The report arrived before dawn.
Delivered by a silver-feathered crow bearing the Tower's brand on its neck—burnt rather than inked. The wardmaster who received it didn't read it right away. He didn't need to. He felt the shift ripple through the glyph-weave of the Academy the moment the seal was broken.
Veritas magic. Echo-tier resonance.
The Tower's enemy has awakened.
Not fully. Not yet.
But enough to warrant action.
Enough for them to stop watching from the shadows.
Kaelen didn't notice the ripple. Not then.
He was still standing in the moonlight with Seraphine when the glyphs between them finally dimmed.
Neither had spoken in several minutes, and neither needed to. Something had been acknowledged—something real, old, and impossible to deny.
Seraphine finally stepped back, her expression unreadable. "This doesn't make us safe."
Kaelen nodded. "No."
"But it does make us stronger."
Their hands lingered for just a breath too long before parting.
She left him there, without a backward glance.
It was safer that way.
When morning broke, the Academy felt… heavier.
Kaelen noticed it first in the stares. Eyes lingered longer than usual. Students who'd once nodded now looked away. Professors marked their attendance glyphs without speaking.
Selene met him near the training yard, already armed, already tense.
"They're closing down the East Wing," she said without preamble. "Archives are being cordoned off."
Kaelen frowned. "That's Seraphine's wing."
Selene nodded once. "And yours."
The implication settled like lead in his gut.
"What happened?"
"I think someone saw you two last night."
Kaelen exhaled sharply. "The glyphs flared again."
"They felt it across half the Academy." Selene looked around before stepping closer. "Kaelen, it's not just about you anymore. They're watching Seraphine too. And Mira's been gone since sunrise."
His heart skipped.
"Gone?"
"She left a sigil behind. Emergency contact glyph. That's it."
The tension coiled in his shoulders like a drawn bow. Mira wouldn't run. Not without cause.
Kaelen turned sharply. "We need to find Seraphine."
But they weren't the only ones hunting.
Across the inner halls of the Academy, the Tower's envoy moved without ceremony. Cloaked in regulation gray, eyes marked with burned-in sigils that shimmered when they passed students.
They were not subtle.
They didn't need to be.
Two of them entered the Hall of Binding. One paused before the sealed door that had not been opened in a decade.
He lifted his hand.
The glyph upon his palm pulsed—black, not gold—and the door melted away like wax.
The past was no longer sacred.
Seraphine sat alone in her study chamber, scrolls scattered around her, the light from her glyph dancing over the forgotten texts like fireflies caught between pages.
The word kept repeating itself in her mind.
Bound.
It echoed in her heartbeat, resonated in her breath.
Every moment with Kaelen brought it closer to clarity. Every flare of their glyphs peeled back another layer of memory that wasn't entirely hers… and yet was.
She hadn't told him everything.
Not about the dreams. Not about the whispers.
Not about the voice she sometimes heard in the quiet between glyph pulses. A voice that called her by a name she didn't recognize, and yet…
Felt like home.
She almost didn't hear the knock.
When it came again—three measured raps—her glyph flared instinctively. Defensive. Suspicious.
But the door opened anyway.
And Mira stepped through.
Her robes were torn, and one of her bracers was half-melted, as if she'd come through fire. Her eyes were wide, unblinking.
Seraphine rushed to her. "What happened?"
Mira didn't answer right away. She reached into her coat and pulled something out—wrapped in cloth, soaked through.
When she unwrapped it, Seraphine stared.
A Veritas medallion.
It should have been impossible.
Only four were known to exist. All accounted for. All relics of the Glyph-Binder's Rebellion.
And yet here it was.
Still warm.
Still humming.
Mira's voice was raw. "They killed Professor Sarn. Burned the sigil out of his spine. He tried to hide it. Tried to protect something."
Seraphine's throat went dry. "What is this?"
"He said it belonged to the true bloodline. Said if it glowed near you, the Tower would burn."
The medallion began to glow.
Not just faintly.
Blindingly.
Mira took a step back. "Seraphine…"
But Seraphine was already falling—memories flooding through her in a wave that burned white-hot behind her eyes.
She was someone else.
Not a student. Not Seraphine.
She stood on a battlefield of glowing stone, glyphs carved into the sky, screaming a name—
"Kaelen!"
And he was bleeding, glyphs carved into his chest, but still standing.
They had died together once.
They had died for something that had been erased.
The Tower wasn't built to protect magic.
It was built to contain it.
Seraphine woke with a gasp, hand clenched around the medallion.
Mira was still there, staring. "What did you see?"
She shook her head. "Not what. When."
Kaelen found them moments later, eyes wild, pulse racing.
He didn't wait to ask—his gaze locked on Seraphine's pale face, then the medallion in her hand.
His own glyph responded instantly.
The symbols mirrored each other.
Perfectly.
Selene arrived seconds after, breathless, sword drawn. "Tower envoys. On the move. They're heading toward the Binding Hall. Someone activated the Old Chain."
Mira swore. "If they reach the Heart Chamber—"
"They'll erase whatever's left of the truth," Kaelen finished.
He reached down.
Seraphine took his hand without hesitation.
The glyphs between them sparked like fire in the rain.
The group didn't go through the main halls.
Mira led them through the oldest parts of the Academy—winding tunnels no longer shown on maps, stairwells hidden behind glyph-paintings, doors that opened only to Veritas pulses.
Kaelen's mind was racing.
Everything felt like it was accelerating—Seraphine's visions, Mira's discovery, the medallion glowing like a star in her grip.
And behind all of it, the Tower watching.
Waiting.
At the edge of the final stair, Selene hesitated. "If we go down, there's no going back."
Kaelen turned. "I already passed that point the moment I awakened."
Seraphine stepped beside him. "We passed it together."
Selene looked between them, then down at her own glyph.
For a moment, it flickered—red, not gold.
Different.
Older.
She said nothing, but stepped through the threshold.
The chamber below was called the Heart for a reason.
At its center stood a crystal structure the size of a carriage, pulsing with a heartbeat that wasn't mechanical.
It was alive.
And inside it—barely visible through the glass-like surface—was a figure.
Not breathing. Not conscious.
But still glowing with Veritas sigils that mirrored Kaelen's and Seraphine's perfectly.
Mira whispered, "He's still alive."
Selene stepped forward. "Who is he?"
Kaelen stared at the frozen figure and spoke the name without knowing how he knew it.
"My father."