The scent of iron clung to the air like an accusation.
Kaelen crouched beside the fallen dueling circle, his palm still stained with dried blood from the training session that had ended in chaos. Not his blood—someone else's. Another noble too eager to prove something, another warning sign that things were escalating. His glyph, pulsing faintly under the bandage Mira had insisted on wrapping, had acted on instinct again.
It shouldn't have.
He hadn't cast anything consciously. No shaping, no intent. Yet when the sigil flared, it had lashed out—fast enough to crack shields and burn through wards.
Something was shifting.
His magic was no longer just a tool. It was... responding.
Or worse—anticipating.
Selene stood quietly behind him, arms crossed, her gaze on the broken wards etched into the marble floor. "They're calling it self-defense. Again."
Kaelen didn't respond right away. His thoughts were a knot. The past few days had been like walking blindfolded across a collapsing bridge—scouts on the outer edges of the Academy grounds, masked Tower envoys in the lecture halls, glyph resonance monitors increasing their sweeps without warning.
And Seraphine's silence.
She hadn't spoken to him since the duel. Not since she'd seen what his magic could do when it slipped. Not since her own sigil flickered in response, mirroring his for just a breath.
As if the glyphs knew each other.
Selene's voice pulled him back. "You can't keep covering it up, Kaelen. They've noticed."
He met her gaze, tired but sharper than before. "Let them notice."
She blinked. "That's... not like you."
He stood slowly, shaking off the stiffness in his limbs. "Maybe I'm tired of hiding."
"You're sounding like her," Selene said quietly.
"Seraphine?"
"No." Her tone shifted. "Like yourself. Before you started second-guessing everything."
There was a silence between them, one not quite awkward, but full of things unsaid. Selene stepped closer, her hand brushing against his as they walked through the training yard—where lingering students still stared or quickly turned away.
"Whatever this is," she said, low enough that only he could hear, "it's bigger than the Tower. Than this Academy. We both know that now."
Kaelen nodded once, distracted. His glyph was still tingling beneath the bandage.
Later that night, in the archives beneath the eastern wing, Seraphine stood alone.
Rows of forbidden scrolls lined the shadowed alcoves, sealed in brass cages that only Circle-ranked scholars could open. But her hand hovered over a scroll whose edge glowed faintly—the same light Kaelen's glyph had sparked during the duel.
She hadn't told anyone. Not yet.
She should.
Instead, she slid the scroll free, the seal resisting her touch until her glyph pulsed in answer. Just a flicker. A shared hum.
It opened for her.
The script inside was older than anything she'd studied in the capital. Not just old—archaic. From the Age of Glyph-Keepers. Before the Tower had rewritten the rules.
Veritas lineage glyphs must not resonate with the living or the bound.
Unless... reborn.
She stared at the line, reading it again and again. Reborn. Bound. Living glyphs.
Was that what Kaelen was?
Was that what she was becoming?
A whisper of cloth made her look up—and Mira stood at the far edge of the stacks.
"You shouldn't be down here alone," Mira said, folding her arms. Her tone wasn't angry. It was... wary.
"You followed me."
"I've been watching both of you since the duel. The Tower's records are waking. Someone needs to make sure we don't get lost in them."
Seraphine lowered the scroll. "You think I'm being reckless."
"I think you're remembering things you were never taught," Mira said. "And that scares them."
Seraphine looked back down at the glyph in the scroll. Its pattern was strangely familiar now. Not just because of Kaelen. Because of dreams she'd had before ever meeting him.
Before her glyph had awakened at all.
"What would you do," Seraphine asked, her voice quiet, "if you realized the Tower's rules were based on lies?"
Mira didn't answer immediately.
"I'd burn them," she said at last, "but only after I found the truth they were hiding."
Kaelen couldn't sleep.
The glyph had stopped hurting, but it itched. Not like a wound—like a puzzle unfinished. He stared at the ceiling, the pale light of the moon casting lattice shadows through the high windows.
Selene was in the next room. She'd stayed close all week, making herself seem like his shadow—until she wasn't.
It was her presence that steadied him. It was Seraphine's absence that haunted him.
He rose, moving through the dorm quietly. The dormitory floor was silent at this hour, the wards dimmed and echo-sensitive glyphs long since deactivated. He reached the observatory courtyard without seeing another soul.
And found Seraphine waiting there, sitting on the edge of the ancient fountain where his glyph had first reacted to hers weeks ago.
"You're awake," she said, not surprised.
"So are you."
Seraphine tilted her head, eyes catching the moonlight. "I went looking for answers."
Kaelen walked to her slowly. "Did you find any?"
"Only more questions."
There was a pause.
He sat beside her, knees nearly brushing.
"I keep thinking," she said quietly, "that maybe this was all inevitable. That the glyphs didn't choose us randomly."
Kaelen turned toward her. "You sound like someone who remembers more than she says."
Her lips curved faintly. "Maybe I'm starting to."
He studied her. "You've been avoiding me."
"I didn't know what I'd say," she admitted.
"You said it just now."
She glanced down at his hand, where the bandage had come loose. His skin still glowed faintly with Veritas lines, as if the glyph was inked beneath the flesh.
Seraphine reached for it. Slowly. Not in fear—but reverence.
Their fingers touched.
And the glyphs reacted.
A pulse. A flicker. A resonance that danced across the old runes carved into the fountain stones.
Her breath caught.
"I saw this in a vision," she whispered. "You and I. Here."
Kaelen's throat tightened. "Was I... different?"
"No," she said. "But I think we were bound. Before."
"Bound?"
"In another life. Another glyph." She looked up, eyes filled with something deeper than memory. "Do you feel it too?"
"I've felt it since I met you."
The silence between them grew heavy, but not with awkwardness. With meaning.
And Seraphine leaned in—not rushed, not bold. Just close enough that her forehead touched his.
Not quite a kiss.
But everything that could come after.
In the shadows above, high atop the observation ward's highest spire, a scribe watched through a glyph-sealed lens.
His sigil did not glow. It drank light instead.
He closed his notebook, stood slowly, and vanished into the mist with a whisper.
The report would be delivered by morning.
The anomaly had been located.
And the Tower would come.