Lyra's POV
"Wait!"
My shout echoed across the courtyard as Professor Winters pressed the dark blade closer to my grandmother's throat.
"I'll do it," I said desperately. "I'll break the seals. Just don't hurt her. Please."
"Lyra, no!" My grandmother's voice rang out strong despite her terror. "Don't you dare give them what they want!"
Professor Winters smiled coldly. "How touching. But I'm afraid it's not quite that simple." She gestured, and the robed figures forced my grandmother to her knees. "You see, we need to make sure you're properly motivated. Words are cheap. But pain? Pain is honest."
She nodded to one of her followers.
The robed figure raised his hand, and lightning crackled from his fingertips—straight at my grandmother.
"NO!" I screamed, but I was too far away, too slow—
Kael appeared beside my grandmother in a blink of darkness, his void magic absorbing the lightning. The attack dissipated harmlessly into his shadows.
"Bad move," Kael said quietly, and there was murder in his voice.
"Kael Voidstrider," Professor Winters said, unbothered. "Always playing hero. Did you forget we outnumber you twenty to one?"
"Did you forget I don't need even odds to win?"
The air around Kael turned black as midnight. His power rolled out in waves that made students stumble backward. I'd seen him use void magic before, but this was different—this was fury given form.
"Get the students inside!" I shouted at nearby professors who weren't with the Covenant. "NOW!"
They sprang into action, herding panicking students toward the buildings. But hundreds remained trapped, too scared to move or blocked by Covenant members.
Lyra, the Codex spoke urgently in my mind. You cannot break the seals. If all seven fall, billions will die.
Then what am I supposed to do? Let them kill my grandmother?
There is another way. But you must trust me. You must see what I need to show you.
"I don't have time for lessons right now!"
Make time. Or everyone dies anyway.
Professor Winters raised her voice above the chaos. "Enough games! Lyra Ashford, you have until I count to three to start walking toward me, or your grandmother dies. Voidstrider can't protect her from all of us at once."
On cue, ten more Covenant members surrounded Kael and my grandmother, their hands glowing with deadly spells.
Kael met my eyes across the courtyard. He gave a tiny shake of his head—don't do it—but I could see the calculation in his expression. Even he couldn't fight off that many at once while protecting someone else.
"One!" Professor Winters called.
Trust me, the Codex pleaded. Let me show you the truth. It will only take seconds in the real world. Time moves differently in vision-space.
"Two!"
I had no choice. I had to trust something, someone, or we'd all die anyway.
I closed my eyes and opened my mind to the Codex completely.
The world disappeared.
---
I stood in a place between places—a void filled with swirling stars and impossible colors. The Codex materialized beside me, no longer just a voice but a shimmering figure made of living constellations.
"Finally," it said. "Now watch. And understand."
The stars rearranged themselves into a vision.
I saw a younger version of the Academy, centuries ago. Seven figures stood in a circle—men and women in robes marked with the same symbols now on my skin. The Primordial Architects.
"Your ancestors," the Codex explained. "The first Ciphers. They discovered dimensions filled with raw creation magic—power beyond imagining. But such power was too dangerous. It drove people mad, twisted them into monsters, shattered entire worlds."
I watched as the Architects performed an enormous ritual, creating seven massive seals. Each seal locked away a dimension of Primordial Magic.
"For seventeen generations, your family has guarded these seals," the Codex continued. "Each generation produces one Keeper—someone strong enough to maintain the locks, wise enough to resist the magic's call."
The vision shifted forward in time. I saw my parents now, young and in love, standing in a laboratory beneath the Academy. My mother was pregnant.
"They knew you would be the next Keeper," the Codex said. "But they also knew the Eclipse Covenant was hunting for you."
I watched as dark figures attacked the lab. My father fought them off with brilliant combat magic while my mother clutched her pregnant belly, her face determined.
"They're not going to stop," my father said in the vision. "They'll hunt our child forever."
"Then we hide her," my mother replied. "We seal her powers so completely that she appears ordinary. They'll never suspect."
"It will hurt her. She'll grow up thinking she's weak."
"Better weak and alive than powerful and dead." My mother's eyes filled with tears. "She'll understand someday. She has to."
The vision blurred forward. I saw myself as a baby, crying in my mother's arms while my father drew glowing symbols in the air.
"This will protect you, little one," my mother whispered, kissing my forehead. "When the time comes, you'll be strong. Stronger than any of us. But until then, stay hidden. Stay safe."
The sealing ritual began. I watched my baby-self scream as the power was locked away, buried so deep it would take seventeen years to naturally resurface.
But then something went wrong.
The Eclipse Covenant attacked during the ritual. My parents fought desperately, but there were too many enemies. I watched my mother hand baby-me to an older woman—my grandmother—and whisper urgent instructions.
"Take her far from here. Tell her we died. Keep her hidden until she's ready."
"But you'll die if you stay!" my grandmother protested.
"We die either way," my father said grimly. "This way, our daughter lives. GO!"
