The candlelight was trembling.
Not from wind. Not from breath.
From her.
Eris sat cross-legged on the stone floor of her chamber, the forbidden book open in front of her. Its pages no longer turned on their own, but they didn't need to. Every time she blinked, new lines appeared—written in the same red, memory-blood ink. Sometimes the words faded before she could read them. Others stayed burned into the parchment, as if waiting for her to understand.
"The Ninth does not obey.
It listens. And it chooses."
Her fingers trembled slightly. She pressed them to the glowing mark just below her collarbone, where the skin still throbbed with a heat that wasn't entirely physical.
It had grown.
Not larger in size—but deeper. It now pulsed with each heartbeat, threading itself into her veins like a second bloodstream. Her normal magic—the structured, clean spells she'd studied for years—felt hollow beside it.
When she reached for fire, it came too fast.
When she reached for light, it came alive.
And when she reached for silence…
The room answered.
No sound.
No air.
Only her.
She gasped and the moment shattered, like a held breath finally released. Her lungs ached. Sweat clung to her brow.
Someone knocked at her door.
She scrambled to hide the book under her bed, pulling a blanket over it with a flick of her fingers.
"Eris?" A familiar voice. Hesitant. "You haven't come to morning drill. Master Lyle sent me to check on you."
Renna. Her roommate. Half-sword, half-smile, always carrying gossip like it was contraband.
Eris opened the door just enough to peek out. "Tell him I'm sick. Cursed. Maybe both."
Renna snorted. "You look terrible, but not cursed. You'd be glowing or hissing or something."
"I'm trying something new."
"You're always trying something new," Renna said, narrowing her eyes. "But you've been weird lately. Ever since you locked yourself in the archives last week."
Eris flinched.
Renna leaned a little closer. "Is it about your mark?"
Eris went still.
Too still.
Renna quickly added, "I won't tell anyone, I swear. But I saw it once. When we were bathing after trials last year. I didn't recognize it. None of us did. I figured you were just... special."
"I'm not."
"Then you're rare," Renna whispered, eyes bright. "And rare things are always being hunted or hidden."
A silence stretched between them.
Then Eris asked, "If you were me, what would you do?"
Renna gave her a strange smile. "I'd run. Or I'd burn down the people who made me want to."
Eris didn't eat that day.
She wandered the outer balconies of the Collegium, where students rarely went. The wind was sharp this high above the city, slicing through the veil of clouds. Below, the world looked orderly. Clean.
But in her mind, the book whispered.
"They will come.
Not with truth.
But with control."
That night, she dreamt of a chained figure seated in a circle of fire.
They had no face.
Only her voice, spoken backwards.
"You are not the bearer.
You are the memory that survived."
She woke before dawn, breathless, heart pounding.
And there, at her window—forty stories above the street—stood a man cloaked in white.
His eyes glowed faintly beneath his hood. His sigil shimmered across his throat: the Spiral of Life.
A master.
A Watcher.
And he had come without knocking.