Solvyr Academy was silent.
The grand Ascendance Chamber had been sealed for "containment."
Repair glyphs danced across broken sigils, but the silence beneath was deeper than shattered stone.
Kaien sat alone in the infirmary, bandaged but wide awake.
Not because of pain.
Because of what he hadn't felt.
That Protocol — Zero — it hadn't responded like anything he'd ever studied. It hadn't drawn power.
It had taken authority.
Professor Velle's Secret Visit
Midnight.
The infirmary door cracked open.
Velle entered, cloak draped over one shoulder, eyes as unreadable as ancient glyphs.
"Kaien," he said quietly, "that cast you used—there's no record of it. None."
Kaien looked up. His voice rasped.
"You mean no one's seen it before?"
"No, Kaien. I mean it doesn't exist in the Foundational Flame Archives. It never did."
"We looked for your birth glyph. You were never entered into the Ascendant Registry. Not even as a Hollowborn."
That silenced Kaien.
"Then… where did it come from?"
Velle hesitated. Then:
"From somewhere before the Flame Schools were written."
The Forbidden Vault — and the Nox Revelation
Meanwhile, deep below Solvyr's foundation…
A sealed chamber pulsed with light for the first time in centuries.
Two figures stood before it — masked. Hooded. Members of the hidden Concord of Severance.
One of them, smaller, spoke softly. Familiar.
"He broke the Sequence," she said.
"And now?"
"Now the protocol will seek the others."
The taller one turned. His voice was unmistakable.
It was Nox.
"The Zero is awake. And he thinks this is the beginning."
"But he doesn't know what we buried in him."
"Let him rise. The Ascendants will come."
"And when they do — he'll burn them too."
Kaien's Blood Test
Back in the infirmary, Kaien stares at the bandages on his arm.
There's a faint glyph drawn in blood — faintly glowing, autonomously etching into the skin.
He hadn't drawn it.
He tries to scrub it off.
It burns through the cloth.
Not on the skin.
Inside it.
The glyph finishes its cycle.
It says:
Subject: SEQUENCE ZERO
Designation: NULL ASCENDANT
Memory Seal: [Active]
Kaien stares. Whispering:
"I don't remember being anyone else."
Then a voice — from the window:
"That's because you weren't allowed to."
He turns—
And sees Riven. Alive. Breathing. In uniform.
But she speaks like a stranger.
"You're not just forgotten, Kaien."
"You were never meant to be remembered."