The Trial was over. The questions weren't.
Caelum sat alone beneath the morning sun, his legs dangling off the edge of the Arcanum's southern terrace. From this height, the kingdom stretched into a haze of blue and green—so vast, so far, that it felt like it didn't belong to him at all.
His hand touched his chest, where the sigil had burned through his skin just days ago.
Now it lay quiet. No glow. No whisper. No promise.
It felt like silence pretending not to listen.
Behind him, the sounds of the academy filled the wind—Etherion chants in the courtyard below, the clang of reinforced steel from the Vitaleian ring. Life went on as though nothing had changed.
But everything had.
"You always come here when you want to disappear."
Caelum looked up.
Rheia stood behind him, hair pinned back with bone clasps, her expression unreadable. She wore her robe slung half off her shoulder, her arms folded around a small satchel of parchment scrolls.
He didn't reply.
She sat beside him, setting the satchel down with care. The breeze caught the edge of one scroll and teased it loose; she tucked it back with a practiced hand.
He glanced sideways. "You ever feel like they're all pretending none of it happened?"
She followed his gaze to the horizon. "They are. It's easier."
"And you?"
She was quiet a long moment. "I have questions. But no answers yet."
They didn't speak for a while.
Rheia unwrapped a folded napkin and handed him a still-warm flatbread—stolen from the mess hall, judging by the ragged bite taken from one corner.
He took it without thanks. She didn't expect any.
This—quiet moments, unsaid kindnesses—was becoming a habit between them.
"I can't feel it anymore," he said after a while. "The sigil. It's just…gone quiet."
"Not gone," Rheia murmured. "Just sleeping. Like memory. Like grief."
She looked at him, eyes softer than usual.
"You're not the same anymore. You know that, right?"
He thought of the glyphs, the trial, the voices that weren't his. The girl in the dream. The star that watched.
"I don't know who I am anymore."
"Good," she said, and smiled—sharp but not unkind. "That's the first honest thing you've said all week."
The message came that evening. No sender name, just a strip of parchment under his door, marked in the stylized glyph of a moon.
Meet me. East sparring ground. Don't bring her.
Caelum knew the handwriting.
Serapha was already waiting when he arrived.
She stood in the center of the sparring circle like a shadow carved from bronze, her coat thrown over a nearby rack, twin braid-lines tracing her spine like scars. The training ring was empty save for her and the wind.
"Late," she said without turning.
"You didn't give a time."
"If you were ready, you'd have known."
He stepped inside the ring. "So this is another test?"
She turned then. Her eyes, rimmed with gold mana-tint, fixed on him. They held no pity.
"No," she said. "This is survival."
Serapha didn't fight to prove a point. She fought to teach one.
The first blow sent him skidding across the ring. The second knocked the breath from his chest. She struck with precision—nothing wasted, nothing showy.
No magic. Not yet.
Only movement. Footwork. Breath. Will.
"You're too heavy on your left," she called. "Because you're hiding something."
He spat dirt, rose. "Hiding what?"
"Fear."
Another strike. His forearm flared in pain.
"You flinch when you reach for your power. You hesitate—because it's not yours yet. So you wait for permission."
She moved again—graceful, brutal.
"Stop waiting."
When the lesson was over, he could barely stand.
She handed him a waterskin, watched as he drank without speaking.
"You asked me once who Elarion was," she said.
He nodded, still catching his breath.
"He was a myth who tried to make himself real. And now… pieces of him live in people like you."
"You think I'm him?"
"No. I think you carry what he couldn't finish. And that scares the ones in power."
Her expression shifted then—briefly. A flicker of something warmer beneath the soldier's mask.
"I've seen what happens to people who carry other people's ghosts. You either become the memory, or the world erases you with it."
Caelum lowered the waterskin. "And what do you think I'll become?"
Serapha paused.
"I think," she said quietly, "you're still writing that answer."
That night, Caelum lay in bed, too sore to sleep.
Through the narrow window, a single star burned too brightly to ignore.
He closed his eyes.
And in the dream, she came again—the silver-haired girl.
No sound. No footsteps. Only presence, like memory wearing a face.
She reached toward him, not to touch, but to offer something. A thread. A name.
Not his.
But one he was meant to remember.