---
Aether first noticed her in the Lecture of Lies.
The hall was packed with students—some human, some not entirely. The professor, a headless man in velvet robes, was scrawling impossible words across the air with a chalk that left trails of burnt smoke.
Among them sat a girl with silver hair tied loosely behind her ear. Her uniform was plain, but the look in her eyes was not. She didn't watch the professor—she watched the chalk. Not the lesson—only the mistakes it refused to admit.
Later, Aether saw her in the library, alone in the restricted wing.
She was reading three books at once, all in different languages, none of which belonged to this world. One hovered over her shoulder and flipped its own pages.
"You don't belong here," she said without looking up. "Not in the Seminary. Not in the city. Not in this version of the story."
Aether didn't pretend to misunderstand.
"You remember something you shouldn't."
"I remember a version of the world where the sky never broke, and you never came."
Her voice was calm, but her fingers trembled slightly as she turned the page.
"I died," she said, eyes still on her book. "In that version. Fire came through the ceiling during a ritual. I saw the flames freeze mid-air, like a paused lie. Then I was here. Alive again. But wrong."
Aether closed the distance between them, slowly.
"What's your name?"
"Seren Veyne. Third-tier scholar. Specializing in causality fractures and mnemonic anchors."
She looked up.
"You're the fracture, aren't you?"
He smiled faintly, like someone reading an old secret.
"I'm the consequence."
---
They met again during a lecture about gods born from doubt. This time, she sat beside him.
"I checked the records," she whispered. "There's no mention of you before this semester."
He didn't respond.
"I also saw something else. The starmap on the western spire? One of the constellations changed shape the day you arrived."
Still, he said nothing.
"So I'll ask directly," she said, voice low. "Are you even real?"
He turned to her at last.
"Not yet."
---
That night, Seren dreamed of the world ending in reverse—stars falling upward, oceans returning to the clouds, time folding in on itself like a book closing.
In the dream, she stood at the center of the sky.
Umbrael stood across from her.
And behind him… a mirror that refused to reflect anything at all.
---
To be countinue...