The night after the Mirror Gate trial was anything but quiet.
Nocth sat alone beneath the balcony of the academy's west watchtower, knees drawn in, breath fogging under the starlight. Around him, the whisper of wind curled like soft chants. Yet they were not wind.
They were voices.
"Ash shall veil the vein. The moon shall blink before it sees."
He gritted his teeth. His fingers trembled — not from fear, but resonance.
Something had awakened again.
The fifteenth vein had not closed. It pulsed.
And now, another... the sixteenth... unfurled without warning.
A silver-ashen line, slithering down his wrist, burned through his body like a reversed flame — cold at the edges, yet searing at the core. The veins of his arm glowed faintly, almost invisible to most, but clear to any trained warrior.
In the Dormitories
Shae stood by a window, looking down at the training garden far below. Her expression unreadable.
Calem leaned against the doorframe behind her, his arms crossed. "You've been watching that boy."
She glanced sideways. "I watch everyone."
He didn't smile. "He broke the Mirror Gate. That's not watching material. That's danger."
Shae's voice was soft, but every word was a dagger.
"Then why are you here, Calem? Because danger attracts you too?"
A pause. Then she smirked and added, "Or are you worried he'll take your spotlight?"
Calem's gaze narrowed. "He's no one."
Shae turned back to the moonlight.
"Even nobodies can carry storms. Especially when they forget they are storms."
The Dream
That night, Nocth slept — but his sleep was not his own.
He found himself walking a long corridor of shattered glass, moonlight bleeding through the cracks. On both sides, the mirrors showed versions of himself — twisted, glowing, vanishing.
And in the distance, a figure waited.
A girl. Or was it a shadow?
She was barefoot, draped in black silk. Her eyes were moons — no pupils, no color, just rotating phases of lunar memory.
She whispered his name before he could speak it.
"You don't belong here. But your veins do."
"The world was built to break you, Nocth. But your dream… it writes over it."
She reached forward — and touched his chest. His veins ignited in a rush of gray flame.
And then — he woke up, choking, sweat freezing against his skin.
Elsewhere – In Saevareth Estate
Lady Enira of House Saevareth stood on a high cliff beyond the Thaleon academy boundary. A scroll was floating before her, glowing with runes. A report.
"Subject Nocth... fragment of unknown origin... vein output exceeds normal by 640%..."
She whispered to the breeze, "So it begins. And House Valshura still watches blindly."
Behind her, a hawk-shaped drone vanished into the skies, heading back toward the Zyreon archives.