The night after the Mirror Gate trial was not silent.
Nocth lay on a stone bed within the Saevareth estate's side chamber, but sleep did not come. Instead, he hovered between breath and dream, caught in the fold of a whisper.
"What you saw… wasn't from your past. Nor your fear."
The voice wasn't his own, nor like the child's. It was layered. Feminine. Ancient.
The darkness around him twisted.
A pale forest. A silver pool. Moonlight dripping like ink.
In its reflection, he saw himself — eyes closed, but veins aglow. Two new lines, burned into his neck and chest like scorched rivers. But their glow was not golden or white. They pulsed gray-black, like living embers coated in ash.
"You carry an echo… of something that never should have awakened."
The image vanished.
He gasped awake.
---
Meanwhile, Shae' stood alone within a mirror chamber at House Dreviir's upper sanctum.
She hadn't told anyone, but she too had dreamt.
In her vision, a gate of bones opened upon a field of stars. And a boy stood there — not Nocth as she knew him, but someone half-broken, half-god. Eyes of black flame.
"Why are you watching me?" he had asked.
She hadn't answered, even in dream.
Now, staring at her reflection, Shae's breath misted.
"I'm not watching you," she murmured. "I'm trying to remember who you remind me of."
At dawn, a new message arrived at the academy gates.
A carriage of smoke and quiet flame bore the sigil of House Khaedris, the seventh of the Nine. Known for their Ash Affinity, their veins produced volatile combustion, rooted in battle-tempered tradition. Their emissary had come not to speak — but to fight.
The courtyard was assembled by midday. The Saevareth estate had prepared Nocth. They knew this was no coincidence.
A tall, smirking youth stepped forward, ash curling around his fists like dancing serpents.
"Nocth of nowhere," the noble declared, "show me what your broken Mirror Gate bought you."
Nocth said nothing. His veins still burned from the dream.
They clashed. Steel flashed. Ash erupted.
But before it could become a full duel, Nocth's 16th and 17th veins erupted—gray fire twined with obsidian threads, no longer hidden.
They didn't burn the opponent. They swallowed the ash attack—turning it inert.
Gasps filled the courtyard.
"Impossible," the noble hissed. "You... neutralized my veins?!"
Nocth's eyes glinted—moonlit and tired.
Shae watched from the rooftops, expression unreadable.
Then came a new arrival: cloaked in white, face masked, bearing no formal insignia—but on their glove was a sigil none had seen in centuries: the Tenth House.
Even Shae blinked.