The Academy didn't sleep, not truly. Not even now.
Even with the simulations ended, even with the duels concluded and blood cleaned from the obsidian stone, Vaelith pulsed like a living thing beneath the surface—whispers through stone, eyes behind murals, cold breath in forgotten halls.
Eryndor opened his eyes. He was still in the Lost Ones' dormitory. The cursed stone chamber that stank of preservation glyphs and old dust. Bandages coiled around his ribs like snakes. His blade rested beside his cot, cleaned but chipped.
The System was silent. For once, no messages. No threats. No corrections. Just...observation.
The others were asleep. The Unborn sat near the door, chained arms crossed over his lap like a silent warden. Flicker was snoring somewhere in the dark, limbs splayed at odd angles. The Mana-Cursed Girl murmured faintly in her sleep, curled against her mana cuffs as if they offered safety.
Eryndor sat up slowly. Pain flared. The duel had left more damage than he'd let show. His mind, too, felt bruised. They had won. That was undeniable. They were feared now.
He hated how quiet it felt.
His fingers brushed against his shirt. The burn scar still lingered—where the System had first marked him anomaly. He hadn't noticed it pulsing until now. A soft, rhythmic glow beneath the skin. Like it was calling.
He stood. Moved silently past the sleeping Lost Ones. Past the door. Past the empty corridors of stone and shimmerlight. He made his way toward the Trial Grounds.
The arena remained locked behind high brass gates. Signs flickered across its boundary glyphs:
*Access Restricted. Area Reset In Progress.*
He ignored them.
A short pulse of mana into the outer keystone—carved during a prior battle—sent a ripple through the defenses. The door clicked open just long enough.
He stepped inside.
The arena was dead. No light. No spectators. Just cracked obsidian and dust. But the air held memory. Energy. Like something buried deeper was breathing.
His footsteps echoed as he crossed the platform where Cadia had fallen.
The System pulsed once.
[Warning: Sublevel Access Detected.]
[Clearance: Denied.]
[Proceeding will elevate Risk Tier.]
He didn't stop.
A jagged seam in the floor marked the edge of the final battle. Beneath it—a faint outline. Not visible to most. But he saw it.
A door.
Eryndor pressed his palm to the stone. The blood on his skin had dried, but the mark remained. His blood still carried the glyphs he'd carved in desperation during the duel. They responded.
The door creaked.
Open.
A staircase spiraled downward into pure black. He descended.
The sublevel was wrong. Not corrupted—no, this wasn't tainted mana. This was...forgotten. Like a space not meant to be remembered.
Glyphs lined the walls. Ancient Vaelith script. Untranslated. Obsolete. The air tasted metallic.
His footsteps slowed.
A great hall opened before him, filled with fractured columns, broken statues, half-collapsed murals that stretched toward the ceiling like memories stretched too thin.
At the center—
A throne.
Cracked, jagged, half-swallowed by roots of stone and time. It pulsed. One faint beat. And above it, etched in that same dead script:
*Vaelith.*
Eryndor's heart stuttered.
He knew this throne. Not from this life. Not from this body. From something older. Something buried.
A vision flickered—him, standing before this throne. A crown of bone in his palm. The Oracle whispering:
*To sit the Dead Seat, you must bury the name you were.*
He staggered.
The System blared.
[Memory Sync Interruption Detected.]
[Observation Breach. Anomaly Trait Escalated.]
[Memory Lock Enforced.]
The vision collapsed. Eryndor dropped to one knee. Blood dripped from his nose. But he didn't look away.
This was the first. The first fragment. The first tooth of the throne buried in the Academy's bones. His throne.
He rose slowly. Turned. And saw her.
The Oracle stood within the broken mural, not truly there. A crack in reality shaped like her.
"You found it early," she said softly. "They will accelerate now."
He didn't speak.
She smiled. "Good."
Then vanished.
The System whispered:
[Dead Seat Fragment Proximity: Confirmed.]
[Clearance: Forbidden.]
[Heir Status: Suspected.]
The throne pulsed again.
He left.
The door sealed behind him with a sound like a tomb closing. Eryndor didn't look back.
The path up felt longer than down. Every step carried weight—not just physical exhaustion, but the weight of revelation, of buried knowledge the System hadn't wanted him to see.
At the top of the spiral, the arena was silent once more. Dead. But he felt it now.
It wasn't dead. It was sleeping.
The Dead Seat wasn't a rumor. It wasn't theory. It was there—beneath their feet. Beneath the very Academy that feared him. That watched him. That trained monsters like him to kill.
He stepped out into the hallway. The torches were lit now. Someone else had returned.
The Lost Ones waited at the end of the corridor. Flicker leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes flicking with suppressed relief.
"You're insane," he muttered.
The Mana-Cursed Girl didn't speak. She only stared at Eryndor like she already knew. Like she'd seen the pulse behind his eyes and felt it mirror her own brokenness.
The Unborn said nothing, but shifted slightly, as if recognizing something had changed.
Eryndor passed them all without a word. Back in the dormitory, he cleaned the blood from his hands, then burned the towel in the training hearth.
No one asked questions. No one needed to.
He sat at the edge of his cot. Breathing steady. Mind racing.
Later that night, when the others were asleep again, the message arrived. A single glyph unfolded itself in the air before him. Not from the System. Not from an instructor. It bore the seal of the Vaelith Archives.
*You were not meant to enter the sublevel.*
Another message followed.
*You have been noticed.*
A final pulse.
*We will speak soon. Prepare.*
The glyph vanished.
He stared into the dark.
He knew what came next.
This wasn't victory. This wasn't reward. This was escalation.
Cadia Serath would not let the duel go. House Merilith would push harder now. The other Houses would no longer pretend to ignore the anomaly.
And beneath it all, the System had elevated him.
[Anomaly Risk Tier: Red.]
[Locked Trait: Heir of the Unseated.]
[Full Observation Engaged.]
He whispered, voice low and jagged. "Let them watch."
He wasn't done.
Far beneath the Academy, the throne pulsed again. Alone. Unclaimed. But not asleep. A crack split one of the ancient runes above it. Light bled through.
In another tower, the Oracle stood within a mirror made of fractured time. She watched the boy return to his cot. Watched the wound in fate widen. And whispered:
"The dead remember, Eryndor Vaelith. Even if the living forget."