The enchanted galaxy outside filtered weakly through the violet-tinted windows of his room, painting soft patterns across the stone floors.

Thorne woke feeling oddly rested, for once. His mind clear, his body loose. He moved quickly, almost automatically, grabbing the sleek leather bag he'd bought from Vellin, checking his textbooks, his ink, his quills. Everything where it should be.

His wand he slid into the holster at his hip and then came the harder part.

The daggers.

Four black-handled, curved blades, compact and lethal.

He hesitated only a moment before strapping them on.

One behind his back. Two hidden at his forearms under the sleeves. One tucked neatly into his boot.

He had tried to leave the weapons behind. He had truly tried. But without them... he felt naked. Vulnerable. Like a tether had been cut.

So he armed himself, and when he was ready, he slung the leather bag over one shoulder and headed out.

The Umbra common room was alive with activity. Students bustled in every direction. Some finishing a hurried bite of bread or pie as they dashed for their morning classes, others arguing over parchment maps or spell diagrams, robes fluttering as they moved.

Thorne spotted Lucian almost immediately, standing by one of the massive pillars near the exit. He looked composed but there was a tightness to his mouth, a guarded tension that hadn't been there before.

No doubt still turning over yesterday's incident with the illumination spell.

"Morning," Thorne said as he joined him.

Lucian just gave a short nod. His sharp grey eyes drifted over Thorne's polished uniform and, maybe, the faintest ghost of approval flickered across his face.

"Waiting for Isadora?" Thorne asked.

Before Lucian could answer, a commotion near the stairwell caught their attention. Isadora appeared, her long hair a shining fall down her back, her sky blue uniform immaculate, but her expression was one of pure, miserable suffering.

She blinked at the soft light of the Umbra common room like it was personally attacking her.

"Late night?" Lucian said dryly as she staggered toward them.

Isadora waved a dismissive hand. "Some fourth-years invited me to a 'back to classes' party. It got... out of hand."

"You look ready to fight a duel and attend a funeral," Thorne commented, eyeing her flawless outfit with amusement.

"Appearances must be maintained," she said grandly then nearly tripped over her own feet.

Lucian snorted.

They walked out of the Umbra common room and into the Sigilwheel chamber. Students with their blue uniforms and armed with textbooks, wands and staffs were everywhere.

They exited together into the cool, brisk courtyard. Around them, the castle's ancient towers gleamed under the early sun.

Near one of the side paths, Elias stood hopping from foot to foot, muttering to himself as he scanned the crowd. His short frame and youthful features made him look even younger inside the crisp Aetherhold uniform.

When he spotted them, he dashed over, relief painted across his face.

"I thought I was gonna be late again!" he panted. "Skipped breakfast for this. I might die."

"You'll survive," Thorne said without sympathy.

"Maybe," Elias muttered darkly. "If I don't pass out halfway up that tower."

They moved together through the sprawling expanse of the castle grounds, the brisk morning air sharpening their senses. Above them, the sky gleamed in soft hues of violet, gold and pink, the sun barely cresting over the endless shimmer of Evermist's fog banks.

The courtyard bustled with students, but their path was clear, toward the farthest reaches of Aetherhold, where the Sigilcraft Tower spiraled up into the clouds like a shard of crystallized logic and ancient power.

As they walked, Elias was practically vibrating with nervous energy, his words tripping over themselves. "I think might faint from hunger, going to etch a sigil onto the floor by accident," he muttered.

Thorne gave him a sidelong look, amused despite himself. "You survived polishing your staff," he said dryly. "You'll survive a missed meal."

Lucian snorted under his breath, but otherwise stayed quiet, his sharp gaze roving across the castle like he was cataloging potential threats.

Isadora, on the other hand, wore her exhaustion like a crown, tilted, lazy, but still somehow regal. Her steps were unhurried, almost gliding despite the occasional wince when the sunlight caught her eyes.

"You know," she said with a half-smile, "you could all learn something from me. If you don't acknowledge you have a headache, it doesn't exist."

