By the time morning came, the frost on the window had melted.
But the face it left behind still lingered—in my thoughts, in the space behind my eyes when I blinked. My reflection had no right to look so unfamiliar. That version of me—the one staring from the other side of the glass—didn't just feel older. It felt used. Worn like a blade that had tasted too much blood and forgotten what it was supposed to protect.
It wasn't a prophecy.
It was a memory waiting to return.
⸻
Classes that day blurred.
Seravin's lecture on the ethics of resurrection, the dueling drills in shadow-forged arenas, even the heady scent of alchemical ink in Theory of Wards—all of it passed through me like wind through broken glass.
Not because I wasn't paying attention.
Because I was listening for something else.
The tower was whispering again.
It had started with the walls. Barely a breath at first. Just a strange pressure behind my ears, like sound with no voice. Then came the shiver beneath my skin when I passed certain corridors, the ones with cracked runes or older bricks veined in obsidian.
Now, it was speaking with intention.
As I stepped into the southern stairwell, the air shifted. The torches dimmed. My golden eyes adjusted immediately.
That's when I heard it.
"Ael."
Not my name shouted. Not even spoken aloud.
It threaded itself into my thoughts. Soft, inquisitive, like a question made of smoke.
I paused mid-step.
"Ael."
This time, it came from beneath.
Below the tower. Below the mountain.
Below the place even the shadows pretend doesn't exist.
⸻
I didn't go straight there.
Even I knew better than that.
First, I visited the library. Not the main wing—too many eyes. I returned to the Forbidden Annex, hidden behind illusionary shelves and scentless firelight. The place where the books read you more than you read them.
I looked for one thing: tower history. Architectural maps, maybe. Construction records.
Instead, I found a record dated "Before Obsidian." The paper crumbled when I touched it, but the ink glowed faintly, stubbornly clinging to life.
"They built the foundation atop a ruin older than the empire itself.
A gate sealed in bone, a well of forgotten things.
The spire above exists to contain what slumbers beneath."
A map followed. Barely legible. Half-erased. But one path remained clear.
A spiral staircase. No doors. No windows. Just descent.
And the note beneath it:
"Only one with the blood of ash may enter and return unchanged."
Ash. Not flame. Not fire.
Ash.
Fallen.
⸻
I made my way back to the upper towers, waiting for the school to sleep.
Even at Obsidian Academy, nightfall was the only time the wards weakened. Not gone—never gone. But tired, like ancient eyes that blinked for just a moment too long.
I slipped through shadows.
Not magically. Not yet. Just movement practiced in silence, in hunger. Like I was back on Earth again, ducking between alleyways to avoid drones during a city-wide scan.
The staircase was real.
I found it behind a wall that didn't hum like the rest of the stone. A section of masonry that felt… mute. Dead.
I placed my hand against it.
The moment my golden blood surged beneath my skin, the wall dissolved into mist.
And I stepped through.
⸻
It wasn't stairs waiting for me.
It was a hall of mirrors.
I stopped cold.
Hundreds of tall, narrow panes, each one framed in ancient silver, lined a corridor that stretched impossibly far in both directions. Some mirrors were cracked. Others fogged. And some… some moved.
Not reflections. Not tricks of light.
People.
Walking. Breathing. Staring directly at me.
Different versions of me.
Ael in armor. Ael with wings. Ael wearing a crown made of bones. Ael with no eyes.
All of them watching.
But only one moved in sync with me.
I focused on him.
He didn't blink. Didn't smirk. He simply raised a hand and pointed—
Down.
I obeyed.
⸻
The corridor narrowed until the walls became roots, gnarled and blackened, pulsing with a faint red glow. At the end stood a door.
Not grand.
Not ominous.
Just wood. Iron-banded. Ancient.
I touched the handle. It was warm.
I opened it—
—and stepped into a memory that wasn't mine.
⸻
It was a battlefield.
Sky choked with ash. Smoke coiled around bodies like mourning veils. Blades lay half-buried in mud stained gold. And in the center, a man stood with wings torn and blood on his lips.
He looked like me.
But his eyes… weren't golden.
They were empty.
Around him stood nine figures.
Not humans. Not angels. Something in between. Some were beautiful in a way that hurt to look at. Others were monstrous and regal, crowned with teeth and eyes that dripped molten light.
The man—myself—spoke.
"I did not fall. I chose."
The nine did not answer.
One simply raised a hand.
A black flame surged forward.
And everything turned to ruin.
⸻
I collapsed to my knees. The vision tore itself free from my mind like it had claws.
My fingers were shaking.
But I understood now.
This wasn't just about power.
It was about memory.
Blood carries more than magic. It carries history.
The Fallen bloodline wasn't cursed.
It was sentenced.
And I was the next chapter.
⸻
I left the mirrors behind.
Returned to the tower in silence.
When I arrived at my room, there was someone waiting for me.
Not Ravianne. Not Caidros.
Her.
Lady Ysara Thorne.
The Headmaster's personal envoy.
Draped in silver-veined robes, eyes like frozen lakes.
She didn't knock. She didn't sit.
She simply said, "You've been noticed."
I raised an eyebrow. "By who?"
"Not who, Ael. What."
She stepped forward, gaze narrowing.
"You walked the Mirror Path. That place sees possibility, not prophecy. Every version of you that could exist, that has ever existed… saw you back."
I didn't answer.
She smiled, just faintly.
"You are not safe anymore."
"Was I ever?"
"No," she said. "But now, neither are we."
⸻
That night, I dreamed again.
But this time, I wasn't alone.
The other Aels—winged, crowned, broken, monstrous—stood in a circle around me.
And one stepped forward.
He knelt, looked up, and whispered,
"You were never meant to follow their path."
"You were meant to end it."