My grandmother fled with baby-me while my parents turned to face their attackers. The last thing I saw was them holding hands, their magic blazing bright as they cast one final spell—destroying the laboratory and everyone in it.
Almost everyone.
One figure survived the blast, stumbling from the wreckage. As he looked up, I saw his face clearly.
Headmaster Aldric Graves.
He'd been there. He'd survived. Which meant—
"He was part of the attack," I breathed. "The Headmaster. He's been with the Eclipse Covenant since the beginning."
"Yes," the Codex confirmed. "He orchestrated your parents' deaths. And he's been waiting for you to activate me ever since. Everything—the scholarship bringing you to this Academy, Cassia's betrayal forcing you toward the Forbidden Archives, even the timing of the attacks—all designed to push you to awaken."
My mind reeled. "But why? Why not just kill me?"
"Because only a Keeper can voluntarily open the seals. Force won't work. The magic requires willing cooperation from someone with Cipher blood." The Codex's form pulsed with urgency. "That's why they're threatening your grandmother. They need you desperate enough, scared enough, to choose saving one person over saving the world."
The vision shifted one last time. I saw the three broken seals—cracked and leaking darkness. Then I saw the four remaining seals, still holding strong.
But I also saw something else. Ghostly figures trapped within the sealed dimensions, screaming silently. Thousands of them. Souls that had been caught when the dimensions were locked away.
One figure stood out from the rest—a small girl with Kael's dark hair and eyes. Aria.
"His sister," I whispered. "She's really in there."
"Many souls are trapped in the broken dimensions. Aria's is one of them. If all the seals break and the dimensions collapse fully, every trapped soul will be destroyed forever." The Codex touched my shoulder gently. "But there is a way to save them. A way to save your grandmother AND stop the Covenant."
"How?"
"You must become the Seal itself. Bond so deeply with me that you can repair the broken seals from the inside. Navigate the dimensions, rescue the trapped souls, and strengthen the locks permanently." The Codex paused. "But the bonding required will change you forever. You'll be connected to the dimensional barriers for the rest of your life. Part human, part magic, never fully either one again."
The weight of that choice crushed down on me. Become something other than human, or let everyone die.
"Will it hurt?"
"More than anything you've experienced."
"Will I survive?"
"Probably. The Architects did. But some of them went mad from the connection."
Of course. Nothing could be simple.
"How long do I have to decide?"
"About three more seconds in the real world," the Codex said. "Professor Winters is at 'three' and your grandmother's blade is descending."
---
I slammed back into my body.
"THREE!" Professor Winters shouted, and the dark blade swung down toward my grandmother's neck.
I threw out my hand instinctively, and power EXPLODED from me.
Time froze.
Everyone in the courtyard stopped moving—students mid-scream, Kael mid-spell, Professor Winters mid-strike. Even the blade hung motionless an inch from my grandmother's throat.
Everyone except one person.
Headmaster Graves walked calmly through the frozen scene, his hands clasped behind his back, a pleasant smile on his grandfatherly face.
"Impressive," he said, stopping in front of me. "Time manipulation already? You're advancing faster than any Keeper in history." His smile widened into something predatory. "That will make breaking you so much more satisfying."
My marks blazed with light, responding to the threat. "You killed my parents."
"I liberated them from their burden. They were fools, hoarding power that could remake the world into something perfect." He circled me slowly. "Just like you're being foolish now. You can't save everyone, Lyra. You're going to have to choose."
"I choose to stop you."
"With what? Your half-learned magic? Your broken trust? Your grief?" He leaned closer. "I've been alive for three hundred years, child. I've killed seventeen Keepers before you. What makes you think you'll be any different?"
The words hit like physical blows. Seventeen Keepers. Seventeen members of my family, murdered by this monster.
"I'm different," I said, my voice shaking with fury, "because I'm done playing by your rules."
I released the time freeze.
The blade completed its swing—but my grandmother wasn't there anymore. I'd used the frozen moment to swap her position with a training dummy from across the courtyard.
The blade cut through empty air.
Professor Winters stumbled in confusion. The Covenant members shouted in alarm. Students gasped.
And I rose into the air, my marks covering my entire body now, my eyes blazing with silver-white light.
"Listen closely," I said, my voice carrying across the entire courtyard with supernatural clarity. "I am Lyra Ashford, Cipher of the Eighteenth Generation, Keeper of the Seven Seals. And I'm declaring war on the Eclipse Covenant."
Power radiated from me in waves that made the ground shake. "You want me to break the seals? You want to use me as a weapon? Fine. But I'm not YOUR weapon. I'm not anyone's weapon. I'm the person who decides what happens next."
Headmaster Graves smiled wider. "Brave speech. But you're still surrounded, outnumbered, and out of options."
"Actually," a new voice said from the Academy entrance, "she has more options than you think."
Everyone turned.
A woman walked into the courtyard—tall and powerful, with my same eyes and my same birthmark visible on her wrist. Her presence radiated authority and magic so strong it made the air shimmer.
My mother.
Alive.
She met my shocked gaze and smiled sadly. "Hello, sweetheart. I'm sorry it took me seventeen years to come home."