There were two kinds of magical dreams.
The first kind involved flying, falling, and the occasional embarrassing memory of showing up to class without pants.
The second kind involved ominous cubes floating in an endless void, judging you like an angry librarian.
Sylas had the misfortune of experiencing the latter.
He hovered in a space that wasn't really space, with no ground beneath him and no sky above. Just infinite darkness, punctuated by the low, vibrating hum of arcane energy.
And in the middle of it all, the cube.
Not spinning. Not glowing.
Just waiting.
"I assume this is your idea of a welcome party," Sylas muttered.
The cube pulsed faintly.
A voice—not heard, but felt—brushed against his thoughts.
"Do you remember the deal you made?"
Sylas blinked. "Oh great. It talks in cryptic questions. Classic cursed relic behavior."
"You are not Sylas Vermund."
"Well, technically neither are you," he shot back. "So unless you've got a cosmic identity scanner, maybe don't throw stones."
The cube shimmered, and suddenly the void around them rippled—revealing flashes of memory that didn't belong to him.
A woman screaming in a burning library.
A silver dagger buried in someone's chest.
A circle of robed figures chanting his name—not Sylas, but something older, something far worse.
Sylas flinched. "Okay, that's enough traumatic slideshow, thanks."
The cube's glow dimmed.
"You were not chosen. You interfered."
"Yeah, well, I didn't ask to wake up in this body. You think I wanted cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and a reputation for attempted fratricide?"
No response.
Just silence.
Sylas stepped closer. Or at least, willed himself closer. It was hard to walk when gravity was optional.
"What are you?" he asked.
This time, the answer came not in words, but in memory.
A vision overtook him—sudden and raw.
The cube, in a pristine chamber, surrounded by scholars. Not afraid. Reverent.
And at the center of it all, a figure cloaked in silver and blue, reaching toward it with trembling hands.
A voice echoed in the distance—feminine, precise, powerful.
"This artifact is not a weapon. It is a mirror."
Sylas gasped as the vision shattered.
He was back in the void, panting.
"A mirror," he repeated. "Of what?"
No answer.
Instead, the cube began to spin slowly. Light gathered around its edges, forming symbols Sylas couldn't quite read—but one stood out, clearer than the rest.
A name.
Vivienne Ashthorn.
Sylas's eyes narrowed.
"Why her?"
The cube pulsed again.
"She knows."
Sylas opened his mouth to ask what, exactly, she knew—but the void cracked open beneath him, yanking him down like a puppet caught in a ripcord.
He fell—backward, upward, sideways—through memory and magic, until his eyes snapped open.
He was on the floor of Professor Veran's study, gasping for breath, drenched in sweat.
Veran crouched over him, face grim.
"You made contact," she said.
"Understatement of the century," Sylas wheezed. "Your cube gave me a guided tour through someone else's nightmares."
Felix burst into the room seconds later, panic on his face. "What happened?!"
Sylas blinked at him. Then pointed to Veran. "She poisoned me."
"It was a stabilizer," Veran said flatly.
"Same thing."
Felix helped him sit up. "Did the cube say anything useful?"
Sylas hesitated, thoughts racing.
Vivienne. The dagger. The chanting.
The voice that said: She knows.
"It said," Sylas muttered, "that I'm not the only one hiding something."