The sigil still burned above Blackthorn, seared into the sky like a wound the world could not look away from. Magic cracked in the air—too thick, too old, too alive.
Below, the Heart Hall emptied in chaos.
Students fled. Accordors vanished into smoke. Only Rowan and the core few remained: Lyra, Avery, the Wardens of the Flame—and the Founding Chronicle still hovering behind him, its pages now whispering secrets Rowan didn't yet understand.
Lyra touched his shoulder. "They'll regroup. Strike harder next time."
"I know," Rowan said. "But so will we."
A low rumble shook the ground. Dust rained from the ceiling. Avery looked toward the courtyard window. "That wasn't an attack."
"No," said one of the Wardens. "It's waking up."
"The Throne?" Rowan asked.
The Warden nodded. "It was never destroyed—just buried. Beneath ash. Beneath memory. Beneath lies."
The Chronicle spun another page open, glowing with an ancient map—Blackthorn before it was Blackthorn. A fortress beneath the school. A throne room lost to time.
Rowan felt it then. Not in the Chronicle. Not even in his mind. In his blood.
It was calling to him.
"Then we go," he said. "Before the Accord finds it first."
⸻
They moved through tunnels even the professors didn't know existed—passageways carved by the founders themselves, now cracked and crawling with dormant wards. Rowan's sigil burned brighter with each step.
Finally, they reached a vast cavern.
It wasn't empty.
Ash floated like snow in the air. And at the center stood a great blackened throne, forged of obsidian and spell-iron, vines of dead magic curling around its legs.
Rowan stepped forward. The room breathed with him.
"What happens if you sit on it?" Lyra asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"I don't know," Rowan said.
But the Chronicle did.
Its final page turned, revealing the last lines of the Thirteenth Prophecy:
"The throne does not choose kings.
It remembers them.
Sit—and be remembered."
Rowan climbed the stairs. One step. Then another.
Avery called out, "If you sit, there's turning back."
Rowan looked over his shoulder.
"There never was."
Then he sat.
The cavern exploded with light—black, silver, gold. The past roared into the present. And across the magical world, every House sigil dimmed for a breathless heartbeat… except one.
The Thirteenth.
Rowan's body went still the moment he touched the throne.
Not in paralysis—but in recognition.
Magic surged up his spine like liquid fire, ancient and unfiltered. Every House's power pulsed through his veins, refracted through the Thirteenth's forgotten lens. The throne did not burn him—it crowned him.
But there was no golden light. No coronation bells.
Only silence.
Until the throne spoke.
"You are not the first.
But you are the only one left."
Visions tore through Rowan's mind. A line of shadowed figures sitting where he now sat. Betrayals. Wars. A queen turned to smoke. A child hidden in plain sight. His bloodline. And then—Calwyn.
He gasped aloud, clutching the armrests. "She knew. She always knew."
Upstairs, the Accord's presence thickened like a storm cloud descending. The sound of marching boots echoed through the underground tunnels.
"They're coming," Avery warned, sword drawn and glowing.
Lyra stood beside Rowan, eyes bright with fury and awe. "You have to break the veil, Rowan. Or they'll trap you down here forever."
"The veil—" Rowan looked up.
The air above the throne shimmered like a mirror surface. He saw Blackthorn Academy through it—only twisted. Empty. Dead. A future if the truth stays buried.
"I can break it," he said, rising from the throne, power roaring in his blood. "But I'll need the Chronicle."
Lyra tossed it to him. He caught it one-handed, and the book split open, releasing a scream of light.
Glyphs burst out—words lost to time—spiraling into the air, wrapping around Rowan, and then—
He spoke them.
Not a spell. A sentence.
"Let memory become law. Let truth become light. Let the Thirteenth be seen."
The throne responded. The cavern shook. And above Blackthorn, the sky ripped open.
Across the entire magical world, illusions cracked. Textbooks rewrote themselves. Statues shifted. Ancient scrolls unrolled to reveal names that had been erased. Rowan Vale was no longer a mistake.
He was a return.
And then the doors burst open.
Calwyn stood at the threshold. No wand this time. Just a blade made of broken oaths.
"You were never meant to find the throne," she said, eyes dark with rage. "And I was never meant to let you live."
Calwyn stepped into the throne chamber like a closing prophecy.
The blade in her hand shimmered not with light, but with absence. It devoured the glow around it—an unmaking weapon, forged from the original Broken Pact itself. Rowan felt the air tighten. This wasn't just a fight. It was the reckoning the Thirteenth House had been running from for centuries.
"You don't belong here," Calwyn said, voice low as thunder before a storm.
"I didn't," Rowan replied, stepping off the throne, power still surging beneath his skin. "But you made me belong the moment you tried to erase me."
Calwyn lunged.
A blur of movement—steel met spell. Avery blocked her blade, sparks slicing through the air as he shouted, "Go! Rowan, take the Chronicle and run!"
