The night after the tribunal, the skies refused to sleep.
Clouds hung heavy over the imperial capital like a lid upon boiling chaos. Thunder groaned in the distance, but no lightning followed. It was as if the storm, too, held its breath.
In the academy's lower sanctum—a place older than the empire itself—Riven stood before the Mirror of Veils, a relic used to gaze into soul ancestry. The chamber was quiet, but he wasn't alone.
A ripple shimmered in the air behind him.
"You shouldn't be here," said a voice that echoed with layers—one human, one not.
Riven didn't flinch. "Neither should you."
The figure stepped forward, cloaked in silver threads of forgotten dialects. It had no face, only a shifting silhouette—a fragment of the Eidolon taking form.
"You've seen only the surface of what you are," it said. "There are deeper truths. More painful lies."
Riven clenched his fists. "I don't need riddles. I need control."
The Eidolon didn't laugh. But the silence between its words felt amused. "Control is not taken. It is remembered."
Then the mirror came to life.
Light flared from its core, peeling away illusions. Riven's reflection didn't mirror him—it aged backward, down through centuries. Past lives. Each one falling like ash. A boy born blind, a soldier impaled in a war that never existed, a girl burned for truths she should not have known. They were all him.
And none of them were human.
Leila burst into the chamber, breath ragged. "Riven!"
He turned, eyes wide, haunted.
"I saw it," he whispered. "I was never born. I was made."
That same night, far beyond the academy's walls, in the desolate ruins of Othren Vale, something stirred.
A gate. Carved into obsidian. Laced with runes in a tongue even the gods had forgotten.
It opened.
Figures emerged—cloaked in veils of entropy. Their eyes bled starlight. Their mouths held no tongues. And at their center stood a woman draped in red glass.
"Sequence 7 has reactivated," she said. Her voice carried across the bones of the valley like a dirge. "The vessel has awakened."
One of the followers knelt. "Shall we prepare the Hollow Rite?"
She smiled, thin as moonlight.
"No. Let him remember first."
Back at the academy, Kael paced before the Council's sealed doors. Leila stood with him, arms crossed, gaze distant.
"He's unraveling," she said. "And it's not his fault."
Kael exhaled. "Fault doesn't matter anymore. Consequence does."
"But we have to try. If he breaks—"
"He won't just break," Kael interrupted. "He'll fracture reality itself."
Leila looked down at the golden mark slowly forming on her wrist. A bond sigil. Linked to Riven.
"We're bound now," she whispered. "If he falls—I fall with him."
Kael met her eyes. "Then I hope you're strong enough. Because the fall has already begun."
And high above the academy, where stars once danced freely, a shadow coiled around the moons.
Watching.
Waiting.
Remembering.