By the time they returned to Xihe, the academy had changed again.
Lanterns dimmed earlier. Doors were bolted during prayer hours. Instructors carried silent wards woven into their sleeves. And Kaelin's office had been moved to the lower sanctum, far from the main tower.
She paced as Tian and Elara gave their report.
"No leyline should reactivate like that," Kaelin muttered, rubbing her temple. "And that glyph you saw... that wasn't mortal craft."
Tian nodded. "It wasn't cast. It was embedded. Ancient. And alive."
Elara sat with her hands folded, knuckles pale. She hadn't spoken much since the ruins. Her eyes flicked now and then toward the far corners of the room, as if she expected something to emerge.
Kaelin's gaze narrowed. "Elara, when you touched the glyph, did you say anything?"
"No," she said quickly. "But it said something to me. In a language I don't speak."
Tian turned to her. "What did it say?"
She looked at him, voice barely a whisper. "It called me... Eleiyah."
Kaelin froze.
She moved to a scroll shelf, pulled an old tome, and opened it with trembling fingers. Pages turned in silence until she stopped at one painted in faint ink.
"The Eleiyah Protocol," Kaelin read. "A name not used for centuries. It refers to a class of celestial anchors... chosen vessels for divine harmonization. They were myths. Failures. Their minds burned from the connection."
Elara stood slowly. "You think I'm one of them?"
Kaelin didn't answer.
But the silence was heavy.
That night, Elara couldn't sleep.
The stars outside her window didn't blink. They stared. And in her dreams, a voice murmured in a tone that was both her own and not.
Eleiyah. Vessel. Beacon. You were always meant to open the path.
She woke with a gasp, fingers burning. She looked down. Her left palm bore the faint outline of the same glyph Tian had seen in the ruins.
She covered it with cloth before leaving her room.
Tian was already in the courtyard, casting glyphs in the dark. No light. No flare. Just movement, repetition, control.
She stepped beside him without a word.
He looked over, noticed her silence.
"Did it follow you?"
She nodded once. "I think it left something behind."
He reached for her hand. She hesitated. Then let him see.
The glyph shimmered faintly beneath her skin.
"It's not possession," Tian said. "It's resonance."
"You say that like it makes it better."
He traced the outline gently, and the mark pulsed once, responding to his touch. Not in defiance. In recognition.
"It knows you," Elara whispered. "And it knows me. Tian... what are we?"
Tian didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
But something inside him stirred. A memory that wasn't his. A throne made of light. A city above the clouds. A war that never ended.
Later that day, Kaelin summoned them both to the observatory. Her expression was grave.
"Someone broke into the academy vault," she said. "Only one scroll was taken. The records of the Eleiyah Protocol."
Elara stiffened. "Who would want that?"
Kaelin looked at Tian.
"Someone who doesn't want you to survive."
Just then, the bell tower rang once.
Then again.
An alarm.
A student rushed in, breathless. "Attack. Infirmary wing. Glyph traces unknown. Five adepts down."
Tian and Elara were already moving before Kaelin gave the order.
As they raced through the corridors, Elara whispered without looking at him.
"If I lose myself... stop me."
"You won't."
"But if I do—"
"I'll bring you back."
They reached the battle site. Flames curled across the ceiling. Broken glyphs glowed on the floor like shattered glass. At the center stood a figure cloaked in glass armor, skin cracked with golden light.
He turned as they arrived.
Eyes empty.
Voice flat.
"You should not have returned from the ruins. The path must remain closed."
Elara raised her palm, glyph glowing.
Tian stepped beside her, hand already drawing.
Together, they stood.
Together, they would fight.
And far above them, the stars shifted again.
Watching.
Waiting.
Marking names.
The cloaked figure moved like shattered light.
His body flickered with every step, phasing between presence and reflection. The glass armor wasn't metal it was memory. Etched with runes of command. Designed not to protect the wearer, but to trap those who dared defy what lay above.
Tian moved first.
A rapid weave of two glyphs breathform and impact designed to strike fast and disorient. The blast hit the figure squarely, but instead of breaking, the armor pulsed.
Absorbed.
Reflected.
Tian was flung backward into the far wall. Dust scattered. Elara didn't scream, didn't look she acted.
A binding sigil, reversed mid-cast, caught the attacker's foot just as he stepped forward. His leg stiffened. She twisted her wrist. The glyph snapped his body jolted sideways.
Then he turned.
And his voice echoed without breath.
"You cannot hold what was chosen. You cannot protect what is already offered."
Elara drew from her palm, forcing the celestial mark into shape. It hurt her fingers trembled, and blood beaded beneath the skin. But the glyph obeyed.
A wide arc of shielding burst between her and the enemy, not defensive, but absorbing. It hummed with unstable power.
The attacker raised his hand.
A symbol bloomed into the air jagged, cruel. Tian recognized it as a dominion sigil. Not taught. Not archived. Only seen once in a dream he could not place.
He shouted, slamming his own glyph into the stone at his feet. The floor split, air warped, and gravity bent.
The blast hit all three of them.
The attacker's armor cracked.
Elara collapsed.
Tian crawled to her side, chest heaving.
"Stay awake."
She blinked, teeth gritted. "The mark… it's spreading."
He touched her shoulder and felt it her glyph was no longer hers alone. It carried echo. Influence. A signature that wasn't mortal.
The figure rose again. Armor splintered. Flesh broken. But not defeated.
"She is the key. And you... you are the gate."
Tian stood, voice like ice. "Then strike. Let's see what happens when the heavens lose their messenger."
He did not cast a glyph.
He reached inside himself deeper than mana, beyond memory. Where instinct and inheritance slept.
And he called.
The ground trembled. Lights dimmed. Somewhere, the academy bell cracked mid-chime.
Tian's eyes lit with a color that had no name.
The attacker hesitated.
Too late.
A glyph burst from Tian's chest raw, chaotic, perfect. It struck the figure without flash or sound. He folded inward, armor fracturing like glass beneath boiling water.
Gone.
Tian fell to one knee.
Kaelin and senior adepts arrived moments later. But the danger was over.
Almost.
Elara lay still.
Her breath shallow.
The mark on her hand had grown. Its lines curled now toward her wrist, whispering through her veins. She stirred weakly as Kaelin touched her forehead.
"This isn't a curse," Kaelin murmured. "It's a binding. But it's incomplete."
Tian looked at her, eyes hollow. "They're trying to turn her into something else."
Kaelin nodded. "Not trying. Preparing."
Elara opened her eyes, barely.
"I'm still me," she whispered.
Tian held her hand.
"For now," he said. "And as long as you're you, I won't let them take another step."
Kaelin's gaze turned to the cracked floor.
"There are no more myths. No more legends. Only facts we were too afraid to record."
She looked at Tian. Then Elara.
"Both of you have crossed into a place the heavens once locked away. They'll keep sending more. Not envoys. Not soldiers. Instruments. And next time, we may not survive."
Outside, the wind howled as if the sky had something to say but lacked the words.
And in the highest reaches of the heavens, a record was marked.
Two anomalies. One gate. One key.
The world had shifted.
And love now lived in the eye of a storm.