The courtyard beyond the market was drenched in thin light.
Clouds gathered low above the Academy's spires, their edges bruised with silver and ash. The breeze carried the scent of iron and wet stone — and underneath it, something faintly scorched.
Kael walked without aim, his boots echoing softly against the marble tiles.
Every breath felt heavy, the world pressing against him in invisible waves. The flicker from earlier — that pulse of light, that tremor — it hadn't been the lights. It had been him. Again.
He stopped near one of the fountain squares, water glimmering faintly in its basin.
When he reached out, the surface rippled before his hand even touched it — spiraling outward like something beneath had exhaled.
For a moment, he saw it — his reflection staring back at him, overlaid with faint ember lines crawling up his skin, marking him in the shape of a sigil he'd never learned but somehow remembered.
He jerked his hand back, and the water stilled.
"Kael."
He turned.
Rynna stood a few steps behind him, hair swept by the wind, her eyes wide with worry.
"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
"You shouldn't be alone either," she replied.
He didn't answer. The silence between them stretched thin, humming faintly like the air before lightning.
Rynna took a slow step closer. "It happened again, didn't it?"
Kael's eyes flickered toward the fountain. "I don't know what it is anymore."
"The Codex," she whispered. "You said it's a warning."
Kael looked up at the clouds. "When the laws were written, they weren't meant to protect mortals from gods. They were meant to protect the gods from what came after."
Her breath caught. "After?"
Before he could answer, a sudden crack split the sky.
Thunder rolled so close it rattled the courtyard stones. A surge of wind tore through the trees — carrying heat, not cold.
From somewhere deep beneath the ground, a low hum began — the same one they'd heard in the Spire. But this time, it didn't fade. It grew.
Rynna stepped back. "Kael—"
Flame burst around him — not wild, not destructive — but shaped. Controlled. It coiled along his shoulders like wings made of living fire, their edges wavering between brilliance and ruin.
His eyes burned gold.
For an instant, she saw something else through them — an ancient shadow behind his gaze, vast and furious, pressing to be remembered.
Then, just as suddenly as it came, the fire recoiled, leaving nothing but smoke and trembling air.
Kael fell to one knee, gasping. The stone beneath him hissed faintly where his palm touched it.
Rynna rushed to him, her voice shaking. "Kael—what are you?"
He looked up at her, eyes dimming back to human shade.
"I don't know anymore."
Elsewhere, in the upper corridor overlooking the courtyard, Liran and Eren had seen everything through the glass.
"What the hell was that?" Eren whispered.
Liran's jaw tightened. "That… wasn't normal."
"You think?"
Liran turned away, his mind racing. "We need to find out what's happening here. Before someone else does."
They disappeared down the corridor, but the echo of what they'd seen followed them — the image of Kael surrounded by fire that didn't burn.
That night, the thunder didn't stop.
The storm circled the Academy like something alive, tracing the edges of old wards and sigils etched into its foundations.
And far below — deep within the sealed chambers of the Archon Codex — the old symbols began to glow again, one by one.
The flame had awakened.
And with it, the world began to remember.