The path beneath their feet gradually transitioned from cracked stone to soft, dew-drenched earth. Morning light threaded through the trees, washing everything in a quiet gold. It should have felt like a return, like a homecoming—but for Verena, it felt like a new frontier. The Old Wing was behind them, broken and fading, its dreamstuff dispersing. Ahead lay the still world, uncertain and half-healed.

Verena's eyes scanned her companions.

Evelyn was walking ahead, just a few paces from Sera and Beatrice. She wasn't slouching anymore. Her steps had a tentative rhythm now, like someone learning to speak with her body instead of apologizing for its existence. Balance magic shimmered faintly along her fingertips—subtle, but deliberate. Verena noted the way Evelyn didn't flinch when branches brushed her shoulder. That was new.

Beatrice, in contrast, had grown quieter. She walked with her head lowered, gaze thoughtful, as if reading the cracks in the ground like a spell. She had been the first to recover from the Dreamgate's pull, but her insights had deepened, become less arrogant, more meditative. The world wasn't a script to her anymore. She was listening to it.

Sera was… still Sera. She trailed behind Evelyn like a protective shadow, hands in her pockets, shoulders cocked with defiance. But there was a softness in her posture now. Less bark. Her sword, slung across her back, didn't feel like a symbol of rebellion anymore—it felt like a promise. She no longer looked like she wanted to fight the world. She looked like she wanted to protect something real in it.

And then there was Clarina. Walking like a soldier, like a statue in motion—until she glanced at Verena. Their eyes met, and for a split second, Clarina gave the faintest nod. Not one of obedience or deference. It was understanding. Recognition. There was nothing forced between them anymore.

The silence between the five of them wasn't awkward—it was whole. They didn't need to say anything. They had survived something that hadn't wanted them to. They had emerged not as heroines, not as saviors, but as people.

Verena finally broke the quiet.

"We'll need to report back to Irasios. They'll want to know what's happened in the Old Wing. Especially about the Dreamgates."

Sera snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure the council will be thrilled to hear about how the narrative structure of reality tried to eat us alive."

Beatrice smiled faintly. "They won't believe us."

"They don't have to," Evelyn said quietly. "The changes are already happening. The Old Wing was trying to overwrite the world. But we stopped it."

Verena nodded. "For now."

They reached the ridge overlooking the academy town. Smoke from early bakeries coiled into the sky. Merchants were beginning to open stalls. People were already going about their lives as if nothing had happened.

"We've been gone for weeks," Beatrice murmured. "And yet everything looks the same."

"It always does," Verena replied. "That's the trap. The world keeps spinning even when it's broken. It doesn't pause to ask if the pieces still make sense."

Sera cracked her neck. "So what now? We just… go back to classes? Pretend we didn't crawl through a collapsing pocket of narrative entropy?"

Verena smiled at her tone. "Not pretend. But yes. We return. We learn. We prepare. There are more Dreamgates. More places the story is unraveling. And now we know how to face them."

"And if the story fights back harder next time?" Clarina asked, voice low.

Verena looked to her. "Then we won't fight alone."

They walked the rest of the way in silence, stepping back into the waking world as though exiting a long, fevered dream. But each of them carried something from that realm—marks not on the skin, but on the soul.

Evelyn walked taller.

Sera watched more carefully.

Beatrice chose her words more slowly.

Clarina allowed herself to feel, even just a little.

And Verena… Verena no longer feared the shape of the villain she might have been written to become.

Because now, for once, she wasn't following the script. She was writing it.

And her story was just beginning.

By the time they reached the outer gates of Irasios, the morning bells were tolling softly through the hills. The Academy's silhouette loomed as it always did—imposing, serene, and meticulously crafted—but something in its symmetry felt… brittle now. As if the world they had stepped back into no longer quite knew what to do with them.

The guards, familiar faces in ceremonial armor, waved them through with tired indifference. Not one of them noticed that these five girls had just returned from a realm where logic unraveled like thread, where their minds had nearly fractured under the weight of stories rewritten and roles reversed.

That was fine. Let them remain unaware.

