They called it a malfunction.
As if the Monolith — ancient and divine, older than the Written Histories — could malfunction.
Within an hour, the grounds had been sealed, the Disc shattered into containment stasis, and the attending nobles quietly ushered to safety. Kaien Virell stood alone on the marble floor where fire should've crowned him… and wasn't arrested solely because no one could agree on what he was.
Not Chosen. Not Hollowborn.
Something in between. Something... unwritten.
"You will leave the premises immediately," the Ritekeeper snapped, voice tight. "You have no Protocol. No flame. No right to remain."
"I didn't do it," Kaien said quietly. "The Disc — it—"
"Silence." The man flinched as if Kaien might crack the stone beneath them with words alone. "You're lucky your heresy didn't collapse the whole Monolith. Go."
Kaien turned.
The world did not.
But something had shifted. Not just in the sky — in how people looked at him.
No longer pity.
Now?
Fear.
At the edge of the temple's shadow, a man in a long soot-gray coat waited, arms crossed, wearing a crooked half-smile that Kaien somehow didn't trust — and yet, couldn't help but notice. His beard was shot with silver. His eyes burned with a clever, kind of tired interest.
"Kaien Virell," the man said before Kaien could ask.
"Who—?"
"Professor Erion Velle," he interrupted, extending a hand. "I teach Unstable Protocol Theory. Which, until now, was purely hypothetical."
Kaien didn't take his hand.
"You saw what happened?"
"I saw what didn't happen," Velle replied smoothly. "No flame. No glyph. No collapse. Yet the Monolith responded. That makes you… fascinating."
Kaien narrowed his eyes. "You think I'm some kind of research specimen?"
"Oh, you misunderstand. I'm not here to test you. I'm here to invite you."
Solvyr Academy towered over the city like a blade carved into the mountain itself — not just a school but a proving ground. Entry required either ascended Protocols or noble backing.
Kaien had neither.
But Professor Velle, it turned out, knew the right loophole.
"Clause 47-F," he explained as they entered the admissions hall. "Any candidate whose Ascendance causes structural anomaly in a recognized Rite can be enrolled as a Controlled Risk Entity. It's archaic. Technically written for Protocol ruptures, not… whatever you are."
"And the Academy's letting you push this?"
"They think it's safer to keep you somewhere monitored. Somewhere with lots of walls."
"And if I say no?"
Velle tilted his head.
"Then the Inquisitors will come. They'll ask how a boy with no flame made a Monolith scream."
Kaien didn't argue.
Enrollment was silent. The clerks barely looked at him, rubber-stamping his name as if trying not to see it.
Kaien Virell.
Designation: Unwritten
Status: Provisional Admit, Category V
He left the office to whispers. None hushed. All cruel.
"He broke the Disc."
"A Hollowborn walking among Chosen."
"His sister combusted. Now he's next."
Kaien walked with his head down until he reached the outer stairs.
And stopped.
Because he wasn't alone.
A girl sat at the edge of the wall — back to him, pale hair pulled into a long braid, one boot dangling over the stair's edge. Her uniform was from the Elite Division. She didn't turn around.
But her voice drifted like moonlight.
"The stars don't like you."
Kaien frowned. "Excuse me?"
She didn't reply. Just slipped a silver coin into her palm, tossed it up, caught it — and vanished down a side path, silent as falling ash.
Later that night, Kaien stood alone at the dormitory window, the city of Aurelis stretched out like a field of lanterns.
Behind him, his new room smelled of dust and fireproof wards.
Below, shadow stirred.
On the rooftop opposite, a figure crouched — thin and still, wrapped in robes blacker than the night itself. A mask like bone covered the lower half of his face. His eyes gleamed silver.
He watched Kaien like a ghost waiting to be remembered.
Then, in a blink — gone.
Kaien pressed a hand to his chest where the Protocol would've burned, and whispered,
"If I'm not written... then I'll write myself."