The sky over Aurelis was a thousand shards of color — soft amber bleeding into tempest blue, gold trails sketching constellations across the heavens like brushstrokes on an infinite canvas. The Monolith of Flame, black as obsidian and veined with pulsing crimson, loomed at the center of the Ascendance Grounds, humming in its ancient rhythm — the heartbeat of the world's hierarchy.
And Kaien Virell stood before it, palms open, trembling.
He was seventeen, dark-haired and hollow-eyed, with skin that bore the windburn of skyfarms and the calloused strength of climbing tower rigs. His shirt clung damp to his back from the mountain air, but his hands stayed cold.
Not from the weather. From what he knew was coming.
All around him, the onlookers — students, instructors, emissaries of noble clans — watched with breathless expectation. His name had been called last.
The final candidate of the Rite.
The one whose sister had burned.
"Kaien Virell, step forward."
The voice of the Ritekeeper echoed, deep and ceremonial. Kaien moved, feet dragging like he carried the weight of his family's broken name. His boots left no imprint on the marble, but the memory of the Virell line's shame was carved deep into every face turned toward him.
There had been whispers since dawn:
"The Hollowborn."
"Protocolless. A fluke."
"His sister's Protocol tore her apart."
Kaien had learned to endure them — not ignore, not forget. Endure. Like he had endured the night Lysera screamed until her Protocol set her ablaze from the inside, how the Academy masters said her blood was flawed.
Yet still they let him stand here today.
One last cruel chance.
He placed his hand on the Ascendance Disc — a glass-like ring seated in a basin before the Monolith. It pulsed gently beneath his touch, ancient runes shifting. His breath caught.
He thought of Lysera, laughing with bandaged fingers and starlight in her eyes. Thought of the last thing she said, half-crazed and beautiful:
"The Monolith listens, Kaien. But it only answers what's already inside you."
He pressed his hand harder.
Nothing happened.
A beat. Then another.
The disc stayed inert — no flame, no glyph, no light. The crowd stirred.
"Protocolless," someone murmured.
Kaien closed his eyes, heart slamming in his chest.
Please. Just… anything.
A cold breath swept through his bones.
—cut the world's lie—
His eyes snapped open.
A whisper. Inside his mind.
—break the shape. Sever it. Cut me free—
The voice was wrong. Not divine like the Monolith, not internal like his thoughts. It vibrated like cracked glass.
The disc beneath his hand jerked, flickered with symbols that weren't flame-based at all — erratic, alien, shivering between glyphs Kaien didn't recognize.
Then—
CRACK.
The Ascendance Disc fractured beneath his palm. A jagged crack zigzagged across its surface.
The Monolith shuddered.
Crimson lines along its surface blinked and dimmed, then flared—not in flame, but in cold white fire, like lightning inverted.
The sky above flickered.
For a breathless second, the stars vanished.
And Kaien Virell, standing at the center of it all, realized every pair of eyes was no longer mocking him.
They were terrified.
Because something inside him had answered the Monolith — and the Monolith had broken to let it out.
Final image:
Kaien's palm lifts from the broken Disc. His eyes glow faint white.
In the sky above, the constellation of the Phoenix — symbol of Ascendance — falters.
The whisper returns, gentle this time:
"Hello, Unwritten One."