Lira didn't mean to steal it.
That was important.She hadn't planned it.Hadn't stalked Kael's steps like she sometimes did.Hadn't crept into the library archives or bribed some crypt-keeper.
She'd woken in her dorm bed, chest tight, breath caught, and found the scroll resting on the floor beside her boots.
Wrapped in silk. Tied in silver thread.
It pulsed.
Like a heartbeat.
Like a warning.
She unwrapped it slowly.
Inside, the parchment was dark. Not aged—burned.But the glyph drawn across it was intact.
Not language. Not spellscript.
Just one symbol.
And the moment she looked at it—
The room disappeared.
She was standing in a city of flame.
Ash rained like snow. The sky was red, but not with fire—with memory.
Screams echoed from streets that no longer existed.
And at the center of it all stood a figure.
Tall. Cloaked. Eyes burning like stars seen through tears.
Not Kael.And exactly him.
He turned.
Looked at her.
And spoke her name.
Lira gasped and slammed the scroll shut.
She staggered back into the wall, skin cold despite the sweat on her neck.
The scroll lay on the floor. Still now.
Like nothing had happened.
She should have burned it.
Should have thrown it into a leyline flame and walked away.
Instead…
She picked it back up and slid it into her belt pouch.
Later that night, as the rest of Team Seven slept—
Kael turned in his bunk.
His eyes opened.
And he whispered into the dark:
"Who took it?"
Far below Aegisspire, in a sealed vault long since abandoned by the living, something stirred.
A figure cloaked in chains, wrapped in prayer-scars, looked up from a broken stone table.
The air grew heavy. The glyph etched into the stone glowed.
"A mortal touched the first syllable," the chained one rasped."And now it knows her."