"Is that how it works?" Elias asked, scandalized.

"Absolutely," Isadora replied, brushing invisible dust from her pristine jacket. "Mind over misery."

Around them, students hurried to their own destinations, some laughing, some yawning, some already cramming last-minute notes.

Thorne, walking a half-step behind the others, adjusted the strap on his bag and let himself enjoy the moment.

The four of them crossed the stone courtyard toward the Sigilcraft Tower. The tower gleamed high above them, a spire of translucent crystal, catching the morning light in strange patterns, like someone had carved it straight out of the sky.

A crowd had already gathered outside its base. Among them, Thorne spotted familiar faces. Rowenna standing stiffly with arms crossed, Vivienne leaning close to whisper something, and Garridan, with his ash-blond hair and slight build, watching the tower with his usual stoic disinterest.

Lucian frowned. "Why is everyone just standing here?"

Garridan glanced over at them and answered with a shrug, "Waiting."

Before he could elaborate, it happened.

The tower, the whole towering structure simply blinked out of existence. No sound. No flash. Just... gone.

The entire crowd gasped and shuffled back a few steps.

"For that," Vivienne said, breathless, "we have the rumors."

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and continued in a whisper loud enough for half the crowd to hear, "They say... if someone's inside when it vanishes... they don't come back. Or they end up trapped somewhere else."

Murmurs erupted around them, excited, nervous, awed. Thorne crossed his arms, studying the empty air where the tower had once stood. His eyes narrowed. There was something unsettling about the way the magic had folded in on itself, like a book snapping shut on invisible words.

Minutes passed.

Just as the crowd began to fidget, the tower reappeared with a pop, almost anticlimactic, except for the fact that it looked... slightly different.

The topmost spire was twisted at a new angle. The staircase along the side now curved to the opposite direction.

Thorne didn't like it.

It felt alive, somehow, like the building was shifting in and out of places it shouldn't belong.

Nobody moved.

The first-years stared at each other, silent and reluctant. Until, from across the courtyard, an older student cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, "You're not gonna be transported to the pits of hell! Get moving, cowards!"

A ripple of embarrassed laughter broke the tension.

One by one, the first-years began filing toward the reappeared tower.

At the base, a wide crystal staircase awaited them, but not an ordinary one. Each step shimmered like molten glass. And as Thorne placed a foot on it, he realized he could see straight through all the way down to the courtyard far, far below.

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The climb began. A never-ending spiral of stairs, winding up and up through hollow chambers of soft green light. Thorne caught glimpses of runes floating in the air, windows that showed not just the landscape but places he didn't recognize. Distant oceans, jungles, and even, for a breathless moment, stars.

Isadora huffed as they climbed. She glanced upward and smirked.

"I wonder," she said casually, voice carrying, "what would happen if someone wore a dress today."

Thorne followed her gaze. The students above were clearly visible through the translucent stairs, unaware or perhaps pretending not to notice the curious looks from below.

"Charming," Rowenna muttered, face flushing faintly.

Lucian said nothing, grimacing as if he regretted every life choice that led him to this staircase.

Finally, mercifully, they reached the top.

A set of double doors swung inward at their approach, and the first-years spilled into a vast, circular classroom, with smooth floors of polished crystal and walls inlaid with shimmering, moving sigils.

Rows of desks formed concentric rings, all facing an empty platform at the center.

Thorne slid into a seat beside Elias and Isadora. He dropped his leather bag onto the floor with a dull thud, exhaling slowly. Around him, students whispered and speculated about the tower, the magic, the strange glimpses through the windows.

But Thorne said nothing.

He simply sat there, staring at the shifting symbols on the walls, symbols that, somehow, seemed to pulse faintly in time with the beat of his heart.

The classroom buzzed with conversation. The first-years were talking loudly, shifting in their seats, pointing at the moving sigils engraved along the walls. A few students had already pulled out parchment and sketching quills, trying to copy the patterns.

Thorne leaned back in his chair as Elias nudged him, grumbling under his breath.

