I didn't sleep after returning from the chamber beneath the library.
Sleep was a luxury. A permission. And tonight, it felt like a lie I couldn't afford.
The golden blood had dried against my palm, leaving behind a crusted map of something I didn't understand. When I pressed my fingers to it, it pulsed once. Just once. But that was enough to remind me this body was no longer entirely mine.
Or maybe it never had been.
The Forgotten House hadn't tried to stop me when I left. They'd simply watched as I ascended the stone steps, as if they already knew what I'd do next. They weren't seeking followers.
They were waiting for something. Or someone.
And somehow, I was part of that plan.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror as morning light bled through the window's frostbitten glass. My golden eyes stared back, unmoving. Tired, but sharp.
I didn't look like a villain.
But villains never do.
⸻
"Today's lesson," Professor Seravin murmured, "is about illusions."
He stood before the class, thin as a blade, robed in something that shimmered between form and shadow. His voice was too soft for the size of the room, but everyone still heard it. That was the kind of man Seravin was.
"You will learn not how to cast illusions, but how to see through them."
He turned, slowly, and looked directly at me.
"Because the most dangerous thing in this world is not power," he said. "It's believing something false is true."
I didn't blink.
I knew that lesson already.
He motioned with two fingers, and the room shifted.
Not the air. Not the walls. The room. Reality itself rippled like a reflection in water, and suddenly we were standing in a desert, sunless and wide. Strange statues jutted from the sand—monsters, warriors, saints. All eroded. Forgotten.
"Each of you must find what is real," Seravin said. "Only then can you return."
I stepped forward without waiting.
The illusion felt like a memory. Not mine, but someone's. The sand crunched beneath my boots. The wind sang in a language I didn't know, but somehow understood.
Around me, the other students wandered, unsure. Some shouted. One boy collapsed, sobbing.
They didn't realize what this was.
Not just a test.
It was a trap meant to reveal who you were. What you feared.
And I…
I feared the truth.
So I stopped searching for what was real.
And started searching for what I wanted to believe.
There. A door. Half-buried beneath the sand, carved into the base of a ruined statue. I stepped toward it and reached out. My hand passed through.
A false door.
But the statue—it was crying.
Stone tears streaked its face. Why?
I placed my palm against its chest.
It pulsed.
Real.
The illusion cracked around me like a mirror under pressure, and then—
The desert was gone.
I stood alone in the classroom.
Seravin smiled.
The others hadn't returned yet.
"You didn't look for what was safe," he said.
"I looked for what made sense."
He tilted his head. "No. You looked for what felt wrong. That is where the truth hides. Always."
⸻
I wasn't alone when I returned to my tower.
Caidros stood in the hall outside, arms crossed, back against the wall.
"You've been quiet," he said without looking up.
"I've been thinking."
"Dangerous habit."
"I don't have many safe ones."
He pushed off the wall and walked with me to my door.
"What happened under the library?"
I hesitated.
He saw it.
"They approached you too," I said.
His eyes flicked toward me. Sharp. Calculating.
"I turned them down."
"Why?"
"Because they want revolution. And I'm not done surviving the old world yet."
I stepped into the room, but didn't close the door.
He lingered.
"Be careful, Ael," he said, voice low. "People like us, we don't get to make mistakes."
"I don't make mistakes," I said.
"I know," he muttered. "That's what scares me."
⸻
The academy's halls were colder the next day.
Winter was approaching fast, and with it came silence. The kind of silence that suggested things were being hidden. Moved. Buried.
The professors spoke more carefully. Even the Heralds, once so proud and loud, now walked with hushed steps and eyes that checked corners.
Something was happening.
And I wasn't the only one who noticed.
At lunch, I found a note beneath my tray.
No signature. No seal.
Just a line, written in jagged ink:
"The Hollow are moving again. Your blood is a signal."
The Hollow.
I'd heard that name once before. In Ravianne's study, whispered between sips of wine.
"A kingdom that doesn't wear crowns," she'd said. "A graveyard that walks."
They weren't a nation. Not anymore.
They were a belief.
A threat that came when empires got too arrogant.
And apparently, they knew about me.
⸻
I spent the evening in the library, avoiding the gaze of the sentient statues and warded shelves. Deep in the forbidden wing, I found an old journal with half its pages burned away.
Its cover was cracked black leather, held together by wire.
Inside, a passage caught my eye:
"We followed the blood trail. It glowed gold, not red. Not human.
We sealed it beneath the mountain. Buried it under false history.
But it sings in the dark. It dreams in chains. And when it wakes,
nothing of this world will remain unchanged."
The entry was unsigned.
I read it three times.
And each time, the shadows around me inched closer.
⸻
Back in my room, I opened the window.
The wind cut deep. I didn't care.
I leaned out slightly, feeling the chill bite into my skin.
Then I whispered another poem.
I didn't know why. I just needed to hear the sound of something true.
"Chains of bone and wings of ash,
Memory drowned in blood's own flash.
Beneath the stone, beneath the scream,
The monster waits inside the dream."
The moment I spoke the last word, the shadows answered.
But not just with movement.
They spoke.
A voice. A real one this time.
No language I recognized, yet I understood every syllable.
"Awaken."
I stepped back. Slowly.
The window slammed shut on its own.
And in the frost left behind on the glass, a shape had formed.
Not a symbol.
Not a sigil.
A face.
Mine.
But not me.
Older. Crueler. Eyes burning like twin suns.
He didn't move.
But I knew what he meant.
I was no longer dreaming of the future.
I was remembering it.