Three days after the Veins of Valor ended, a message arrived at Toji's door. Not written. Not sealed.
It arrived through his shadow.
A flicker. A glyph. A pull.
No words.
Just direction.
⸻
He followed it through the academy's western ward, past dead gardens and unused chambers, until he reached a staircase of violet stone carved into the cliffside.
He descended in silence.
The stone glowed with Echo-runes beneath his feet, reacting not to his presence—but to his tether.
When he reached the bottom, a chamber opened before him.
A hall of dusklight and circling mirrors, their frames humming with unbound magic.
And at its center—six students stood.
Only two of them familiar.
Kaela. Arms crossed, calm, unsurprised.
Roth. Standing quietly, eyes lowered, posture tighter than usual.
Toji stepped forward and joined them.
The others turned as he approached.
The first—a girl with ink-dark hair braided in spirals and an Echo floating behind her shaped like a dozen moths, each wing bearing a different eye. She met his gaze without blinking.
The second—a tall, glass-eyed boy with silver-thread gloves and a tether that shimmered like a music score rewritten in blood. He nodded once.
Toji said nothing.
Neither did they.
⸻
The sixth arrived last.
Niko.
She walked in without expression, no longer dressed in her tournament robes. Just a high-collared coat and a frost-marked satchel.
She looked at Toji for a moment.
Then past him.
Then down.
⸻
A door opened.
Lysara entered, robes trimmed with twilight-colored stitching, her staff held flat across both palms.
She stopped before them.
Then did something no one had seen her do.
She bowed.
Slightly.
But sincerely.
"You six," she said, "have crossed a threshold that cannot be untaken. Not because of strength. Not because of victory. But because your tethers have begun remembering you."
Toji felt the Mnemo-Eye pulse behind him.
Lysara walked past them one by one.
"Toji Fushiguro. Echo-forger. Mnemo-bearer. Resonance catalyst."
"Kaela Vrenn. Tether-stabilized. Emotional conduit."
"Roth Talveir. Shadow survivor. Echo-fractured."
"Niko of Winterholt. Memory-walker. Mirror-bonded."
She stopped before the others.
"Ira Vahl." (the moth-eyed girl) "Multi-Node Echo host. Fracture-born."
"Sethron Vey." (the melody-tether boy) "Lost-link Echo bearer. Channeling incomplete memory-source."
She turned back to them all.
"There is no syllabus for what you are becoming. No class. No test. No rubric."
She raised her staff. The mirrors pulsed once.
"But now… you are a class."
She let the silence stretch.
"I will teach you. Not as students. Not as spellcasters. But as Echo-bound. Tether-walkers. Those chosen not by lineage—but by the fact that your Echoes refuse to forget you."
⸻
No applause.
No rank board.
Just gravity.
Toji looked at the others.
They didn't look back.
They were each lost in the understanding of what had just happened.
Kaela, however, stepped forward.
"Why us?" she asked.
"Because," Lysara said, "the others survived the event. But you six came back changed."
Roth swallowed hard.
"And what now?"
Lysara finally smiled.
"We begin. Tomorrow. You'll be given access to the Echo Sanctum, forbidden archives, and internal forge rites. But first—"
She turned away.
"You rest."
She vanished into the doorway beyond.
⸻
Toji lingered after the others left.
Kaela stayed too, as if waiting to see if he would speak first.
He did.
"What did she mean… by changed?"
Kaela shrugged.
"Maybe you always were. And now she's not pretending otherwise."
⸻
That night, Toji walked alone along the outer courtyard wall.
The Mnemo-Eye hovered quietly.
He whispered to it.
"You've been quiet since the Weave."
The Eye didn't respond right away.
Then:
"You are being watched."
"I know. The Council."
"Not them."
Toji stopped walking.
"Then who?"
The Eye pulsed once.
Then again.
"Someone we cannot see. But they remember you.
Even though you have not met."
Toji's blood chilled.
Then, far away—too far to feel, but close enough to echo—
A ripple passed through the tether-space of the world.
Somewhere, a veil parted.
And someone smiled.
Toji remained by the courtyard wall long after the Mnemo-Eye's final whisper faded.
Someone watching.
Someone not from the Council.
That was new.
And unsettling.
He let the weight of that settle in his chest, like a blade pressed flat—not cutting yet, but cold.
Behind him, footsteps approached.
He didn't need to turn to know who it was.
Kaela's voice broke the silence gently. "They gave us rooms. Same wing. The upper dorms. For 'tether-compatible training.' Whatever that means."
He glanced sideways. "Convenient."
She shrugged. "Or strategic."
She came to stand beside him, resting her forearms on the stone railing.
"Do you ever get tired?" she asked suddenly.
He blinked. "Of what?"
"Being whatever they think you are. The prodigy. The mystery. The threat. The one they whisper about when you leave the room."
His jaw clenched, but not in anger.
"In the beginning, it was armor. Now… I'm not sure if it's still armor or just who I am."
Kaela studied him carefully.
Then said, "You were different when we met."
"I was hiding," he admitted. "Not because I was afraid. But because I didn't think anyone would stay if they saw past it."
"I stayed," she said simply.
He looked at her now.
And she didn't look away.
The moment passed—quiet but meaningful—and then Kareth emerged from his shadow behind them, still partially layered, the shimmer of what it could become flickering with breath-like pulses.
Kaela glanced at it. "It's still changing."
"So am I."
She nodded.
Then added with a small, sideways smile, "Good. You were getting a little predictable."
He huffed a breath—halfway to laughter.
Kareth turned its head toward Kaela, then back toward Toji. Its eyes narrowed with a kind of recognition.
It had never done that before.
⸻
Later that night, after they separated, Toji entered his new dorm suite.
It was larger than his last, with high runed ceilings and a private sigil circle inlaid into the stone floor.
At its center sat a box.
No seal. No label.
Just a ribbon of gray.
Toji opened it.
Inside: a single page.
On it, a simple message burned in gentle red script:
"We remember you, even before you knew your name.
You have crossed the first mirror.
When the second cracks, come to us.
—Pale Flame"
His fingers closed around the note.
No title. No address. No formal summons.
But a promise.
And a threat.
⸻
Across the academy, Lysara stood in the hidden observatory beneath the forge chamber, speaking softly to the image of the six students arranged in a diagram above a massive etched circle.
She tapped one line—Toji's.
His mark pulsed once.
"They're not ready," she said quietly.
The spell beside her responded.
"But you believe they will be."
Lysara didn't smile.
She didn't argue.
She simply whispered, "They have to be."
⸻
In the darkness beyond the academy walls, where memory and time tangle, the one who was watching leaned forward over a pool of still, black water.
It rippled with the image of a blade. A jackal. A spiral eye.
A voice older than the council, speaking to no one, echoed across the void.
"The forge wakes. The mirror strains.
And the one who walks with memory… remembers less than he should."
The water stilled.
And the smile returned.