Dawn came like breath over glass—cold, faint, and cracking the silence.
Aetherveil Academy had been sealed for nearly a full day, but the quiet was no comfort. The resonance detectors still sputtered across the east courtyard, where the Weave had been torn and stitched shut by something none of them understood. Cleanup crews sifted through scorched stone and snapped sigils. Watchers in black robes combed for clues, whispering reports to unseen superiors.
But the boy who caused it all sat very still, in a quiet room beneath the chapel wing.
Caelum.
His hands trembled faintly. Not from fear, not even from exhaustion—but from a strange kind of dislocation, as though the world he knew had taken three steps away and refused to come back.
He could still feel the resonance in his chest, humming like a second heartbeat.
They hadn't named his condition.
They couldn't.
No core formation had ever done what his had.
Professor Verrian's office smelled of old incense and older arguments.
"He doesn't match any known path," she said again, voice clipped as she paced.
"You said that yesterday," said the Crown's liaison, a tall woman with a hidden crest stitched into her collar. "What I'm asking is whether he's safe."
Verrian scoffed. "Safe? He's contained. That's not the same thing."
The liaison didn't blink. "The Crown wants a full report. If we're seeing the emergence of a forgotten channel—"
"Then we bury it." Verrian's voice went colder. "You think the nobility wants that kind of instability crawling back from the Age of Sundering?"
"No," the liaison said, "but they might need it. If the Hollow Choir is moving."
The silence that followed was heavy. Verrian sat down.
"You believe the Choir is still active."
"I believe," the liaison said carefully, "that we are long past the point of assuming they're not."
Verrian glanced toward the sealed window, where Caelum's file sat unopened.
"Then we have a much larger problem."
The winds of the outer isles howled like a beast that had forgotten its voice.
A ship cut across the waves below moonlight, its sails dark and ragged, its hull charred at the edges like it had survived fire—or birthed it. On the aft deck stood a girl in layered black robes, wind tugging at her long silver hair. Her eyes were hidden beneath a thin veil. Her hands were bare.
Serapha.
Once a daughter of nobility. Once the inheritor of the Opaline Choir. Once a guardian of things long buried beneath ash.
Now? She was none of those things.
Her name had been struck from the records of the capital. Her lineage severed. Her channels collapsed.
She'd done it herself.
And yet, when she looked into the storm tonight, her heart thrummed with quiet certainty.
Something had awakened.
Something she'd hoped wouldn't.
"Landfall in twenty, milady," came a voice from behind.
Serapha turned. A man with one arm stood there, wrapped in the sigil robes of the Black Tide mercenaries. His voice was respectful, but cautious—as if unsure whether she was guest or warden.
"Do not call me that," she said softly.
The man nodded. "You'll want to disembark fast. The Academy's wards don't like outsiders."
Serapha smiled without humor. "They'll like me even less."
She stepped past him, gripping the rail. Somewhere ahead, in the mist-cloaked cliffs of the Aetherveil, lay the school she'd once been rejected by.
Now she was going back.
But not for revenge.
For him.
Rheia watched Caelum eat slowly—one spoon of broth every five minutes, each one an act of will. His body was recovering faster than expected, but his mind… that was a harder thing to mend.
"So," she said gently, "we're just ignoring the part where you collapsed the Weave and rewrote your soul?"
He gave a weak smirk. "Seems easier that way."
"You're impossible."
"I try."
But she could see the change in him—he was quieter now, not out of shyness, but awareness. As if the veil had lifted on something larger and he wasn't sure whether to be terrified or grateful.
And she wasn't sure which reaction was right either.
"You heard anything?" he asked.
"Only whispers. The instructors are fighting. Verrian's advocating for you. Others want you expelled. Or worse."
"Executed?"
"No," she said carefully. "Not unless you lose control again."
"Right."
"But don't." Her voice cracked slightly. "Don't make me watch that again."
Caelum looked up, eyes softening. "I won't. Not if I can help it."
She didn't answer.
Because they both knew it might not be his choice.
Far below, in one of the Aetherveil's sealed research vaults, a man in a robe of ink-black feathers pulled out an old diagram.
It depicted a sphere split in two halves—one white, one black—with a spiral of gold threading between. The old symbol of Equinox.
He lit the edge of the page with green flame and whispered to the shadow beside him.
"Prepare the others. One of the Boundless has reawakened."
From the shadow, a voice replied:
"Then the Echo Crown will stir soon."
Serapha arrived beneath the eastern cliff spire just before dusk. Her robes were plain now, her veil thick. She wore no crest, no glyphs, no sigils—only a single ring with the symbol of the Forgotten Choir.
The gatekeeper didn't recognize her. That was the plan.
But the moment she stepped into the first barrier ward, the stone beneath her feet thrummed.
A bell rang inside the tower.
Magic flared.
And the sky cracked with violet light.
Serapha looked up, unmoved.
"They remember me," she whispered.
Then, with a flick of her wrist, she cut through the barrier with nothing—no glyph, no chant, no tool.
The ward fell.
A dozen mages scrambled from the courtyard.
But Serapha just walked forward.
In the infirmary, Caelum jolted up in bed.
He hadn't felt anything in hours—just that quiet resonance from within, gently swirling, waiting.
But now? Now something had touched it.
Something familiar.
He staggered to his feet. Rheia tried to stop him, but he pushed forward.
"Caelum, wait! You're not ready!"
He didn't answer.
He walked out the door, down the stairwell, past two startled guards and out into the courtyard.
Where the moon had just broken through the clouds—
—and Serapha was standing at the center, her veil fluttering, eyes hidden, but unmistakable.
Caelum froze.
And her voice broke the air like a blade:
"You opened it, didn't you?"