The moment Lucy touched the spiral glyph on the observatory wall, the world blinked.
Just for a second.
The light changed. The air stilled. She saw the entire room shift — the books on the shelf were gone, the curtains missing, the moon in a different position. Then it was all back. The moment passed like a breath. And yet, it lingered.
She stood frozen, hand still on the cold stone.
"Did I just… dream while standing?" she whispered.
No answer came. Only silence.
But deep in the back of her mind, something moved — like a curtain lifting to reveal a scene she hadn't rehearsed.
---
Back in the training sanctuary, Frank, Neolin, and the others were gathered around the remaining fragments of the strange glyph that had appeared beneath Kitty's hand earlier.
"We've trained to recognize elemental scripts, Triggsen variations, and even old Palecto markings," Frank said. "But this… this was something else."
Neolin leaned closer to the broken image projected above the stone. "It's one of the Seven Forbidden Glyphs."
Tom crossed his arms. "You keep saying that, but what does that even mean? Who forbade them?"
Jack answered before Neolin could. "The Triggsen Elders. During the Sealing War. They discovered seven glyphs that couldn't be controlled by will, emotion, or logic. They responded to only one thing…"
"Existence," Neolin finished. "They don't read your intent. They read what you are."
Susan glanced toward the door. "Then why would Kitty have one?"
"She may be a carrier," Neolin said. "Not a wielder. The difference is—"
"Wait," Frank interrupted, frowning. "Where's Lucy?"
---
Lucy was outside again.
She didn't remember walking.
One minute she had been staring at the glyph on the observatory wall, and the next… she was standing in the Grand Garden Hall. Alone.
And it was raining.
Which was strange. Because Odessyus hadn't had rain for three weeks. She remembered that clearly. They'd been training under cloudless skies.
But now… thick grey clouds loomed overhead. The flowers looked half-bloomed. The water running through the fountain wasn't flowing.
It was frozen.
Not ice. Frozen in motion.
The droplets hung in the air like glass beads suspended on strings. Lucy stared at them, heart pounding.
"This isn't real," she whispered. "It's… a memory. But whose?"
Then she heard footsteps.
She turned slowly.
A man stood on the far side of the fountain — cloaked in silver, face hidden beneath a deep hood. He didn't speak, didn't move. He simply pointed.
Lucy turned back toward the garden floor.
There, glowing just beneath the puddles, was the same spiral glyph she had touched earlier. Except now, it pulsed.
Not light.
Time.
She knelt beside it. Her hand trembled as she reached out, unsure if it was real.
As soon as her fingers brushed the edges of the mark—
---
She was somewhere else.
A battlefield.
But not the Blood Moon War. This was older.
The sky above was cracked with fire, the ground split with glyphs the size of cities. Armies of shadow-cloaked figures and glowing beasts fought beneath an orange moon. And at the heart of it all stood…
Three thrones.
Each one carved from a different element — one from diamond, one from bone, and one from twisted vines.
And above them floated the spiral glyph — no longer a symbol… but a whole sun, turning slowly, casting light in every direction.
She couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
Then the spiral spun.
Once.
And everything vanished.
---
Lucy gasped.
She was back in the observatory.
Frank and Susan were beside her, calling her name. Neolin stood at the edge of the room, his expression unreadable.
"What… what just happened?" she whispered.
"You disappeared," Susan said. "One second you were with us… the next, gone."
Frank added, "Then the star map started glowing again. Same spot."
Lucy sat up, dizzy. "I saw… I saw a war. Not our war. One from before even Alkros. There were glyphs… and thrones. And… a sun that wasn't a sun."
Neolin looked sharply at her. "What did it look like?"
"A spiral," Lucy said. "Like the one I touched."
Neolin went silent.
Jack, who had just arrived, stepped forward. "That symbol keeps showing up. The same one from Kitty's trial."
Neolin slowly turned toward the center of the room and summoned a scroll from the wall.
He opened it carefully.
On the parchment, hand-drawn and ancient, were seven symbols. Six of them were faint, barely legible.
But the seventh — the spiral — was marked in blood-red ink.
"This," he said, "is the first Forbidden Glyph. It is known as the Glyph of Aeon."
Tom frowned. "What does it do?"
Neolin answered, voice low.
"It breaks time."
---
Silence filled the room.
Neolin continued, "The Glyph of Aeon is not a weapon. It's a... reset. It doesn't just affect the battlefield. It affects fate. Choice. It erases certainty."
Frank looked at Lucy. "It let you see the past?"
Lucy nodded. "And something worse. I think... it wanted me to stay there."
Susan knelt beside her. "But why you?"
Lucy looked down at her hand. She hadn't noticed it before, but there was a faint shimmer on her wrist — a spiral, barely visible, like it had been branded into her skin.
"I don't know," she said quietly. "But I think it chose me."
Neolin looked at Frank, then at the rest.
"We need to move carefully now," he said. "If Glyphs like Aeon are awakening… then something older than Kazakare is watching."
Jack muttered, "Did Kazakare know?"
"No," Neolin said. "But he may have served something that did."
---
Far away, in the shattered ruins of an old underground city, a massive wall began to pulse.
On it, carved in ancient sigils, the Glyph of Aeon lit up — and behind it, something stirred.
A voice whispered from the dark:
"One has remembered.
The rest will follow.
And when they do…
Time itself will bow."