The dormitory was never meant for dreams.
No windows. No skylight. No soft wind to sneak in and remind a sleeping mind of time passing. Just stone, dry air, and magical pulses that ran through the walls like slow heartbeats.
Kyle woke with a start.
No sound had stirred him. No nightmare. Just the sensation of being watched.
He sat up slowly. The air felt heavier now—cooler, charged.
He looked around the room.
Same four walls.
Same rune-carved lock on the door.
Same faint, flickering light orb embedded in the ceiling.
Then his eyes settled on the wall above the headboard.
And he saw it.
A mark, burned into the stone as though branded with fire and left without ash. It glowed a sickly, subtle blue—a shade that flickered at the edges with purples and black tendrils. It wasn't large. Just big enough to be seen in full from where he lay.
The symbol didn't belong to any House. Or School. Or known Order.
It was serpent-like. Almost draconic. It shimmered as if half-submerged in water.
He stood.
Slowly. Cautiously.
Approached.
His skin buzzed the closer he got. The hair on his arms stood up. His blood moved differently. Not faster—but aware.
He reached out.
And the moment his fingers touched the mark—everything stopped.
The air vanished.
The light died.
And the symbol pulsed.
Once.
Then his mind opened.
A flash—
The mirror again. But not cracked. Whole. And something on the other side, moving with absolute stillness.
A hallway underground, paved in obsidian and bone. Footsteps in the dark—his own, maybe.
A whisper.
Not the familiar voice.
A new one.
Feminine.
Unfamiliar.
"Come to where the old memories burn. Come to the place below the palace. We are waiting."
Then—
Pain.
A sudden pulse through his chest. Sharp. Precise. Like a second heartbeat had activated—and then immediately gone still.
The mark vanished.
The room returned.
Kyle staggered back, gripping his ribs. Breathing hard.
The wall was bare stone now. Cool to the touch.
As if it had never changed at all.
He stood in the silence, pulse still pounding, the message burned behind his eyes.
The place below the palace.
Where the old memories burn.
He didn't know what it meant.
But something in him already knew where to go.
And worse—
It knew he'd come.
The corridors were silent at this hour. More than silent—hushed, like the very architecture wanted him to pass unnoticed.
Kyle moved with purpose, but not speed. Every step echoed more than it should have, despite the cushioning spells woven into the West Hollow stone. He passed the other dorms. Doors sealed. No sign of life.
Even the light orbs dimmed as he passed beneath them.
He held onto one word: palace.
Not "school." Not "tower." Not "cathedral."
And he realized something—no one ever called Sanctum Magna a palace. It was an academy by name, but on looks alone, it was more than worthy of the title. The grandeur. The sheer scale of its halls…
Maybe this place had not been built as an academy.
Maybe it had been something else.
He reached the north wing. The hall turned sharply, sloping downward in a smooth, unnatural grade—almost imperceptible. The walls here were older. Uneven. Magic here wasn't layered in glyphs or sigils.
It pulsed from the stone itself.
No one had carved it.
It had formed this way.
He passed an iron gate that stood ajar. Behind it: a stairwell. Spiral. Narrow. Unlit.
Kyle didn't hesitate.
He descended.
One step at a time.
Downward. Ever downward.
After thirty-seven turns, he reached the bottom.
There was no door.
Just a wall.
But as he stepped toward it, his hand brushed against an outcrop of stone—and the wall responded.
A pulse.
Then the stone folded inward, collapsing with the grace of liquid metal. The passage opened with no fanfare. No magic he recognized. No mechanism.
Just will.
Beyond it—darkness.
And the smell of ash.
The hallway wasn't long, but it was wide. Arched like a cathedral's ribcage, with vaulted ceilings that vanished into shadow.
Along the walls were alcoves—each holding a single item behind glass, long forgotten:
A mask.
A burned scroll.
A child's wand, snapped in half.
A memory hall.
He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.
These were objects bound to secrets. Failures. Promises broken.
