The ruins were a graveyard of arrogance.
Kael stood at the threshold of a forgotten citadel half-swallowed by the earth — jagged spires rising from broken hills, each one marked by a single glyph: a circle with a slash through it.
Null.
The First Scholar had built this place as a sanctuary for thinkers — and a fortress against rulers. It wasn't just old.
It was angry.
"Don't touch anything unless I say so," Kael warned.
Lia and Seren exchanged a glance behind him. Not fear — trust. Though the air had grown cold and strange, they followed him inside.
A tunnel opened beneath the spires. No light, no warmth, just carved stone. But as they entered, glyphs along the walls lit one by one — not with mana, but thought. The path responded to Kael's presence.
"Why only you?" Lia whispered.
"Because I'm not a Talent," Kael said. "This place rejects divinity. It only opens to Learners."
They descended deeper.
---
Glyph-Tomb of the Mindless
As they reached the first hall, Seren suddenly halted.
"Stop."
Her hand went to her blade, eyes narrowing at the massive mural carved into the stone. It depicted a robed man, face hidden, standing before a council of kings. In his hand was a single glyph, offered like a weapon.
"The First Scholar," Seren whispered. "Offering knowledge like it was war."
Kael stepped closer.
"No," he corrected softly. "He wasn't offering it. He was warning them."
A low hum began vibrating through the floor. The air buzzed.
Then—
A wall behind the mural slid open with a hiss, revealing a chamber filled with statues — cloaked in stone robes, with gaping holes where their eyes should be.
Lia shivered. "What are those?"
"Failed entrants," Kael said grimly. "People who tried to use Talent here. They weren't killed. They were... erased."
---
Trial of the Learner
The hallway narrowed, walls now covered in layered glyph-circuits. Kael touched one.
It shifted.
A voice echoed across the chamber — not sound, but memory.
> "Only the one who walks without crown may read the forbidden page."
A stone table rose from the floor. At its center: a thick book bound in pale hide, inked in black fire.
The First Scholar's Journal.
Kael reached out.
But the moment his hand touched the book — the chamber shattered into blinding light.
---
Inside the Mind of the Scholar
Kael fell — not physically, but mentally — into a world of fractured glyphs and infinite mirrors.
A presence loomed.
Not alive. Not dead.
Something preserved.
A voice like wind whispering through a library:
> "You are not my descendant. And yet you carry my mark."
Kael floated in the mental space, mind screaming from pressure. "Who... are you?"
> "I am the residue of the mind that once dared to rewrite the divine."
> "The world chose kings. I chose truth."
Kael clenched his fists.
> "Why did you hide this?"
> "Because knowledge without courage becomes tyranny."
Then, a glyph flared before him — a diamond, ringed with four elements, then cracked in two.
> "Take my last thought, Learner. And forge it new."
The vision shattered.
---
Outside — Seconds Later
Kael gasped awake, the book glowing under his hand.
Lia steadied him. "Kael?"
His eyes burned. Not with pain — with understanding.
"I saw it. I saw everything. The Null Bind is incomplete—by design. He made it just usable enough to tempt tyrants. But there's a final piece."
He turned to the next page.
And saw the phrase:
> Only in fire can truth be tempered.
Suddenly, the chamber began shaking.
Stone cracking. Glyphs flickering.
Seren grabbed her sword. "The ruin's collapsing!"
"No," Kael said, eyes wide. "It's rejecting someone—"
Then a flare of red fire erupted from the entrance tunnel.
A figure stepped through the blaze.
Wrapped in royal crimson.
Eyes burning gold.
Cressa of the Flame-Touched Veil.