Inside the grounds, students bustled. Some carried stacks of books, others sparred on the courtyard fields, laughter echoing in the crisp air. No one even paused to stare. Not at Evelyn, whose eyes now carried the soft glow of equilibrium magic at rest. Not at Beatrice, who had stopped mid-path to gently touch a weathered statue she used to ignore. Not even at Verena, whose familiar stride had gained something sharper—an invisible edge beneath her confident calm.

The world had forgotten them. But they had not forgotten the world.

"We'll regroup tonight," Verena said without looking back. "Library. East wing. The sealed annex."

Clarina gave a quiet nod, already peeling off toward the combat halls. Sera followed Evelyn toward the dorms, slouched and pretending she didn't care that Evelyn was walking ahead of her now instead of the other way around. Beatrice lingered just long enough to murmur, "Don't let them pull you back into the machinery."

Verena raised a brow. "You say that like I ever left."

Beatrice smiled, bittersweet and distant, then disappeared among the scholars.

Alone now, Verena walked toward the administrative spire. She kept her posture straight, her smile intact, as she passed professors and upper Conduitors, answering greetings with polite nods. But her mind was burning. The things they'd seen—the dream logic, the narrative anchors, the corrupted mirror gates—none of it could be written off as coincidence. Someone was reshaping the boundaries of the world. Someone who understood how stories worked.

And they were using the heroines to do it.

She reached her office. The familiar scent of old ink and lavender wafted in. Saphira, coiled lazily on her sunlit perch by the window, flicked her tongue once.

"You look like you haven't slept in days," she hissed.

"I haven't," Verena replied, removing her gloves. "But I brought them back."

Saphira gave a low, approving rumble. "And the damage?"

"Contained. For now. But the fabric is thin, Saphira. Thinner than it should be."

"Then it's beginning," the snake whispered.

Verena poured herself tea—something warm and bitter—and sat behind her desk. She opened a drawer and removed a file. It was sealed with red wax, marked only by the sigil of the thirteenth constellation.

She broke it.

Inside were records. One of Evelyn. One of Sera. One of Beatrice. Old assessments, behavioral charts, aptitude tests. Once, Verena had only seen them as students—pawns, possibly, in a larger board she hadn't yet understood.

But now?

Now they were becoming wild cards.

Not because they were powerful, but because they were awakening. The Dreamgates hadn't just tried to overwrite them—they'd cracked them open. And when something cracks, light gets in.

A knock interrupted her thoughts.

She glanced up. A younger student—pale, quiet, eyes like silver ink—stood at the threshold, holding a scroll.

"For Director Verena," the girl said softly. "From the Astral Department."

Verena took it, nodding dismissal.

The scroll bore unfamiliar symbols. Not standard runes, not astral glyphs—but a weaving of both. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat beneath parchment.

She opened it.

The message was simple, unsigned, and written in what could only be described as a paradoxical tense—past and future intertwined:

"One of your heroines is a false anchor. She does not belong. She never did. Remove her, or the world fractures."

Verena stared at the words.

False anchor.

The Dreamgates had been trying to rewrite the narrative. If one of the heroines wasn't meant to exist—if one of them was warping the story just by being in it—then everything they'd just survived might have been a prelude, not a climax.

And worse: if someone wanted to remove that "false anchor," it meant they weren't done yet.

Verena folded the scroll carefully, then burned it in a controlled flick of Balance fire.

She would say nothing—not yet. Not until she knew which of the girls the message referred to. Not until she could protect them properly.

Because one thing was certain now.

The story wasn't broken.

It was being edited.

And someone was planning to erase her cast, one heroine at a time.

Verena closed her eyes, steadying her breath. The message lingered in her mind like smoke: one of your heroines is a false anchor. It could be any of them—Evelyn, with her quiet resolve; Sera, stubborn and ablaze; Beatrice, calm but fraying at the edges. She couldn't afford to mistrust them, not now. Whoever sent that warning wanted doubt. Wanted hesitation. Verena wouldn't give it to them. She would watch, investigate, prepare—but she wouldn't let anyone be erased. If this world was being rewritten, then she'd become the editor. And gods help the fool who tried to write her girls out.

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