The word wouldn't leave him.
Skyborn.
It echoed in his mind all morning. Through Spell Theory. Through Elemental Control (where he nearly got scorched by a careless flame-caster). Through lunch, where Lysena tripped him "accidentally" and made sure the soup hit his only clean shirt.
He didn't fight back. Not yet.
Instead, Calix kept turning the word over in his head.
It wasn't just rare. It was erased. It didn't show up in any academy texts or magical glossaries. Not even in forbidden history—he checked the restricted index through a peephole in the library wall.
There was nothing.
Which meant it was important.
And someone didn't want anyone to know.
After curfew, he went back.
Not to the Old Tower—he wasn't stupid enough to push his luck two nights in a row—but to the Undercroft: the winding tunnels beneath the academy, originally built for elemental drainage and magical overflow. Now? Just half-forgotten passages avoided by anyone who valued clean robes.
He needed answers. And he knew someone who might have them.
Her name was Mira, and she was two years above him. A seer-born who had failed every noble expectation and now hid out in the Undercroft, trading information for silence. No one knew more about the school's forbidden history—or its secrets.
He found her sitting cross-legged under a cracked crystal pipe, playing with floating shards of broken prophecy glass.
"I was wondering when you'd show," she said, without looking up.
"You knew I'd come?" Calix asked, slightly creeped out.
"No. But I figured you'd get in trouble by week one."
He crouched beside her. "I found something. A door. Hidden in the Old Tower. It responded to me. It said a word. Skyborn."
That got her attention.
Mira's hands froze in mid-air. The shards dropped.
"…Say that again?"
"Skyborn."
She exhaled slowly. "You're either very stupid… or very lucky."
"Probably both."
She leaned in. "I've only seen that word once. In a pirate journal. An old one—so old it barely held together. Pages missing, ink faded. But that word was burned into the cover."
"What did it mean?"
"No idea. But the rest of the book talked about a 'chosen wind'—something ancient. Something that pre-dates noble magic." She paused. "Some say Skyborns were the original rulers of the skies. Before the empires. Before bloodlines mattered. Before magic was locked behind titles."
Calix's heart thudded in his chest.
"Where's the journal now?" he asked.
"Gone. Confiscated. Locked in the Vault of Silence." She snorted. "Good luck getting in there."
"Then I'll find another way."
Mira studied him. "You really want to know, don't you?"
"I have to," Calix said. "If there's even a chance I belong to something… something real, something that isn't just royal hand-me-downs—then I have to find it."
She considered him for a long moment. Then reached into her satchel and pulled out a tiny scroll.
"I wasn't going to give this to anyone," she said. "But you've got that look. That same desperate fire all the old Skyborns supposedly had." She handed him the scroll. "This is a location. Outside the school walls. Off the books. It's where the old pirates used to train. Only those who wanted to earn their wings."
Calix took it carefully. "What's there?"
"A trial," she said. "And maybe your first real lesson."
That night, Calix packed light.
He didn't tell anyone—not that anyone would care—but as he slipped past the school's edge and into the cold, star-choked sky, he felt something shift inside him.
Not fear.Not doubt.But momentum.
He wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was chasing something.A legacy.A truth.A name worth carrying.
Calix Skyborn.
It didn't sound so impossible anymore.