In the quiet aftermath of the Librarium's collapse, the sky above the Academy of Aeons remained fractured. Shards of starlight hung like suspended glass, frozen in the very fabric of dusk. The air shimmered with residual runes, still dissolving from the last of the Choir's failed chant. And far below, beneath the trembling ceiling of the Spiral Dome, Lynchie sat alone at the center of the cracked circle.
The scroll in her lap had stopped glowing.
But it hadn't stopped whispering.
She could no longer see the glyphs—they were gone—but their echo still pulsed faintly inside her, a murmur beneath her heartbeat. Her fingers trembled where they touched the edge of the parchment. It no longer burned, but it throbbed gently, as if remembering fire. Her thoughts felt strangely arranged, like books placed in a new order—still hers, but not entirely.
She blinked. The dome above her was silent. Not even Vyen had returned.
"You heard it," a voice said softly from the shadows.
Lynchie turned. A boy stood at the periphery of the fractured circle, his silhouette limned in fading azure. Zev. His presence did not startle her, not exactly. But something about his gaze—too old, too still—reminded her of the moment the page had breathed.
"What did it say to you?" he asked.
"Nothing it meant to," she answered.
He tilted his head. "That's not comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be."
Zev stepped forward, each movement deliberate. The runes beneath his boots flickered and faded. He knelt beside her, fingers brushing the scroll's edge without touching it.
"The Binding Verse," he murmured. "They thought it lost."
Lynchie swallowed. "What is it?"
He looked at her, truly looked, and for a heartbeat she felt that strange clarity again—the sense of being read like a book with no cover.
"A seal. A song. A seed. It was never meant to be found by one voice."
"But I heard it. Alone."
"And that," Zev said, his voice quiet, "is what scares them."
She wanted to ask who they were. But before she could, a tremor shook the chamber—low and mournful, as if the very stone groaned in remembrance. Zev stood.
"You should come with me," he said.
Lynchie hesitated. "Where?"
Zev didn't smile, but his eyes darkened like approaching rain.
"To the place where voices become weapons."
And beneath the Spiral Dome, the first sound of the next chant began to stir in the bones of the walls.