The night in Selun'Thael wore a crown of veiled stars, each cloaked by ancient runic nets cast by skyward arrays. A protective shell of light—woven from mathematical sequences passed down by House Zyreon—kept the city afloat among the clouds like a sanctified whisper among giants. The moon, fragmentary and quiet, hung beyond the arc-glass domes in pieces, as if time itself had forgotten how to complete it.
On the eastern edge of the Celestial Academy, Nocth stood barefoot at the tip of a spiraling platform of jade stone. The sky shimmered above him—half real, half dream.
His eyes, dark as unspilled ink, stared ahead but did not see.
He listened.
He had come here nightly, drawn not by discipline, nor tradition, but something much more ancient: a beckoning.
And tonight… it called louder than ever before.
The wind no longer sounded like wind.
It throbbed.
A deep, low pulse. Not of his blood, but deeper than blood—like a heartbeat beneath the skin of the world.
He closed his eyes.
And he felt it.
It did not awaken him. It observed. It remembered.
"Your veins do not awaken. They listen."
The voice wasn't heard—it unfolded inside his chest, spoken from a place that didn't belong to this universe. It echoed with calm finality.
Nocth turned.
No one stood behind him. But his shadow had lengthened.
As if something stood where nothing was.
He stared at his own hands.
The veins glowed faintly—far fainter than those of any trained youth at the academy.
They shouldn't hum. They shouldn't flicker.
But they did.
And not in response to him.
They responded to something else. Something… beneath.
He dropped to his knees, hands pressing against the stone platform as another whisper surged—not from outside, but inside.
A voice layered in thousands of unspoken tongues, echoing through dimensions he had no name for.
---
Elsewhere, high in the darkwood towers of House Elkaruun, Lady Eysentha knelt before a great bowl of distilled soul-oil. Her spirit-veins wrapped around her arms like serpents, pulsing with faint spiritual runes. The oil rippled.
Then it froze.
The entire pool turned black.
> "Dreaming resonance," she whispered. Her eyes widened. "But not unlocked… no, it breathes still."
> "Inside a child who has no past. No father. No seed."
She stood, knocking the bowl over in horror as blue flame erupted from the floor beneath her feet. House Elkaruun had long hunted dream-affinity bearers. But this… this child's pulse threatened the foundation of even their soul-binders.
---
Elsewhere, in the Temple of Inheritance nestled within the garden-palace of House Vaelserine, the heiress stood before a mural of her mother.
The woman in the painting had eyes like moonstones and a faint silver glow to her braid. She had once governed three celestial provinces with a grace that bordered on reverence.
She died during the Vaelserine Civil Dissolution, a conflict so bitter it was erased from public record. Her daughter—still young—had been spirited away under veils of memory manipulation.
But now, Lady Vaelserine had remembered too much.
And in that moment, as she reached to touch her mother's mural, her AuraCrown surged.
A vision cracked open behind her forehead:
A boy, barefoot, standing at the edge of a shattered dreamscape. His arms bled not blood, but threads of light stitched with ink. Around him, the world disintegrated—yet he remained.
Untouched.
Defiant.
> "Who are you?" she whispered aloud.
> "Why does the Vein Crown show me... him?"
A slow tear slipped down her cheek. Her mother had once said: "The greatest powers will not be born. They will be remembered."
---
Back in Selun'Thael, Nocth's world dissolved into silence.
Inside his mindscape, a cavern opened.
Not of stone.
Not of stars.
But concept.
A realm before thought, before the Celestial Kingdom even dreamed itself into being.
Here, he saw veins—endless, stretching like rivers through time. They pulsed not with fire, not with lightning—but with paradox.
> A Vein of Unreality.
A Vein of Absence.
A Vein of Dreams that refused to become laws.
And in the center of it all:
A child, just like him, staring at his own reflection.
Except the reflection did not mirror him.
It spoke.
"You were never meant to be written."
"You were the breath the world held back."
"You are the Unwritten One."
Nocth screamed.
The sound didn't echo in air.
It echoed in bloodlines. Across the city, noble families felt an instant of pressure—just enough to still a breath, stall a rune, interrupt a meditation.
And in the depths of the city—
A man vanished.
A bloodline agent of House Morhanthe.
No trace.
No sound.
Not even soul residue.
Just… gone.
High above, within House Zyreon's spire-halls, an alarm rune blinked red—a rarity.
Arch-Seer Veylt frowned. "A soul was erased—not killed. The difference is vast."
Behind him, diagrams of the Ten Thousand Veins began to flicker.
One line blinked faintly.
Nocth collapsed onto the platform.
His breath returned in waves, but the visions did not fade. His veins still glowed, lines etched not by nature, but by something forgotten.
Above, the stars realigned, subtly.
And far below the city, in chambers long sealed, ancient black runes blinked alive—ones that had not been seen since the founding of the Celestial Kingdom.