The rain hadn't stopped in over a day.
Outside Blackstone's sealed towers, the storm poured in sheets of violet-black, laced with streaks of mana lightning that cracked across the skies like veins of broken magic. The air itself hummed with overload, and the acrid scent of ozone stung Mark's nose as he stepped onto the campus grounds.
The school groaned beneath the strain of its own wards, enchantments grinding like gears pushed beyond their limits.
"Someone's trying to short the entire ward lattice," Elira said, eyes scanning a floating sigil flickering between her palms. "If they succeed, the inner seals collapse. The place turns into a free-for-all."
"That's what they want," Mark replied, scanning the horizon, lightning reflecting in his eyes.
"Who's they?"
He looked up at the swirling storm.
"Whoever wants the Circle Keepers to burn themselves out on a war they can't win."
That morning, Mark made a choice.
No more hiding. No more running.
He needed a base. Allies. Eyes in the shadows, blades that answered only to him.
Blackstone's student body wasn't just filled with spoiled heirs and reckless children—it was a collection of warriors in waiting, scions of bloodlines that had survived centuries of war and ruin, heirs of arts older than the Academy itself. But it wasn't loyalty that kept them in check. It was fear.
Mark knew fear. He'd sold it in boardrooms, bought it with blood.
Now he would weaponize it.
He started with the two most volatile factions on campus: the Dredgeborn and the Runebreakers.
The Dredgeborn were outcasts, twisted by corrupted mana. Half-banned from duels, barely tolerated in classes, they lived in the old sub-level dorms. The chamber Mark found them in was lit by green flames that cast jagged shadows across broken relics and shattered crystal.
He didn't waste words.
"You're feared. Misunderstood. Used. Sound familiar?"
They glared at him, their eyes wary, their postures defensive.
"You don't need pity," he continued, stepping closer. "You need purpose. I don't offer safety. I offer vengeance. When the tower falls, I'll make sure your names are written on its bones."
One of them stepped forward—a girl with stone-like skin, veins glowing faintly like molten metal.
"What do you want from us?" she asked.
"Information. Loyalty. When the lines are drawn, I want to know who bleeds for which side. And when the time comes… you fight with me."
The girl tilted her head, skeptical. "You'll die before this school changes."
Mark smiled. "Then I'll haunt its ruins as a king."
She laughed. Then extended a hand.
"Call me Vrix."
Next were the Runebreakers—glyph-hackers, magical vandals, expelled for insubordination, raw power, and defiance. Their leader, Silas Raen, lounged on a throne made of floating books, a cane tipped with a jagged crystal in one hand, the other flicking through invisible glyphs in the air.
"You're the Wilde boy," Silas said, voice smooth and amused. "The one with the spooky power signature."
"I'm the one building something," Mark replied. "And I don't have time to impress you."
"Oh?" Silas raised a brow. "And what makes you think I'm not already impressed?"
Mark tossed a coin. Silas caught it. The glyphs etched into its surface were forbidden. One flicker of intent, and the coin would have cracked into a whispering rune that could scramble the mind. Silas flinched.
"You're not bluffing," he muttered.
"No," Mark said. "And if you work with me, I'll show you runes that rewrite the rules, not just break them."
Silas leaned forward, intrigued. "I'm listening."
That night, Mark and Elira returned to the forgotten passage beneath the Archive. They had pieced it together using the tome, fragments of pre-Academy maps, and hidden glyph paths in the Observatory's core.
The entrance wasn't a door—it was a collapsed ley-thread, a scar in the fabric of the world where a city had once pulsed with forbidden mana.
Mark placed his hand on the stone. It shuddered. With a whisper of power—his power—the wall melted away like ash, revealing a staircase descending into lightless stone.
Elira's breath caught.
The City Beneath Blackstone was real. And it wasn't dead.
The air was dense with history—not dust or ruin, but thought itself. Whispers of long-forgotten incantations looped in the silence, spells repeating without fuel, memories echoing from every brick.
As they stepped into the outer wards, remnants of the city revealed themselves:
Towering statues of cloaked kings, eyes glowing faintly as if alive.
Glyph pillars that burned with sealed names.
Runes that reacted to Mark's presence, flaring black-gold for the first time in centuries.
"This is where it began," Elira whispered. "Your Tier. This place—it's not a ruin. It's a sealed memory."
Mark moved forward with unease and purpose. Every step made his Forbidden Tier pulse, resonating with the dormant magics around them.
They reached a dais at the city's heart—a platform inscribed with ancient spell-circles that had no modern analog. The air thickened, alive with expectation.
And then a voice spoke—not aloud, but inside his mind:
"You return, Crownless. You wear a name, but not yet the Will. Claim it."
"Or be devoured by what follows."
The sigils on the walls flared, bursting to life, and shadows erupted from the stone.
Not Keepers. Not wraiths.
Specters of the original Circle—loyal guardians of this place, awakened by his bloodline.
Mark raised his hand, prepared to strike—but Elira stopped him.
"They're not here to kill you," she said.
Mark narrowed his eyes. "Then why do they feel like a warning?"
One shadow stepped forward—taller than the rest, wearing a crown of broken crystal, bearing the same glyph that had appeared on Mark's hand after the Crucible.
"Return to the Vein. Restore what was fractured. The Keepers are merely children with blades. But what sleeps beneath this city… remembers your empire."
Mark's breath caught.
"Elira… I think this place was mine."
Above them, Silas Raen pulled Vrix aside.
"You felt that surge?" he asked.
She nodded. "Black-gold signature. Same as Wilde."
He smirked. "Then it's time."
"For what?"
"For war," he said. "I'm betting on the king no one sees coming."
Back in the buried city, Mark stood alone on the dais, light flickering across his eyes.
A new power throbbed beneath the stone—older than Veins or Circle Keepers, bound to him.
He wasn't just awakening magic. He was awakening a claim.
Not as a student. Not as a mistake.
But as the rightful heir to the empire that once ruled this hidden city.
And this time, he wasn't asking permission.