The duel loomed closer with every toll of the academy's great bronze clock, its echo rolling through the sleeping courtyards like distant thunder.
But Alex wasn't in his dorm, nor was he in the training yard where most students sharpened their blades before battle.
He was walking toward silence.
The Library of the Academy of Fire stood on the far eastern edge of the campus a spire of dark stone and red glass that shimmered under the moonlight.
It was said the first Fire Mages carved it from a single volcanic monolith, then sealed their knowledge within so it would never burn again.
Now it towered before him like a sleeping giant, half-wreathed in mist.
When Alex pushed the doors open, the hinges groaned, and a wave of warm air met him thick with the scent of parchment, ash, and faint embers. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched upward into infinity, their shadows merging with the vaulted ceiling. Crystal lanterns drifted lazily between aisles, shedding soft gold light over marble floors.
Alex paused at the threshold, heart racing. He didn't belong here.
This place was for the nobles for those with family crests etched into their robes and fire in their blood. He was still the "late bloomer," the commoner who only recently awakened his flame. Yet something in him had pulled him here, stronger than fear or reason.
A whisper faint, familiar echoed inside him.
Not a voice, exactly, but an instinct.
And then, like a heartbeat, the System shimmered faintly at the edge of his vision.
[Optional Path Unlocked: Seek the Unknown.]
He swallowed hard the duel against Kaelen was at dawn mere hours away. He should have been sleeping but part of him knew that tomorrow wasn't just another test. It was the moment everyone would be watching to see if his spark was a fluke.
He needed strength.
He needed answers.
Alex walked deeper between the shelves titles etched in ancient tongues glowed faintly as he passed
"On the Shaping of Fire."
"The Bloodlines of Flame."
"Draconic Symbiosis: A Study of Bonded Souls."
All magnificent.
All beyond him.
He brushed his fingers over the spines, half in awe, half in longing. His calloused hand looked so out of place among the gilt lettering and velvet bindings. Every breath he took sounded like an intrusion in this sacred silence.
Then, a flicker of light caught his eye.
Behind a hanging tapestry one depicting a dragon coiled around a sun he noticed a faint glow, like firelight leaking through cracks.
Curiosity overcame hesitation Alex lifted the tapestry aside and found a narrow spiral staircase descending into darkness. The stone steps were worn smooth, as though countless feet had once walked them though no one had in years.
He hesitated.
Then the System pulsed again.
[Hidden Location Detected: Sub-Archive, Restricted Access.]
[Proceed? Y/N]
He didn't answer he just began to descend.
The deeper he went, the warmer it grew the scent of burning parchment clung to the air.
Finally, the staircase ended at a round chamber small, quiet, ancient bookshelves bent under the weight of forgotten tomes. Strange sigils glowed faintly on the walls, their light breathing like embers in a dying hearth.
Alex stepped cautiously inside.
The moment his foot touched the floor, a subtle vibration rippled through the stone like a creature stirring in its sleep. His pulse spiked then the System flickered.
[Hidden Archive Acknowledges Presence.]
[Key of Recognition Not Found.]
[Limited Access Granted.]
A loud clunk echoed.
One of the shelves shifted, and a single book slid free, drifting through the air until it landed gently on a pedestal in the center of the room.
Its cover was ancient leather, cracked but still alive with faint golden light a sigil was carved into it a sun divided down the middle, one half blazing, the other swallowed by shadow.
Alex's hands trembled as he reached out.
The moment his fingertips brushed the surface, a pulse of warmth shot up his arm not the scalding pain of fire, but the steady comfort of sunlight breaking through clouds the air around him seemed to still.
The book opened itself.
Words flowed across the pages like liquid flame.
He began to read.
"When the world was first born, the flames belonged to dragons.
To wield fire was to borrow from their breath their will.
But there was one who defied this order.
The first Sun Knight, chosen not by blood, but by the light itself.
His flame was not born of lineage, but of endurance.
And so, it could never be extinguished."
Alex froze.
Chosen not by blood… but by light itself.
He read faster, breath quickening.
"The Sunlight System was his covenant the union of flame and radiance.
It does not seek the proud, nor the strong, but those who break and still rise.
It watches those who fall beneath the weight of the world,
and when the time is right… it awakens."
The words burned into him like truth long forgotten.
He could barely breathe. Sixteen years of silence, of being told he was nothing, a sparkless boy in a world of flame and now, the page whispered the reason why.
He wasn't late. He wasn't defective.
He had been chosen.
He felt tears prick his eyes, unbidden.
But before hope could bloom fully, the book turned another page on its own the ink seemed to bleed, forming new letters darker this time.
"Yet where light gathers, shadow follows.
The Sun Knight did not rise alone, nor did he fall alone.
From the ashes of light, a mirror was born .
A flame that devours rather than warms."
The air in the room shifted heat and cold at once.
A faint whisper brushed Alex's ear for a second, he thought he heard a voice low, sorrowful, almost human.
"He is coming…"
The book slammed shut.
The echo rang through the chamber like a hammer against steel. Alex staggered back, clutching his chest as if struck the sigil on the cover glowed fiercely, then faded into silence.
[New Lore Acquired: Legacy of the Sun Knight.]
[Main Quest Updated.]
[Warning: Unknown Entity Awakening — Classification: Mirrored Flame.]
He sank to his knees, heart pounding. Sweat beaded his forehead.
It wasn't just knowledge it was memory. He could feel pieces of it weaving through him, like sunlight threading into his soul.
For a heartbeat, he wasn't in the library anymore.
He was standing on a battlefield of molten stone, surrounded by warriors of flame and light. In the sky above, two dragons circled one gold, one black, their roars shaking the heavens and in the middle stood a man with his same eyes… lifting a sword that blazed like the sun.
Then, just as suddenly, it was gone.
Alex gasped and blinked. The chamber was silent again.
His breath came uneven. The vision had felt too real.
The System blinked faintly at the edge of his sight.
[Sub-Quest Unlocked: Reclaim the Lost Flame.]
[Objective: Seek the Source beneath Pyrelith.]
He looked up slowly the sigils on the walls pulsed one last time before dimming. The book had gone still, but its presence lingered like something alive, waiting.
Alex stood on trembling legs his mind raced, torn between awe and fear.
If everything he read was true, then his awakening was no accident it was the continuation of something ancient and the shadow mentioned the mirror flame that meant someone, somewhere, was awakening too.
Maybe even Kaelen.
The thought chilled him.
When he finally climbed the staircase, dawn light was seeping through the red glass windows above. The library had returned to silence, as though it had never stirred.
He stepped into the courtyard, breathing in the crisp morning air. The city beyond the walls was already stirring banners fluttering, bells chiming. The Duel of Proving would begin within the hour.
His pulse quickened, but his steps felt lighter.
For the first time in his life, Alex wasn't walking toward humiliation he was walking toward purpose.
He glanced at his hands. A faint shimmer of gold danced beneath his skin, barely visible, like sunlight beneath glass. He clenched his fists.
He remembered the last line of the book "It seeks those who fall beneath the weight of the world yet refuse to break."
He smiled faintly.
"I fell enough times," he whispered. "Now it's time to rise."
The wind carried his words away, lost among the distant toll of bells.
Somewhere deep beneath the academy, far below the chamber he had left behind, a faint light flickered to life inside a sealed crystal.
A second presence stirred soft at first, then sharper.
And as the sun broke over Pyrelith, bathing the city in gold, two Systems whispered into the dawn.
[Sunlight System: Active.]
[Mirrored Flame System: Awakening.]
Alex didn't hear it.
But the world did.
And the balance between light and flame began to shift.