The scarred boy was no longer screaming.
He sang.
Not with a voice, but with resonance—low, jagged notes that rattled glass and bent the Weave around him like warped metal.
Instructrix Vale circled the containment ward, her eyes sharp, cold.
"He's not possessed," she muttered. "He's overwritten."
Serapha stood beside her, jaw clenched.
"The glyphs match the ones in the Cathedral chamber."
"But they're reversed," Vale said. "Not Elarion's truth. A mockery."
Serapha knelt, pressing a scribe-sigil against the ward.
The resonance song faltered.
For a moment, the boy's eyes flickered human.
"…make it stop," he whispered. "He's in the scar. He's watching."
"Who?" Serapha asked.
But he began to scream again—only this time, his mouth didn't move.
The Weave did.
Caelum sat by the northern lake near the edge of the Academy, knees pulled to his chest.
The sigil on his chest wouldn't stop pulsing.
Not hurting.
Calling.
Like a heartbeat in the wrong place.
Rheia sat beside him, book in hand.
"The runes are adaptive," she said. "They're not just ancient—they're alive. They bind to your thoughts, reflect your will. But now… they're starting to reflect things that aren't yours."
Caelum swallowed.
"You mean I'm… turning into him?"
"No," she said, softer now. "You're becoming the continuation. The sigil isn't just an inheritance. It's a bridge."
"To what?"
Rheia didn't answer.
Because the wind had shifted.
And Lior was standing ten paces away.
"You're being hunted," he said.
Neither of them answered.
Lior stepped forward, the mask now tucked into his belt.
"You're not the only Echoborn awakening. The scarred boy—they think he's just infected. He's not. He's a reflection of what happens when the sigil fails."
Caelum stood.
"How do you know?"
Lior looked at him with those sharp, storm-gray eyes.
"Because I was meant to bear it."
Silence.
"I was the candidate. Years ago. But the sigil rejected me. Left this instead."
He rolled up his sleeve. The broken, jagged echo-sigil pulsed faintly.
"It didn't kill me. But it made me empty. My soul's thread frayed. So the Arcanum marked me. Studied me. And cast me aside."
"Then why are you helping?" Rheia asked.
"I'm not," Lior said plainly. "I just don't want to watch this world fall apart without knowing why."
In the east wing of the Arcanum dormitory, Serapha searched the infected student's room.
It was covered in chalk glyphs. Scratched into wood, glass, stone—mirror-runes drawn backward.
But one stood out.
A circle of sigils stitched in bloodline script—a form of external glyphcraft used only by the Seventh Path.
And inside that circle, a name:
"Caelum"
Her eyes widened.
Then the chalk cracked under her boot.
And the room shifted.
Caelum flinched.
His vision burned with sudden light.
He saw Serapha—not in real time, but from above—as if the sigil were tethered to her.
The room spun.
The glyphs screamed.
And then he felt it.
Someone else had touched the sigil's memory.
Serapha drew a weaponized glyph, slicing the air.
But it wasn't enough.
A figure rose from the circle—not flesh, not echo, but a scar. A negative imprint of something half-erased.
It lunged.
Caelum moved.
He didn't understand how.
But in the next moment, he was inside the circle too.
Not transported.
Reflected.
A piece of him reached across the thread.
He caught the scar's arm with a hand that wasn't quite his.
And he said a name.
Not Elarion's.
His own.
The scar shattered.
Later, Serapha stared at him across the broken remnants of chalk and silence.
"You moved through the scar," she said. "Like a mirror-gate."
"I didn't mean to," Caelum replied. "I just… felt you. The sigil reacted."
"It didn't react," Rheia said. She'd arrived moments later, breathless.
"It chose."
In the hidden vaults beneath the Arcanum, the Headmaster of the Echo Order stood before an obsidian mirror.
It showed nothing.
Until it did.
A reflection of a boy who wasn't looking into it—but was still seen.
"He's begun to thread," the Headmaster whispered.
From behind him, Vale approached, carrying a sealed relic case.
"We must prepare the Sevenfold Trial."
The Headmaster nodded.
"If he survives that… we open the Weave Scar."