Each radiated a soft, almost imperceptible resonance—like they still remembered the last person who had touched them.
At the end of the hall was a gate.
It wasn't grand or ornate. Just old. Heavy. Stone reinforced with bone-white inlays—the origin of which he dared not guess.
A familiar whisper brushed against his ear—not the feminine voice this time, but a faint chorus.
A single phrase:
"Enter, our Inheritor."
The door opened.
Inside, the room was circular. Empty—save for one thing.
A crystal.
Not a small talisman. Not some grand, absurdly sized treasure.
Just a blood-red crystal placed on a stand.
He stepped toward it. Placed his hand on it.
Nothing happened.
Until—
The walls around him shifted.
Not physically. Not visibly.
But the sense of space altered. Time slowed. The very shape of the moment bent.
And then—
Across from him, a figure rose from the floor.
A woman, cloaked in white and shadow. Her face was obscured—not by veil or hood—but by magic. As if her features refused to settle. Like water disturbed by thought.
When she spoke, her voice carried weight.
"You are finally here."
Kyle swallowed. "Who are you?"
The figure tilted her head.
"I am the one who called for you. Do you not recall my voice?"
It asked, almost confused.
Kyle stiffened.
"I digress," she said. "You must be told what it means to carry our power. Power that wasn't yours—but now is."
The ground beneath him thrummed like a heartbeat.
And the real conversation began.
The woman's presence expanded across the room. Her outline shimmered—unstable—like she wore form as a courtesy. Her voice was layered, thick with languages Kyle didn't understand—yet somehow still grasped.
"Your power is not your power. Your skin is not your own. But the flame within—it is ours. And now… yours."
As she spoke, the red crystal between them began to glow.
Then—without warning—four more figures stepped forward from the room's edge.
They hadn't walked. They had arrived.
Each took a place in a wide ring around the crystal. The shadows twisted around them, but Kyle saw just enough.
The second figure was cloaked in vines and hollowed bone, its face a crag of stone marked with runes that changed when you tried to read them.
The third shimmered like heat on metal—genderless, faceless, wrapped in fluid armor that pulsed like veins.
The fourth was smaller, seated on nothing, covered in worn robes that flickered between child and ancient.
The fifth had no form at all—just a voice, the same voice that had been in his mind for weeks, drifting in circles, taking shape only as sound.
Together, they formed a ring of power.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Not gods.
But something in between.
Kyle stepped back slightly, but the stone beneath him didn't let him retreat.
There was no edge.
No exit.
"You are now chosen," said the stone-faced one.
"You are needed," said the shifting one.
"You will gain power," whispered the small one.
"And this time you must be decisive," echoed the formless voice.
Kyle clenched his fists. "Why me? You keep talking in riddles, but I don't understand you at all!"
The woman smiled—or something like it.
"Because you bear the cost. Because you opened the gate. Because you screamed the words no one else dared speak. You claimed the power, and this is the price. Your cost to pay."
The red crystal pulsed again.
From its center, light bent outward—and for a moment, Kyle saw images.
Visions.
A city of iron and fire, torn apart by war.
A creature in chains—too massive to live—screaming.
A sky cracking open.
A woman's face—bloodied—standing before something she shouldn't survive.
The images vanished before his mind could catch them.
But their weight stayed.
"A war is coming," said the formless voice.
"But not the one they should fear," added the child-ancient.
"You will be the beginning," said the shifting one.
"You may die. And still be used," said the stone-faced.
"But in one future—you become the end," said the woman.
Kyle's chest burned.
He stumbled. Fell to one knee. "Why… why tell me this?" he gasped.
"Because it has begun," the voices said in perfect unison. "Our flame is now yours. The future in your hands. For you are the axis."
And just like that—
The light snapped off.
The crystal dimmed.
And Kyle was alone.
The chamber was silent. The floor cold.
But the ache inside him now thrummed like a buried ember.
He didn't remember everything they had said.
Not clearly.
But something had been etched into his marrow.
A shape.
A purpose.
A warning.