The rune-scar on the chamber floor had been sealed.
Not healed. Not mended. Just covered — like an old crime hidden with new law.
Lyric stepped carefully over it as he left the judgment halls behind. The corridors of the Grand Academy were emptier at dusk, lit only by soft wardlight bleeding from runes etched into the ceilings. They buzzed faintly in his ears, reacting to the second mark like they hadn't before.
He kept his collar high. His head low.
Not for shame.
For secrecy.
Two years of silence, and now the mark stirred twice in two days.
Something was unraveling.
As he crossed the glass causeway connecting the Council Tower to the upper dormitories, a wind slid through the arches — sea-damp, sharp with salt. The scent didn't belong here. Cael's mountain air was crisp and dry, bone-pure.
Which meant someone had come from the coast.
He glanced back.
The courtyard below — once empty — now held a lone figure by the central reflecting pool.
Long hair, dark and wind-tossed.
Clothed in the seafoam and silver of House Oryllae.
She was watching him.
Not with suspicion. Not with fear.
With knowing.
Lyric turned away too quickly.
The air behind him warped faintly, like heat over water. His second mark pulsed. Not painfully. Almost… alert.
He didn't sleep that night.
His dormitory room in the Ring of Echoes creaked with every breath. The walls whispered — not with voices, but memories. Someone had carved script into the bedframe: I dreamed the gods bled ink. It never dried.
He traced it absently with his thumb.
Something tickled the edge of his thoughts.
A sound.
No — a song. Familiar. From a childhood dream he didn't remember having.
One truth drowns another, one mark hides a twin…
He sat upright.
A shadow moved outside his window — slow, graceful.
He rushed to it.
Nothing.
But beneath the windowsill, pressed against the stone, lay a single object.
A folded fan. Silver inlay. Laced with ocean thread.
And inside: a slip of parchment.
"We see you, Inkborn. One thread frays — the others will follow. Meet me at tidefall."— Signed with the seal of House Oryllae.