The Tier One Trials ended not with a roar of glory, but with an uncomfortable hush that clung to the halls of Aetherion Academy.
Victory banners still fluttered in the wind. Magical scoreboards blinked above the great hallways, names ranked, placements decided. But the students barely glanced at them now.
All eyes—and all rumors—were on Selene Altharys.
The girl who had not only won her duel, but had unraveled something ancient in front of them all.
No one spoke it aloud, but they had seen it: the violet flare that twisted space, the forbidden word that left a metallic tang in the air, and the way her opponent's spell had withered before impact—undone not by force, but by something older.
And then she vanished.
Not even the adjudicators could find her after the match.
Arin stood at the outer edge of the observation platform above the West Spire, where the final matches had been projected. The crowd had long since scattered. Only gusts of wind remained, whistling through enchanted brasswork and crystalline conduits.
He hadn't seen Selene since the duel.
But he'd felt her.
The moment her voice echoed through the dueling field, the Codex fragment sealed beneath the Academy—the one inside him—had stirred. It hadn't just reacted. It had resonated. The same way sympathetic magic vibrated across linked runes. Only this wasn't magic.
It was memory.
It was recognition.
"She has a piece," Arin murmured to himself. "Of the Codex. Just like me."
And that meant more than just shared power.
It meant the Codex was beginning to awaken. Piece by piece. Soul by soul.
And none of them were ready.
He left the spire behind and began walking the quieter halls, avoiding the busy commons where students still half-heartedly discussed rankings. Lucien had asked him to meet, Mira had left two messages, but Arin didn't reply to either.
He was searching.
Not with his eyes—but with the thread.
The thin, imperceptible pull of magical resonance that had woven into his soul since the moment of his reincarnation. Normally dormant, but now pulsing with irregular life.
It wasn't leading him to the sealed chamber beneath the observatory.
It was pulling north.
Toward the towers of isolation.
Toward her.
But he didn't reach the tower.
Because as he turned a corner near the quiet meditation garden, a figure blocked his path.
Professor Elaren.
Sharp-robed, silver-haired, and impossibly still, the spellcraft professor stood with one gloved hand behind his back. His eyes—deep gray with a faint inner glow—watched Arin like a chessmaster reading the board three moves ahead.
"Valemore," the professor said, voice low. "You're walking a thread that was never meant to be pulled."
Arin's brow furrowed. "I'm just walking."
"No," Elaren replied, stepping closer. "You're chasing the echo of a name that the Academy tried to forget. Just like her."
A silence settled between them, heavy with implication.
Arin held his gaze. "You know what she awakened."
"I know what you both are awakening." Elaren glanced toward the sealed meditation gate behind him. "The Trials were supposed to shape students, not summon remnants of the Primordial Epoch. But now they're stirring. One after the other."
"You're not going to stop us?"
The professor smiled—tired and thin.
"I couldn't, even if I wanted to."
He stepped aside.
Behind him, the meditation gate opened on its own, old glyphs sliding into place.
"She's in there," Elaren said, "but she doesn't want to be found. Not yet.
Arin hesitated at the threshold.
Then nodded once, without stepping forward.
"I'll wait," he said.
That evening, the final Trial results were posted on the Grand Obelisk. Selene Altharys' name shone near the top of the dueling rankings.
But she did not come to see it.
She sat alone within the sealed meditation chamber, the room dim and warm with rune-light, her back pressed against the cold wall, her thoughts a thousand miles away.
Something inside her had changed.
She could feel words in her blood now. Not thoughts—scripts. Ancient, rotating glyphs she didn't understand, but instinctively knew were real. Her sleep was filled with whispering voices and dreams of broken tomes floating in a starless void.
The word she had spoken during the duel—Nyss-varek—echoed still. Not aloud. But inside her bones.
Her opponent had barely seen it coming. The spell had not struck. It had been reversed.
And yet Selene hadn't felt triumphant.
She had felt hollow.
As if something else had reached through her body, wielded her magic, then retreated back into the dark.
She didn't know if it was hers.
Or the Codex's.
But she was starting to remember things she shouldn't.
A library without walls.
A door of bleeding keys.
A throne that floated in the dark, unclaimed.
Outside, the Tier One Trials faded into memory. Students resumed their studies. Professors whispered warnings to one another.
But far beneath the Academy—in the depths where no light reached—the sealed Codex fragment stirred again.
The First Flame had awakened.
And six remained.