Rain cloaked the academy in silence.
It fell in quiet sheets over slate rooftops, pattered against arched windows, and blurred the glow of runestones lining the walkways. Most students were asleep. Caelum wasn't.
He sat in the Umbra dorm's library annex, the scroll of the Seven Sigils hidden beneath his cloak. The eye-shaped mark on his hand still pulsed faintly beneath the glove.
He couldn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the Vault door.
And the figure standing on the other side.
---
A whisper touched his ear. Not from the wind.
From the room.
"You should be more careful where you study, Varrow."
Caelum leapt to his feet, wind magic instinctively pooling at his fingertips.
A tall girl stepped from the shadows older than him by a few years, clad in a dark cloak with silver trim. Her eyes gleamed gold in the lanternlight.
"Relax. If I wanted to report you, you'd be in chains already."
She pulled back her hood. Caelum recognized her. A fifth-year. Duels champion twice over.
"You're Reian."
"Correct. And you're late."
"Late for what?"
She tossed something at him.
A pin. Shaped like a serpent coiled around an open eye.
The same mark from the Vault door.
"We've been watching you. You're not the first. But you're… louder than most."
---
Reian led him through narrow tunnels beneath the archive wing passages he hadn't even known existed. They passed two magical locks and descended into a stone chamber lit by blue fire and silence.
There were six others waiting inside, their faces hooded, their robes marked with the same serpent-eye emblem.
"Welcome, Caelum Varrow," said an older boy in red-gold. His voice carried the weight of command. "To the Order of the Veiled Sigil."
Caelum didn't speak. He was too busy staring at the runes carved into the walls the same runes from the Vault scroll.
"You're… a cult?" he managed.
That earned a few laughs.
Reian shook her head. "Hardly. We're librarians with better fashion sense."
The red-gold speaker stepped forward. "We are descendants of mages, seers, and scholars who survived the last breach of the Arkanite Gate. Our purpose is simple: observe, record, intervene only if absolutely necessary."
Caelum narrowed his eyes. "You knew about the Vault? About the Gate?"
"Of course."
"And you did nothing?"
"We were doing nothing," Reian said, "until you touched the door."
---
They showed him a map.
One drawn centuries ago, charting resonance pulses from students across Arcvale's history. All elemental users. All marked. All forgotten.
"There's a pattern," said Reian, pointing at seven specific names. "One per generation. Fire. Earth. Water. Wind. Shadow. Light. And one that doesn't match."
She pointed to the last name, faded and torn.
A child who vanished in 482 A.R. the year the Vault was first sealed.
Caelum's mouth was dry. "You think I'm him?"
"No," Reian said. "We think you're the next."
---
Another student hooded and quie brought forth a book. Thick, metal-bound, its cover bore no title. Reian opened it, revealing dozens of entries.
Students who had shown signs of Arkanite echo.
"Most never knew," she explained. "A few went mad. Some disappeared. One tried to breach the Vault himself. The Headmaster… silenced him."
Caelum looked at her sharply. "You're saying Arcvale knows?"
"Not all. But the Council keeps eyes everywhere."
"And you what, you're just babysitters?"
Reian leaned closer.
"We're watchers. But we're also believers. Some of us think the Gate needs to stay shut."
"And others… think the world needs what's locked behind it."
---
A brief silence passed.
Reian looked toward the others. Some lowered their hoods.
A half-elven girl. A scarred boy with fire-marked palms. A Lunaris scribe with runes tattooed over her eyes.
They weren't strangers anymore. They were inheritors.
And divided.
Reian's voice dropped. "There's a split growing in the Order. Two factions. One wants to help you understand what you are. The other… wants to make sure you never awaken."
"What about you?"
She looked at him for a long moment.
"I think the wind chose you for a reason. But I also know what happens when power awakens without control."
She handed him a scroll wrapped in silver thread.
"This is what we have on Echo Bearer. Read it. Learn what you can. But don't show it to anyone. Not Eo. Not Ardyn. Not even Lira."
"Why?"
"Because someone at Arcvale is working against us. And if they learn what you are before you understand it—"
She left the warning unfinished.
---
Later, back in his room, Caelum stared at the scroll Reian had given him.
It was warm to the touch. The same warmth he felt when the Vault spoke.
He didn't know if he was being hunted, protected, or groomed.
But the words from the prophecy burned in his mind:
"The Lock is waking. And the Key does not yet know it is one.
Caelum looked to the window.
The rain had stopped.
The wind had returned.
And the storm it carried no longer felt distant.