The next day dawned gray and cold.
Mist clung to the fields beyond the academy, and even the birdsong felt muted—as if the world itself knew something had changed. Students went about their routines, unaware that two of their peers had seen lifetimes behind their eyes the night before.
Lyra sat at the back of her morning alchemy class, staring blankly at a bubbling cauldron while the instructor droned on about elemental stabilizers. She didn't hear a word. Her mind was somewhere else.
Somewhen else.
Lucien didn't break the seal alone.
She'd said it aloud.
And now it echoed through her chest like a curse.
She had helped him.
Not in betrayal. Not in malice. But in fear.
She hadn't known what he was doing, not fully. But she had trusted him. Enough to alter a single rune—one glyph in the spell that bound the Veil.
Enough to create a fault line.
Enough to doom them all.
"Miss Vale?"
The voice snapped her back to the present. Professor Morrin stood before her, thick brows raised in polite annoyance.
"Care to explain why the cauldron is melting?"
Lyra blinked.
She looked down.
Sure enough, her cauldron was hissing violently, the potion eating through the bottom with acidic glee. The floor beneath it sizzled.
"I—sorry," she mumbled, grabbing a neutralizing dust and dumping it into the mix.
The bubbling stopped.
The smell didn't.
"Stay behind after class," the professor said with a sigh. "We need to discuss your concentration."
Lyra nodded, already tuning him out.
She had bigger problems than potion safety.
Meanwhile, Kai found himself in the school's overgrown greenhouse—a place more sanctuary than classroom. Only a handful of students used it, and even fewer came in the early hours.
Lucien was already there.
He stood near a bed of blooming veilroses—soft white flowers with pale violet centers, said to only grow in places where reality thinned.
"Did you know they grow where dreams die?" Lucien asked without turning. "The flowers, I mean."
Kai leaned against the doorframe. "Is that true?"
Lucien shrugged. "Probably not. Sounds poetic though, doesn't it?"
A beat passed.
"I remember," Kai said quietly.
Lucien finally turned. His eyes were tired, but not surprised.
"How much?"
"Enough. The seal. The betrayal. The fire."
Lucien walked over to the bench and sat. "Then you know I never meant for her to die."
Kai followed him, slow and deliberate. "You lied to us."
"I wanted to save her."
"You used her."
"I thought—" Lucien's voice cracked. "I thought I could change the outcome. That if I just tweaked one thing, altered one rune, delayed one step, the cycle would break. I was desperate. I was in love with her."
Kai clenched his fists. "So was I."
Lucien looked at him then, and for a moment, the weight in his gaze was ancient.
"I never hated you, Kaelen."
Kai flinched at the name.
Lucien noticed. "You remember that too."
"Every moment."
Another silence stretched between them.
Then Lucien leaned forward, elbows on knees. "There's something else you should know."
Kai tensed.
"The seal's weakening again. Faster than it should. Something is accelerating it."
"What kind of something?"
Lucien didn't answer right away. He pulled a small obsidian shard from his coat and held it out.
The shard pulsed with an eerie light—dark violet, like bruised shadow. Runes flickered across its surface, then vanished.
"I found this in the basement. It's a piece of a Wraith core. It shouldn't exist here—especially not outside the veil."
Kai took the shard and felt a jolt of recognition, like it was whispering to him.
A voice in his head.
Faint.
Cruel.
We never left, little knight.
He dropped it.
Lucien caught it before it hit the ground and pocketed it.
"They're already inside," Lucien said. "They're just waiting."
Kai stared at him.
"Then why haven't they attacked?"
Lucien stood. "Because they want us to finish opening the door for them."
Later that evening, Lyra found herself standing in the hallway outside the old chapel. It hadn't been used in years, but something about the carved reliefs on its doors still pulsed with residual power.
She traced a fingertip over one of the runes.
To hold the veil is to hold the soul.
Inside, the air felt different. Not colder—denser. Like walking through a dream half-remembered.
She stepped forward, and the room lit slowly.
A single glyph at the center of the chapel floor glowed gold.
A memory anchor.
Someone had been here recently.
"Hello?" she called.
Silence answered.
But not the empty kind.
The waiting kind.
She crossed the room slowly, boots echoing against the stone, and stood before the glyph.
It was old. Familiar.
Her handwriting.
This was her circle. A backup anchor. Set generations ago, in a life where she'd prepared for the worst.
She knelt and placed her hand over it.
The glyph flared.
And then—
Visions.
Flashes of Elenya at a ritual table. Carving sigils. Weaving safeguards into spells no one else would understand.
A figure entered the room. Hooded. Shrouded in smoke.
Lucien.
Younger. Scared.
"If it all goes wrong—" he whispered.
"It won't," she said.
"But if it does…"
"Then you'll do what's necessary. And I'll forgive you."
The vision faded.
Lyra's breath trembled.
She sat there, alone, with the weight of her own mercy.
That night, the three of them—Kai, Lyra, and Lucien—met atop the old astronomy platform. No more games. No more hiding.
The sky above was a sea of bruised violet. No stars. Just the ever-thinning Veil.
"I think it's time we stop dancing around it," Kai said. "We're running out of time."
Lyra nodded. "We need to find the true origin of the Wraiths. Their tether. Why they can follow us between lives."
Lucien looked up. "I have an idea."
They turned to him.
"There's a place. Beyond the boundary of this world. The original crossing point. The first tear in the Veil."
Lyra stiffened. "The Hollow Mirror."
Lucien nodded. "We sealed it before. But part of it remains. Fractured. Hidden beneath the ruins of Caer Theron."
Kai met his eyes. "You want to go back to where we died."
"I think," Lucien said quietly, "it's where we start living again."