The whisper on the pillar haunted me.
"Flameheart never died.""Watch the echoes."
What echoes?
Back in the dormitory, I lay staring at the ceiling. Tracking sigils shimmered there as part of the academy's standard enchantment grid—but tonight, they pulsed unevenly. Almost… nervous.
I reached out with a detection spell. The glyphs jolted, not from my magic—but from something buried beneath them.
I sat up.
Someone had rewritten the enchantments.
Footsteps approached. Serena appeared at the doorway, holding a mug that steamed faintly lavender. "You're glowing," she said dryly.
"Something's off. These wards aren't reacting to me—they're reacting to each other."
She moved beside me, examining the ceiling with narrowed eyes. "That's not school standard. Look—see the layering? There's a second spellweb underneath."
"That's illegal."
"Or old," she murmured. "Older than the school."
That night, we crept into the lower tower. It housed the academy's magical core—a nexus of flowing runes beneath crystal barriers. Most students never saw it awake.
Tonight, it thrummed like a heart trying to beat against a hand pressed to its chest.
"There," Serena pointed. "Top left node. One glyph's blinking off-sequence."
I approached, breath held. The glyph wasn't just damaged. It had been rewritten.
In the margin, someone had etched a warning:
"Rewrite the truth, and fire will rewrite you."
The flameheart's echo wasn't just memory.
It was still burning.