
As Elias Verdan—
bearer of the Ominous Wisdom,
subject of chains and permissions,
reluctant seer of wounds in the world—
finally slept.
The world outside Dawnspire turned, unaware of the quiet war being waged in a single boy's mind.
But that would not last.
Storms were coming.
And Elias had seen just enough to know:
His role in them was only beginning.