Kael waited until the library dimmed into silence.
By evening, even the most zealous noble sons and sleepless apprentices had wandered off. The only sounds left were the whisper of candle flames and the faint sighs of old books dreaming in dust.
He slipped past the shelves, moving without hurry, as if this was normal. As if his blood wasn't humming.
Back down the steps. Past the rusted gate.
Back to the mirror.
It hadn't changed.
Still cracked. Still ancient. Still watching him.
Kael stepped forward.
His hand hovered over the glass.
You don't belong here, said a voice in the back of his mind.
But he never had—not anywhere.
So he touched it.
And the world changed.
He wasn't in the academy anymore.
He stood in a forgotten city—a place of towering gold spires and shadowed skies. The air was heavy with ash. Wind blew through streets slick with memory and flame.
He looked down at his hands.
Not his.
Older. Armored. Etched in obsidian rune-plates that pulsed like breathing embers. A massive blade hung at his back, too heavy for anyone less than a god.
Ashir.
The name wasn't spoken. It was.
A memory. A presence. A life once lived.
But before Kael could move, before the vision could settle—
The fire shifted.
And he heard another sound.
Not from the city. Not from this world.
Rain.
He was smaller now.
Six years old. Wet to the bone.
Standing on crooked stone steps behind a cottage carved into the woods. The forest whispered things it shouldn't. And the rain came down like it was trying to hide something.
His mother was in front of him.
Dark hair. Deep eyes. A cloak too thin for the storm. But her hands never shook—not until that night.
"You'll be better than both of us," she said, cupping his cheeks. "You'll forget this. You have to."
But Kael never forgot.
Behind her, his father faced the trees, holding a blade that glowed softly in the dark—the same glow now buried in Kael's bones.
His mother pressed something small into his hand. A stone, wrapped in scorched cloth.
"Don't open it until your blood remembers."
Then came the roar.
Not a beast.
Not magic.
Something ancient.
His mother didn't flinch.
She kissed his forehead once, whispered something into his hair, and ran toward the sound.
He never saw her again.
The memory tore away like a blade through smoke.
Kael gasped.
He was back. On the floor of the mirror chamber. Breathing like he'd been drowning.
The mirror was silent again.
But his hand—his real hand—burned.
He turned it over slowly.
A rune had appeared on his palm. Brighter. Deeper. New.
A sword inside a sunburst.
Not one from any scroll or recorded bloodline.
His blood had remembered.
That night, in the stillness of his room, Kael unwrapped the cloth bundle he'd never dared open.
Inside was a shard of something black and scorched.
It looked useless. Dead.
But now it pulsed with the same rune.
And a thought surfaced—not his own, but as old as fire.
You are not the first. But you may be the last.
Kael didn't sleep that night.
Not out of fear.
Out of awakening.