"I swear," the elf muttered, "if there isn't food during the break, I'm sneaking out to the Astral Hall."

Thorne gave a soft grunt of amusement, absently spinning his quill between his fingers.

"You think they'll let you leave?"

Elias shot him a conspiratorial grin. "What they don't see won't hurt them."

Thorne smirked, but then noticed something, the voices were tapering off around them, like a ripple passing through a still pond.

It took him a second longer than the others to realize why.

The professor had arrived.

He turned his head, expecting to see some frazzled scholar or absent-minded spellcrafter. Instead...

He froze.

For a heartbeat, he forgot how to breathe.

Her.

The woman who had once stood in his way in Valewind, unassuming yet unmovable.

The one who had seen too much.

Who had recognized the pendant nestled even beneath his clothes.

She was exactly as he remembered.

Short and slight, but somehow she carried herself like a towering force. Her grey hair was spiked and untamed, as if she had just walked through a thunderstorm. Her refined face was framed by sharp lines of tension and grace, her expression unreadable. And her eyes, those brilliant, searing green eyes swept the room, pinning students in place with the weight of silent judgment.

And when they found him...

Thorne felt the air around him sharpen, as if invisible threads had suddenly pulled taut. There was no surprise in her gaze. No recognition she tried to hide.

Just a calm, razor-edged certainty. As if she'd been expecting him.

He turned rigid in his seat, every instinct screaming at him to move, to shield himself, to hide.

But it was too late.

Their gazes held.

For a single heartbeat, it was just the two of them and he knew she remembered.

Her lips quirked, barely, a ghost of a smile, not mocking, not kind. Simply... acknowledging.

And then, just like that, she turned away, striding toward the center dais without another glance.

The room breathed again.

Elias nudged him in the ribs. "Thorne? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Thorne tore his eyes away, forcing himself to relax. "Something like that," he muttered, voice dry.

He didn't miss how Rowenna, sitting nearby, cast him a curious sideways glance.

As the woman reached the center platform, she tapped a small silver rod, a wand or perhaps some other focus, against the polished stone floor.

The sigils along the walls flared softly, as if greeting her.

No words.

No grand announcement. Just a flicker of raw, controlled power that made the very air seem to thrum with anticipation.

Thorne leaned back slightly, fingers curling around the edge of his desk.

This was going to be interesting.

The woman finally turned to face the class, her silver rod resting lightly against her shoulder.

"I am Professor Marian Valeus," she said, her voice cool but resonant, somehow cutting through the soft glow of the floating sigils with ease. "And welcome to Sigilcraft and Ancient Spell Forms."

She paced slowly across the platform, her boots making no sound against the polished stone. Around her, the walls shimmered. The embedded sigils stirring as if they had been waiting for her command.

"Some of you," she continued, "have been told that spellcasting is nothing more than instinct. That it is enough to channel aether through a focus, to recite a phrase, and to expect magic to answer."

She paused, allowing the weight of her words to settle.

"You were lied to."

A ripple of unease ran through the first-years. Quills stilled. Eyes widened.

Marian raised her rod and with a simple, lazy gesture, sigils bloomed into the air around her, one after another after another, spiraling upward in radiant strands of light.

"A spell is not instinct," she said, voice low, hypnotic. "It is language. Structure. Precision."

The spiraling sigils expanded, filling the round classroom. Some hovered inches from the glass walls, others floated close enough that Thorne could have reached out and brushed his fingers through their shimmering lines.

He didn't move.

He watched. He listened.

"Each sigil you see here," Marian said, "was once part of a vast language, the Language of Making, forged by the first people when gods still roamed this world."

Her rod swept outward. The sigils responded, shifting, linking, bleeding into each other like molten gold until they formed endless, flowing patterns.

"In this language, every mark carries meaning. Every curve, every angle, every point speaks to the world, commands it to change."

Her voice dropped to a near-whisper.

"To cast a spell... is to speak a sentence in a tongue no longer understood."

