The light that spilled through the ancient dome of the Wellspring Library wasn't sunlight.
It shimmered—like the glow of memory. It filtered through the leaves of the massive tree at the library's heart, each leaf etched with faint runes in a language no scholar could fully decipher.
Kairo stood beneath it, not moving. His name—freshly burned into the bark—still pulsed with a quiet, golden warmth. Not like fire, but like a lantern's breath in deep fog.
> "Your name shouldn't be there," Lyra whispered, her voice barely audible over the hush of the library's wards. "That tree only responds to... to initiates, ascendants, saints. And only when they've been judged."
He said nothing.
Judged?
If the tree judged him worthy, it was broken.
Or worse—it remembered something it was never meant to.
---
The whispers began an hour later.
Not outside.
Not in the wind or in the stone.
But inside his bones.
Soft. Elongated. Ancient.
> "You are not sealed. You are... forgotten."
Kairo gripped the iron railing of the west wing corridor, knuckles pale. He slowed his breath. Counted the steps between torch sconces. Anything to ground himself.
The voice wasn't his.
But it knew him.
And that was more dangerous than an enemy's blade.
---
Flashback: Years ago, under the Northern Sky
> "You must never speak the names you remember," his mother had once said. "Not even in dreams. Some things wake when they are remembered."
> "But how can I forget what's inside me?"
She had touched his forehead, softly.
> "That's the curse you carry, Kairo. Not that you were sealed—but that your memory... isn't only yours."
---
Now, in the present, he reached his dormitory door just as the sky began to thunder.
Not lightning.
Not rain.
Just a dull, echoing thump from above. As if a giant heart was beating in the clouds.
And then silence.
He turned the handle and entered.
---
The room was dim, lined with old tomes, suspended lanterns, and a single frost-touched window. Most students decorated their rooms with elemental crystals or floating lamps.
Kairo's only ornament was an old, cracked mirror nailed to the opposite wall—its reflection warped, and its surface etched with circular symbols.
He locked the door.
And waited.
Three seconds.
Then ten.
Then—
> Knock.
He didn't move.
Another knock.
> "Kairo?" came Lyra's voice, hesitant.
He opened the door.
Her eyes were wide. She looked over her shoulder, twice.
> "Something's wrong. The head librarian... he collapsed. Said something about a Third Name being written. And then—he bled from the eyes."
Kairo stepped aside.
She entered, shutting the door quickly behind her.
> "I heard your name," she said, voice low. "In the dreamscape. The Collective Vision."
That stopped him.
He turned.
> "You entered the dreamscape again?"
> "I didn't mean to. It pulled me in. And your name was... echoing."
She hesitated. Looked him dead in the eye.
> "Kairo... there were others in the dream."
> "What did they look like?"
> "They didn't have faces."
He closed his eyes for a long moment.
Faceless dream-walkers. Collective visions. These weren't isolated events. The cracking seals weren't only removing his limits—they were awakening echoes. Parts of the world that had gone silent for centuries.
And if the Third Seal had cracked—
Then others would start to remember him too.
---
Elsewhere...
A continent away, in a cathedral made of black glass and chained shadows, a scribe was jolted from his meditation.
The ink in his pen bubbled.
And Kairo's name appeared in the margins of a book that hadn't accepted new entries in two hundred years.
The scribe dropped the pen.
> "He's alive," he whispered. "The Nameless Voice has spoken again."
---
Back at the academy...
Kairo sat cross-legged on the floor, his fingers brushing the glyphs carved into the cracked mirror. His eyes were closed. His breathing, slow.
Lyra watched, arms crossed tightly, nervously glancing at the window.
> "You're not human, are you?" she asked, finally.
Kairo didn't respond.
Not because he didn't want to—but because he didn't have a true answer.
What was he?
He was sealed before he was born.
He had memories he never lived, languages he never learned, and a voice that could break divine bindings.
And now... he had a name etched into the Wellspring Tree.
A tree that refused even gods unless they paid the price.
> "I'm not sure what I am," he finally said. "But I know what I'm becoming."
Lyra's expression tightened.
> "Then maybe... I need to decide what I am before I follow you any further."
Silence.
And then—
The mirror pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
On the third pulse, it cracked down the middle with a sharp, dry sound.
Inside the mirror, not his reflection—but a room of chains, a sigil of thorns, and an altar made of ash.
Kairo exhaled.
> "The Fourth Seal... is stirring."