The academy always hushed at night, but tonight the silence felt staged—like every shadow leaned closer, waiting for him to move.Kai slipped out from the barracks without a word. No footsteps followed, no whispers stirred. Lina was asleep, or at least pretending. He hoped she stayed that way.This wasn’t a path anyone could walk with him.The Fifth Sigil still burned faintly on his skin, an ember refusing to die down. It pointed him like a compass, not outward, but downward—into the belly of Arcadia.The tunnels beneath the academy were older than the stones above. Ancient, damp, carved with sigils even the professors never mentioned. Kai passed through corridors that smelled of rust and grave soil, each step echoing like a question he couldn’t yet answer.He didn’t need a map. The Mark guided him.At last, he reached the door.A slab of black stone embedded in the wall, bound with iron chains that looked too thick for human hands. They weren’t real chains anymore—not entirely. So

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days.Kai leaned against the stone railing of the dormitory tower, letting the cold drops run down his face. Arcadia always smelled sharper in the rain, the faint trace of burning wards in the air. But beneath it all was something sour, like rot under a polished floor. The Circle was pushing harder. Every student could feel it.Behind him, the door creaked. Lina stepped out, clutching a thick, black-bound book to her chest. The grimoire. Its surface pulsed faintly, as if it had veins beneath the leather.“You’re not sleeping,” she said softly.“Neither are you.”She came to stand beside him, her hair damp from the mist. For a moment they just stood, side by side, the silence heavy. Then she held the grimoire out.“It showed me something,” she whispered. “Not just spells. Not just runes. A… name.”Kai turned. “Whose?”“Not Rafe’s,” she said quickly. “Someone else. A rival. Trapped in a crystal. Sealed away under this academy.”Her fingers tightened on

The first time it happened, Lina thought she was dreaming.Her dorm was dark, the other girls asleep, their breathing rising and falling like waves. Moonlight slipped through the high window, silvering the old mirror above her desk. She had turned it face-down weeks ago…….too many late nights catching her own reflection when she was half-awake. But now, as if something unseen had flipped it upright, the glass caught her eye.She froze.Not her. Not exactly.The girl staring back wore the same face, the same tired eyes, but something clung to her light, golden, soft as flame. It coiled around her wrists, circled her throat like a crown of dawn. She looked older, stronger. She stood taller.And she was leading.Lina’s breath caught in her throat. Behind that other self, blurred shapes dozens, no, hundreds stood in shadow. Students, mages, people she didn’t recognize. All of them facing the golden lit version of her. Waiting. Following.Lina blinked. The image fractured like water rippli

The hall sat empty except for those two. Dust stuck to the broken banners up above, their colors had faded a lot. This used to be a training wing in Arcadia. They condemned it a while back. You could still see faint burn marks from old duels. Faint echoes of lives spent there. Magic wasted.Kai stood at one end of the chamber. His hand hung loose by his side. Every muscle in him was wound up tight. His eyes locked on the figure across the way. For a second he didn't see the man Aiden had turned into. He saw the boy he remembered instead.That boy was gone.Aiden leaned back against a toppled column. Like this wasn't the kind of challenge that would set the whole academy on fire. His smile cut sharp, but his gaze carried more weight than Kai recalled, the kind of weight that comes from too many choices already made.“You came,” Aiden said softly. His voice cut through the silence. Even that little sound seemed to shake the air a bit. “I wondered if you'd just hide behind your little re

Lina………a darkness that pressed against her ribs like a hand keeping her under.Lina floated inside it, her thoughts scattered, her body weightless. For a moment she believed this was death—-simple, endless, merciful.Then the light came.Not from outside. From her.It pulsed with her heartbeat, faint and golden, like a thread pulling her toward something above.When her eyes opened, the world wasn’t the infirmary. It was a plain of broken stone under a dead sky. No sound. No wind.And in the center stood a mirror.Its surface rippled like water, jagged at the edges, wrong.Her reflection stared back—except it wasn’t her. This Lina was taller, cloaked in sunlight, armor of light stitched to her skin. She held no weapon, but people—students, strangers, faces blurred—knelt behind her.The golden reflection lifted its chin, lips moving without sound.She stepped closer. The words slipped through the surface:You are more than you believe.Your blood remembers.Your mother’s line was not b