For a moment, Thorne was no longer sitting in a tower above Evermist. He was standing on the edge of some ancient place, where light bled from stones and the air hummed with forgotten songs.

He blinked, forcing himself back to the present.

Around him, students were scribbling notes furiously. Rowenna hunched over her parchment with almost religious devotion. Elias, to Thorne's amusement, looked halfway to panicking, his quill darting frantically.

But Thorne...

He simply watched her.

Watched Marian Valeus, who moved through the luminous sigils as if she was part of them, a ghost walking a forgotten path.

"You must understand," she continued, "that when you study sigils, you are not learning new magic. You are unearthing the memory of magic."

The sigils began to shift faster now, rearranging into patterns too complex to follow.

"Each spell you learn is a single whisper plucked from a once-living symphony."

She stopped before them again, her rod tapping the ground once more.

"The spells we cast today," she said, "are but shadows of what once was. Broken fragments. We teach you the finest remnants, the safest pieces."

A pause.

"But there are others, forgotten, forbidden. Sigils of ruin, of life and death intertwined. The old wars were fought with such knowledge... and much of it was lost, sealed, or buried for good reason."

Marian let that hang in the air for a moment longer.

Thorne sat absolutely still, the back of his neck prickling.

Lost sigils. Forbidden words. Fractured songs.

All pieces of a puzzle he hadn't even realized he was looking for.

Marian finally moved again, sweeping her rod in an elegant arc.

Around them, the swirling sigils slowed, settling into neat rows that hovered quietly above their desks, ready to be studied.

"Today," she said, "you will begin to learn the foundations. The alphabet of the old world."

Her brilliant green eyes caught Thorne's once more and held.

"For knowledge," she said softly, "is the oldest magic of all."

The rest of the lesson passed in a blur.

Thorne tried; he truly tried to focus. He jotted down fragments of ancient sigils, half-drawn glyphs curling clumsily across his parchment. He listened as Marian's voice wove meanings into the twisting shapes, threading forgotten histories into the bright air around them.

But his thoughts kept drifting.

Back to Valewind. Back to the lavish party.

Back to the woman who had looked at him, not with fear, not with suspicion, but with recognition.

The same woman now paced at the front of the class, her every movement stirring something restless in him. When he'd told her the pendant around his neck came from his mother, her reaction hadn't been anger. It hadn't even been curiosity.

It had been sorrow.

And certainty.

Who was she?

Why was she here, at Aetherhold?

A sudden hiss jolted him awake, the sound of parchment being tucked away, of spellbooks snapping shut. Around him, students stretched and laughed and began packing up their things, the gleam of excitement still fresh in their eyes.

Thorne blinked, dragging himself back to the present. He gathered his notes mechanically, stuffing them into his bag with a stiffness he couldn't shake.

He joined the others, Rowenna, Elias, Lucien, as they trickled toward the exit, voices chattering brightly about the floating sigils, about ancient wars, about how cool it all was.

He didn't participate. He felt unbalanced. Like the ground beneath his feet had shifted half a pace sideways, and he was the only one who noticed. He didn't look back. He didn't dare.

He was a step behind the others, lost in his thoughts, when...

A soft pressure brushed against him.

Not physical. Magical.

A whisper against his skin, a gentle, insistent pull as if the very air was holding him back.

He frowned, instinctively reaching out with his senses.

And then, before his open eyes, lines of pure aether stitched themselves into existence. Fine threads, visible only because of his aether vision. Invisible to everyone else.

The threads wove themselves into words. Simple. Direct. Breathless.

COME AT SUNDOWN.

Thorne's heart hammered against his ribs.

The letters shimmered once and then dissolved into nothingness.

He whipped his head left, then right. The others noticed nothing. No one even glanced back.

Only he had seen it.

Only someone like him could have seen it.

He tightened his grip on his bag and moved forward, forcing himself to blend with the flow of students pouring toward their next class.

He didn't look back.

Didn't risk a glance at the woman still standing at the front of the room, watching.

But inside him, the unease coiled tighter.

And deep down, he knew:

Today was going to change everything.

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