But Rowan didn't run.
He raised the Chronicle like a shield, the pages glowing with remembered truth, and shouted a word lost to all twelve houses—"Elarion!"
The chamber exploded with light. Calwyn staggered, momentarily blinded. Lyra hurled an illusion so sharp it cut through reality—a vision of the Thirteenth House in its golden age, surrounding Calwyn with ghosts of those she'd betrayed.
And Rowan—he struck.
Not with a wand, but with the weight of everything that had been stolen.
"You didn't just erase a house," he said, voice like fire. "You erased people. Futures. Families. Me."
Calwyn faltered. The blade trembled in her grip. Her mask cracked—not the literal one, but the image of authority she'd worn for years. For a second, Rowan saw her fear.
"I was trying to save us from another war," she whispered.
"You started this one."
Rowan raised the Chronicle above his head. The sigils spun around him like a tempest, drawn not just to him, but to what he represented. Every lie the Houses had written, every truth buried in the name of control—it all rushed back in a violent tide of magic and memory.
Above them, the broken sky groaned.
And then—it tore.
Blackthorn Academy convulsed. Every wall, every hall, every portrait shifted. Students screamed as centuries of forgotten truth surged through their veins like lightning.
The Thirteenth House rose from beneath the school, stone by stone. Its tower unfurled like a flame remembering how to burn.
And the veil—the illusion cast over the world to suppress the Thirteenth—shattered.
Wizards from across the continent gasped. Their House rings glowed with an unfamiliar thirteenth mark. Old spells warped into new ones. Forbidden archives flew open on their own.
The world changed.
Rowan collapsed to his knees as the Chronicle dimmed.
And Calwyn, coughing smoke and fury, vanished into the shadows—her blade left behind, humming with cursed magic.
The sky turned violet. A storm without rain circled above the academy.
Rowan stood in the tower of the Thirteenth House, watching the students below.
No one knew what came next. The Accord had gone silent. The Twelve Houses fractured. And Rowan—the boy who once didn't know he had magic—now sat at the center of it all.
Lyra joined him, her voice gentle. "You know they'll come for you."
"Let them," Rowan said. "I'm not hiding anymore."
From behind them, Avery laughed bitterly. "You say that like you're not already the most wanted mage alive."
Rowan turned, smiling faintly. "I'm not a mage anymore. I'm a flame."
—-
Rain hissed against the stone as Rowan unsealed the envelope. The parchment was older than the school itself, preserved by a magic older still. The wax bore no sigil—only a single word burned into its surface in silver ink:
"Rowan."
Lyra watched him from across the chamber, arms folded, every muscle tense. "No one should have been able to write that. Not back then."
Rowan opened the letter anyway.
To the Flame Yet to Be,
If you're reading this, then the Veil has cracked, and the world has remembered what it once chose to forget.
You are not the first Rowan Vale.
And you will not be the last.
You are the echo of the Founder.
You are the heir to the House that was never meant to die.
You are the last page of a prophecy that rewrites itself.
The Accord will come in numbers.
But numbers cannot break a name that cannot be erased.
They will try to cage you in history.
But you are not history.
You are the future.
At the bottom, a signature that glowed like the first spark of fire:
"—R."
The ink shimmered, then vanished as if inhaled by the letter itself.
Avery looked stunned. "Rowan, that signature—"
"Was mine," Rowan whispered. "It's my handwriting. But older. Centuries older."
Lyra's voice dropped. "You've been here before."
"No," Rowan said, breath catching. "I will be here again."
The Chronicle began to glow again—faint at first, then roaring. Pages flipped themselves open as a name began to etch into the air.
Not Rowan Vale.
Not the Thirteenth House.
But something older.
"Ashraem."
The name filled the room with heat. Avery backed away, shielding his eyes. Lyra gripped Rowan's shoulder, grounding him as visions flooded his mind:
A tower falling. A sword of flame buried in a sea. A thousand wizards kneeling, not in defeat—but in remorse.
And in the center: him. Wearing thirteen sigils on his cloak, not one.
Rowan gasped. "Ashraem isn't a name. It's a title. The First Flame."
"And you were it," Lyra said, softly. "You are it."
—
The Accord's March
They heard the drums before they saw the lights.
From the northern ridge, twelve battalions of Accord enforcers descended in silence. Their robes gleamed like armor. Their spells darkened the sky.
Rowan stood at the balcony, arms crossed.
"They're bringing everything," Avery said. "Not just to kill you. To erase you again."
"I know."
Lyra stepped beside him. "Then let them come."
Below them, the Tower of the Thirteenth blazed with renewed life. The students—those who'd joined Rowan—lit their wands and raised them to the storm.
Rowan drew his cloak over his shoulders. The thirteenth sigil pulsed like a second heart.
"This time," he said, "we don't burn alone."
And behind him, the magic of the First Flame stirred once more.