---
The next day brought a storm—ashen winds from the eastern ridges sweeping across the village, turning the skies a bruised gray. Calem stood beneath the overhang of Lira's cottage, cloak tight, watching the clouds twist like serpents. The world here moved oddly, like it responded to things he couldn't yet see.
Lira stepped beside him. Her silver eyes scanned the horizon.
"It's begun," she whispered.
"What has?"
"The Spiral Storm. It comes every twelve cycles. It reveals what the sun hides." She glanced at his glyph. "If you want to find a way back to your world, the ruins beneath the Vale may be your first answer."
Calem's breath caught. "You mean… someone tried?"
Lira nodded. "An Archmage. One who vanished… or transcended. His name was Vexen Starweaver."
A chill crept up Calem's spine.
Vexen. The name echoed faintly in his dreams. It hadn't belonged to a stranger.
---
That night, he prepared.
The Flamebind rune was now as natural to him as drawing breath. He had also started forming new glyphs—crude, unstable—but brimming with potential. The Archive's fragments hinted at deeper truths: glyphs could be layered, like thoughts in harmony, producing cascading magical effects.
He packed his satchel with rune-stones, a charcoal stick, food, and a vial of glowing Essentia sap Lira had gifted him—"a drop of living fire," she called it.
Then he descended into the Vale.
---
The Vale of Sleep was a canyon choked with mist. Once, Lira had told him, it was a holy site—where Magi came to dream themselves into visions, hoping to glimpse the truth of the Arcanum.
Now, it was silent.
He followed a trail of obsidian shards. Wind howled through the jagged stone arches, carrying whispers in forgotten tongues.
Eventually, he found a staircase carved into the canyon wall, half-collapsed and crawling with vines. It led deep into the earth.
Down.
Past roots.
Past bones.
Into the Ruins of Vexen.
---
The chamber at the bottom was round, enormous, like a forgotten cathedral. Pillars of fossilized glyphs spiraled to the ceiling. Floating embers hung in the air like suspended stars.
In the center was a circle of runes, ten feet wide, drawn in silver ash.
Calem stepped forward and knelt.
In the center lay a stone tablet. On it: a handprint. His size.
He touched it.
The glyph on his palm flared to life.
The runes ignited.
And the walls came alive.
Images burned into the air: maps of other worlds, constellations of impossible geometry, and—
—a portal.
A fracture in space, swirling with white fire.
And a voice, older than language, echoed through the chamber.
> To return across the void, one must be more than magus. One must become Arcane Sovereign. One must bear the True Mark.
> Only an Archmage of the Ninth Gate may part the veil of worlds.
---
The vision faded.
Calem staggered back, heart pounding.
An Archmage of the Ninth Gate.
That was the answer.
He clenched his fists. The journey would be long. The Gates were not merely levels of magic—they were transformations of being. Thresholds between what was human… and what was beyond.
But he had a direction now.
He looked back at the handprint.
One word now glowed across the stone in burning Veylin:
> Begin.
---
When Calem returned, the storm had broken.
Sunlight pierced the gray veil, casting golden rays through the sycamore branches.
Lira stood waiting.
"Well?" she asked.
He showed her the glyph on his hand. It had changed.
No longer a spiral.
Now it was a starburst—fractals branching from the center in perfect balance.
"You've seen it," she murmured. "The Path of Return."
Calem nodded. "I know what I need to do. I must become an Archmage. One of the Ninth Gate."
Lira smiled, but sadness touched her voice. "Many seek the Ninth. Few survive the Third."
"I'll go further."
She tilted her head. "Why?"
Calem looked east—toward the unknown, toward the fire, toward the truth.
"Because they're waiting," he said quietly. "My wife. My daughter. My son."
"I will tear through heaven and flame if that's what it takes to see them again."
---