The following morning.
Outer City – Near the Old Canal.
Mist rolled across the canal like a blanket of half-spoken secrets. The sun had not yet risen, and the silence of the pre-dawn world was only broken by the drip of condensation from twisted pipes overhead.
Kairos moved quietly along the edge of the canal. His boots barely disturbed the dew-laden stones. In his hand, a fragment of old parchment—taken from a sealed compartment beneath the Academy ruins—tugged his thoughts toward an era long buried.
The markings on it weren't written in the common tongue. They pulsed when he touched them.
The scroll he signed—the pact—was only a beginning.
He knelt beside the dark water, peering into his reflection. His crimson hair shimmered under the faint light. In his eyes, now lined with a trace of silver, something older stirred.
A question.
A hunger.
---
Later that day.
He returned to the shelter with herbs gathered from the outskirts. Their mother nodded in approval and set to work brewing something to soothe his sister's lingering cough.
The home felt different now. Not in danger. But as though the world outside no longer held it in its grasp.
As if time slowed when they were within it.
He knew better.
This peace was temporary.
---
Same day – Late afternoon.
Academy Outskirts – Central Tower.
Selene stood before a sealed gate carved into the tower's base. The silver runes along its frame had faded long ago, but when she whispered the word etched on the tome from the archive, they blazed to life.
"Vel'raem."
A deep rumble followed. The stone shifted.
Beyond it lay a library untouched by dust or decay.
Scrolls floated in the air like they waited to be read. A crystalline sphere hovered at the center, projecting illusions of distant lands.
And at its heart—a map.
Marked on it were ancient zones labeled only in High Arcanic. One stood out.
The Cinderspire.
She touched the name. Fire rippled across her fingers. Not burning—but calling.
The same flame she saw in Kairos.
They were being drawn toward the same storm from different ends of the sky.
---
Evening – Back at the Shelter.
Kairos sat at the rooftop again, the city now lit by dying embers in the distance. Fires that hadn't gone out since the first Sinfall.
His sister sat beside him, chewing quietly on a strip of dried meat.
"Will things ever go back to normal?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away.
"No," he said softly. "But maybe… maybe they're not supposed to."
The wind carried with it the scent of ash.
And something else.
A whisper of coming war.