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. It was unnatural—engineered even. Someone was flooding the ley-lines, overloading the local mana grid. Mark felt it the moment he stepped back onto campus grounds: the school itself was grinding against its own enchantments, like a machine pushing past its limits.
"Someone's trying to short the entire ward lattice," Elira said, reading a floating sigil that flickered between her palms. "If they succeed, the inner seals will collapse. It'll be a free-for-all."
"That's what they want," Mark replied.
"Who's 'they'?"
He looked up at the swirling clouds.
"Whoever wants to draw the Circle Keepers into war."
That morning, Mark made a choice.
No more hiding. No more running.
He needed a base. Allies. Eyes in the shadows and knives that answered only to him. Blackstone's student body wasn't just filled with brats and bullies — it was full of warriors in waiting, children of old bloodlines, orphans of collapsed Houses, heirs of ancient arts.
But it wasn't unity that kept them in check. It was fear.
Mark knew fear. He'd sold it in boardrooms and bought it in blood.
Now he'd weaponize it.
He started with the two most volatile groups on campus: the Dredgeborn and the Runebreakers.
The Dredgeborn were alchemy-ravaged outcasts, bloodlines mutated by exposure to corrupted mana. Half-banned from duels, barely tolerated in class, they lived in the old sub-level dorms. Mark found them in a chamber lit by green flame and scattered with broken relics.
He didn't waste time.
"You're feared. Misunderstood. Used. Sound familiar?"
They glared at him, cautious.
"You don't need pity," he continued. "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 and glowing veins.
"What do you want from us?"
"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. "You'll die before this school changes."
Mark smiled. "Then I'll haunt its ruins as a king."
She laughed. "You might be crazy enough for it."
She extended a hand.
"Call me Vrix."
Next came the Runebreakers — glyph-hackers, magical vandals, the ones expelled from traditional Circles for insubordination and raw power. They were led by a cocky, cane-wielding conjurer named Silas Raen, who greeted Mark while reclined on a throne made of floating books.
"You're the Wilde boy," Silas said. "The one with the spooky power signature."
"I'm the one building something," Mark answered. "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 toward him.
Silas caught it.
The glyphs on its surface were forbidden. One flicker of intent, and the coin cracked into a whispering rune that made Silas flinch.
"…You're not bluffing," he muttered.
"No," Mark said. "And if you work with me, I'll show you the kind of runes that rewrite the rules, not just break them."
Silas leaned forward.
"I'm listening."
That night, in the lower crypts beneath the Archive, Mark and Elira returned to the forgotten passage from his vision.
They'd pieced it together using the tome, fragments of pre-Academy maps, and glyph paths hidden in the Observatory's core. The entrance wasn't a door — it was a collapsed ley-thread, a faded scar in the world's magic 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.
It slept.
The air below was dense with history — not dust and ruin, but echoes of thought. Mark could hear fragments, murmurs of incantations that never ended, of spells looping without fuel.
As they stepped into the outer ward of the buried city, they saw the first remnants:
– Towering statues of cloaked kings whose eyes glowed faintly.
– Glyph pillars that burned with sealed names.
– Runes that responded 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 through it with unease and purpose. Every step made his magic resonate louder.
They reached a dais at the city's heart — a platform inscribed with ancient spell-circles that had no modern analog. As Mark stepped into it, the air thickened.
And a voice spoke.
But not aloud.
Inside his mind.
"You return, Crownless. You wear a name, but not yet the Will. Claim it."
"Or be devoured by what follows."
Suddenly, the sigils on the walls burst 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 of the shadows stepped forward — taller than the others, wearing a crown of broken crystal and 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 in the hallway.
"You felt that surge?"
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 in the circle, light flickering across his eyes.
A new power throbbed beneath the stone — something more ancient than Veins or Circle Keepers. Something bound to him.
He wasn't just awakening magic.
He was awakening a claim.
Not as a student.
Not as a mistake.
But as a rightful heir to whatever empire this place once ruled.
And this time, he wasn't asking permission.