The aqueducts ran silent at night.
Not dry — just reverent. The moon's pull drew the waters low, exposing old stone veins the Spiral Council no longer claimed.
Lyric moved like a shadow through them, his second mark still faintly warm beneath his collar. Not glowing. Not screaming. Just… alert. Like it knew where he was going.
He found Saelrine crouched at the edge of the Moonwell, her reflection rippling over the black pool as if it were breathing. Her sea-thread cloak hung from one of the rusted spires behind her.
"You came," she said, not looking up.
Lyric approached slowly. "You didn't give me much choice."
"That's how the gods like it," she murmured. "I thought I'd try it out."
The Moonwell wasn't part of the official campus anymore.
A forgotten ring of sanctified stone, built before the Spiral Council codified shrine law. The structure wasn't marked on the current maps. Its outer rim was overgrown with reedlight and brineglass moss, and the water shimmered unnaturally — like it remembered being touched by something it hadn't consented to.
Saelrine tapped the ground beside her. He sat.
They watched the water for a long time.
"She said this place once belonged to Oryllae," she said. "Before even the High Council unified. Before the gods agreed on silence."
"Who?" Lyric asked.
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a relic — a broken compass sealed in waxed thread. Its needle spun in slow, clockwise spirals.
"My mother," she said. "She said it was the last place she heard a true memory."
The silence pressed tighter.
Then the water shifted.
Not rippled — bent. Like something had dropped through time, not space.
Lyric leaned forward.
Shapes stirred beneath the surface. Not reflections. Memories.
His own.
He saw the glyph arena. The rain. Vhentyr's blade swinging.
He flinched — but the scene kept going.
This time, Lyric didn't fall.
This time, he struck first.
This time, he won.
He blinked. The memory was gone.
Saelrine had gone still beside him.
"You saw it too?" he asked.
"No," she whispered. "But I felt it. Something tore."
She reached toward the water — and the second her fingers touched it, the second mark on Lyric's skin flared like a brand.
He doubled over, breath ragged.
Something ancient pulled at his lungs — like memory trying to rewrite itself.
Saelrine caught his arm. "Breathe, damn it—breathe—"
Then, from the well, a voice:
"You remember wrong."
The Moonwell pulsed once — and went still.
They sat gasping beside it, both of them silent, shivering.
"That wasn't Orryn," Lyric said quietly.
"No," Saelrine agreed. "That was the world."