The wound had not closed.
Three days had passed since Caelum's accidental surge at the Weave Scar, and though his body had recovered, the world around him had not. Birds no longer sang near their camp. Mana refused to settle in the trees. Even the wind whispered with restraint, as though the forest itself feared him.
Serapha didn't speak of it. Not directly.
She drilled him harder than before. Combat routines, reaction exercises, even meditation under forced duress. But her gaze had changed—like she was measuring him not just as a student, but as a factor in a future she hadn't yet decided on.
And Caelum… Caelum had begun to dream.
The sigil from the Scar appeared behind his eyes whenever he blinked. Sometimes, he saw it etched in the moonlight. Other times, it burned into the faces of strangers in his memory.
A circle split by a vertical line.
He hadn't dared ask her about it yet. He wasn't sure he wanted the answer.
On the fourth morning, Serapha gave him a new order.
"We're leaving."
Caelum blinked. "Where?"
"To Lareth," she said, packing swiftly. "The Archive of Winds."
"That's where the seers are, right?"
"And records," she replied. "We'll find a place to hide you in plain sight. You'll be a research scribe, under me. They won't question it."
He frowned. "Why hide me?"
She paused. "Because you tore a hole in the Weave, Caelum. The Arcanum is beginning to look closer. They'll send a Seeker soon—someone who won't ask if you're stable. Just whether you're necessary."
He swallowed. "And if I'm not?"
"They erase problems."
Caelum sat still for a moment, knuckles white on his pack. Then: "Why are you helping me?"
It was the first time he had asked.
Serapha didn't answer right away.
Instead, her voice came low, distant. "I once watched a boy your age be hunted for what he could become. He didn't even get the chance to choose. The Arcanum called it preemptive safeguarding. I called it cowardice."
Caelum looked up at her. "Did he survive?"
She turned away. "No."
They left the forest behind before nightfall.
Their path took them east, into the highlands where the terrain grew jagged, dotted with memory stones—ancient standing pillars etched with sigils too old to interpret.
The air was thinner here, and colder. Vein mana shimmered more faintly, barely visible at night. Serapha said the ley threads were weaker this far from the great conduits.
Caelum noticed something else.
His senses had begun to change.
He couldn't feel mana, not like Serapha described it. But he could sense interruptions—places where it failed to flow properly. Hollow spaces, like weak bricks in a wall. He began to notice cracks in the world, fractures invisible to everyone else.
On the third night of their journey, they camped near an abandoned shrine.
Serapha sat by the fire, her coat draped over her shoulders. Caelum watched her from across the flames, hesitant, then asked:
"That boy you mentioned. The one hunted. Was he a Nullform too?"
Her eyes didn't leave the fire. "Yes."
He waited. Silence.
And then, slowly—too softly to be performance—Serapha began to speak.
Years Ago — Dominion Borderlands
He had been calm. That was what haunted her most.
The last Nullform she met had known what he was. And what they would do to him. And still he had walked into the clearing with bare hands, eyes steady, lips forming the sigil of silence.
Serapha had been young. Idealistic. A newly minted Seeker tasked with recording the encounter.
They were meant to capture him. Instead, they chased him into a Weave Scar. A live one. The scar swallowed three of her unit whole—erased them not just physically, but from memory. She couldn't recall their names even now.
The Nullform had not struck a single blow.
He had simply unwritten the field around him.
At the end, as the scar widened and the air cracked, he turned to her and said, "We're not weapons. We're what comes after them."
Then he vanished into the fracture. Not dead. Not defeated.
Gone.
Present
Serapha's voice drifted to stillness.
Caelum said nothing for a while.
"Is that why you took me on?" he asked at last. "To save a ghost?"
Serapha looked up at him. "No. I took you on because I saw a choice in your eyes. You didn't flinch when you failed. You wanted to understand, not just obey."
She stood. "That's more dangerous to the Arcanum than Nullform will ever be."
They reached the outskirts of Lareth two days later.
The Archive of Winds shimmered on the cliffs like glass grown from the earth itself. Pale towers spiraled upward like twisting horns, each carved with aerial runes that kept the city afloat—barely. Clouds danced between buildings. The air was sharp with scentless ozone.
Caelum had never seen a city like it.
They passed through shimmering wards that scanned for external mana fluctuations. Caelum held his breath, but Serapha had cloaked him with a dulling glyph—one she didn't explain.
Inside, the city pulsed with quiet magic. Memory scrolls floated from tower to tower. Scribes murmured wind-sung verses to each other, speaking through voice-cast echoes. There were no carriages. Only glide-discs and sigil stairs.
And everywhere: seers. Blindfolded. Marked with feathered veils. Watching the unseen.
They were given a room in the under-level of the central archive tower, where Serapha registered herself as a Roving Examiner of Weave Law. Caelum posed as her mute assistant. The lie was thin, but not questioned.
That night, Caelum lay awake beneath the soft hum of floating memory lanterns.
The sigil still pulsed behind his eyes. But now it was joined by another echo:
The image of the scarred man from Serapha's memory, his voice ringing through the void.
"We're not weapons. We're what comes after them."
Caelum didn't know what that meant.
But something inside him whispered that he would find out.
And when he did, the world would no longer ignore him.