The next morning, Kael's body ached in ways he couldn't name.
He'd woken before dawn, as he always did, and slipped into the academy halls like a ghost. The others were still sleeping off victory celebrations or late-night rituals. He preferred the silence. Silence didn't laugh at him. It listened.
The academy library opened at sunrise, but the keeper didn't bother to stop Kael from entering early. No one assumed he'd steal anything worth guarding.
He walked through the marble-floored corridors, past gilded shelves, past ancient tomes chained in glass. His fingers brushed the spines of forgotten histories, titles etched in runes older than empires.
But something was pulling him.
Not curiosity.
Something older.
He found himself standing before a rusted iron gate hidden behind a collapsed bookshelf. The gate was slightly ajar. Dust coated the handle. No one had been here in years.
Kael hesitated… then stepped inside.
It was colder down there.
Stone steps led into the dark, lit only by flickering wall torches — clearly enchanted, yet barely maintained. At the bottom, the corridor opened into a low, circular room lined with scrolls too old to catalogue and sigils that hadn't been used since the First Age.
And there, at the center, was a mirror.
Cracked. Clouded.
Ancient.
Kael stepped closer.
And the moment his foot crossed the circle of faded runes surrounding it, something moved in the glass.
Not a reflection.
A shape.
It looked back at him.
And whispered.
"You've bled. You've buried. Now remember."
Kael staggered back.
The rune inside him flared—not to fight, but to respond. Like it knew this place. Like it had waited to be here.
He didn't understand.
But the fear didn't take him this time.
Only the sense that something inside this mirror was not done with him yet.
Above, back in the main halls, Professor Lioren stood silently by a window overlooking the grounds. His arms were folded. His eyes unreadable.
Beside him, Mistress Yira, the blind seer, turned her head slightly toward him.
"He's in the dustwing archive," she said. Her voice was soft as falling ash.
"I know," Lioren murmured.
"You're watching too closely."
"Not closely enough."
She hesitated. "If he's what I think he is—"
"Then we've already waited too long."
Elsewhere in the academy gardens, Naya Elreth stood beneath a blossom tree with her two closest friends, Lyla and Imare. They were gossiping about the duel, about Torran's perfect form, about Soren's fire showboating.
But Naya was quiet.
She remembered the way Kael had stood. Bruised, silent, and stubborn.
He hadn't looked pathetic.
He'd looked… patient.
And that unsettled her more than anything.