A storm brewed over Empire High. Not a physical one—though dark clouds hung low over Manhattan—but a storm within the school itself. Magic trembled beneath the stones, in the veins of students, in the bones of the ancient halls. The Vault was no longer sleeping.
And Seraphina Cole could feel it.
She stood on the Astronomy Tower, staring across the skyline, the chill wind tugging at her cloak. Behind her, the five sigils on her palm shimmered faintly, glowing one at a time in slow, rhythmic pulses.
Fire. Water. Earth. Aether. Umbra.
She was the Lock. The Seal. The bridge between what once was and what now stirred beneath the surface. And it was waking.
"You're trembling," Elijah said, stepping up beside her. He wore a long coat over his uniform, shadows curling at its edges.
"The Vault's trying to speak to me," she said, her voice tight. "It doesn't use words. It uses... pulls. Images. Memories."
"Have you answered it?"
"Not yet. I'm afraid of what it'll show me."
Elijah's hand brushed hers. "Then let's face it together."
She closed her eyes and let the pulses guide her. One by one, each mark flared, and the wind stopped. Time stretched. The world turned silent.
Then it came.
She wasn't standing in Empire High anymore.
She stood inside the Vault, yet not the same Vault. This one shimmered with colors that bled from the walls like veins—living memories held in stone and shadow.
The glass floor beneath her flickered, then vanished.
She was falling.
Falling through time.
Falling through lives not her own.
A battlefield—mages cloaked in light and darkness. Screaming. Fire raining from above.
A child alone on a staircase, watching her twin walk into the Vault and never return.
A teacher weeping over a cracked locket.
And finally—a mirror.
It didn't show her reflection. It showed Empire High split down the middle. One side glowing. One side blackened, twisted.
The Vault whispered:
"You must choose the shape of its future."
She awoke with a gasp in her bed, drenched in sweat. Elijah sat by the window, keeping watch.
"Nightmare?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Vision. A warning."
The next day, Headmaster Thorn called for a gathering—not just of Umbra students, but every student.
The Great Atrium buzzed with tension. House leaders stood with their banners, but it was clear the old ways were cracking.
Thorn stepped forward, his expression severe. "There is a rift forming within the Vault. Seraphina Cole has been touched by it, as many of you know. But what you do not yet know is that this rift has names. Locations. Events tied to each of the Seven Sanctums that surround our world."
Gasps.
"There are Seven?" someone whispered.
Sera stepped forward. "Yes. And one is here. The others lie hidden—beneath rivers, in forgotten cities, buried under ruins. But they're stirring. Just like this one."
Thorn nodded grimly. "We are forming a team—a Vanguard. Chosen students from each House. But its core will be Umbra. Those closest to the Vault's resonance."
The murmurs turned sharp. Students eyed Umbra members with a mix of awe and fear.
Elijah stepped beside her. "We're not here to rule. We're here to protect."
But Sera's heart wasn't steady. Because part of her knew—protection might not be enough.
She might need to rewrite the rules of magic itself.
Training intensified.
Under Professor Marrow, the Umbra team was pushed harder than any other group at Empire High. They trained in ancient arts—mirrorwalking, sigil weaving, essence binding. Spells that had been buried for centuries.
Kaelina mastered mirror dueling, slicing through illusions and bending light.
Tobias learned to summon lost voices through aetheric song.
Mei discovered she could shift water into shadow and back again.
And Seraphina... she began walking the Vault in her dreams. Each night, the echoes showed her more.
One night, the Vault revealed a door she had never seen. Marked with seven circles, each glowing faintly.
She reached for it—
—and was pulled back by a scream.
Elijah's.
She woke to find him convulsing on the floor of the training hall, shadows writhing around his body.
"He touched the Rift," Nyra said, rushing forward. "Something is feeding from his mark."
Sera dropped beside him and took his hand. The shadows recoiled slightly.
"Let me in," she whispered.
Elijah's eyes opened—pure black. "Don't. You'll see too much."
She didn't let go.
And she saw.
Elijah's past. His mother, consumed by shadowfire. A hidden vault beneath their home. The moment he first heard the whispers.
The shadow wasn't just inside him.
It was bred into him.
She pulled him back with a scream of her own, light flaring from her sigils and forcing the dark out. He collapsed, breathing heavily.
"You shouldn't have seen that," he whispered.
"We're in this together," she said.
But now she knew—Elijah was a conduit. If the Rift took root in anyone first, it would be him.
After that, she begged Thorn for more access to the Vault's records.
He refused.
So she broke in.
With Nyra's help, they slipped into the restricted archives beneath the library. Tomes bound in skin. Scrolls inked in blood. Warnings in ancient tongues.
She found what she needed:
The Covenant of Seven.
A spell cast by the first founders to bind the Vaults and maintain balance. But balance, it turned out, required a sacrifice—one bearer per sanctum.
Each bearer would eventually merge with their sanctum.
Becoming part of it.
She felt sick.
It meant the Vault had already chosen her to vanish someday.
"There has to be another way," she whispered.
Nyra touched her arm. "Then we'll find it. Or make one."
The next day, Liora Vexen returned.
She appeared in the Mirror Hall without warning, her form flickering like a candle in wind.
"The sanctums are calling," she said to Seraphina. "And one is in danger. The gate beneath the Hudson River."
Sera blinked. "But that one was sealed centuries ago."
Liora nodded. "And something is trying to unseal it. If it succeeds, all of New York will be swallowed."
The Vault's sigils pulsed on Sera's palm.
The time had come.
That night, as the Umbra Vanguard prepared for their first mission beyond Empire High's walls, Sera stood in her dorm room one last time.
She touched the mirror.
No shadow.
Only herself.
She whispered, "Ready."
The mirror pulsed once.
And the journey into the sanctums began.