Chapter 3 : A Copy in the Tower
---
It began with the bells.
At dawn, all five towers of Crownshade rang in unison — not for class, not for curfew, but for containment.
No student had heard that chime before.
No professor had explained it.
But everyone stopped moving the moment they heard it. The air changed. Magic shivered.
And high above the central courtyard, the great eye-shaped crystal atop the Observation Spire lit red.
> Surveillance Level: Absolute.
---
Ash woke before it rang.
His body jolted up in bed the instant the sun hit the horizon — like someone had poured energy into his blood.
His notebook was already open, even though he hadn't touched it.
On the last page:
> "You will be tested. Not by spells.
But by mirrors."
He didn't tell Riven.
She was already wide awake, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a candle burning beside her — watching her own sigil flicker across her arm like it was trying to escape.
"The stars moved again," she said softly.
Ash nodded. "They're not real anymore."
"They never were."
---
At breakfast, the Black Wing mess hall was unusually full.
Level 0 students, all unranked, all considered powerless, all now dangerous by association.
No one would sit near Ash and Riven.
And still, no professors came.
Until they did.
---
He entered without fanfare. No footsteps. No sound. Just a coldness that spread through the room before his form even became visible.
A tall, bald man in long, dark green robes embroidered with the symbol of a closed book.
Everyone froze.
Because no one had ever seen him.
Only heard rumors.
A name.
Headmaster Ilithan Mor.
> "Author of The Veil Between Realms."
"Founder of the Rewrite Ban."
"Exiled once. Returned without permission."
"Master of 'Mirrorcasting.'"
He scanned the room with hollow gray eyes. Not unkind — but unblinking.
And then he pointed at Ash.
"You," he said. "Come."
---
Ash followed without question.
Not because he was afraid.
But because… a part of him recognized the man.
The Headmaster led him not to an office or trial hall, but to the Mirror Dome — an underground observatory where magical theory students performed reflection spells and scrying practice.
Except now, it was empty.
Except for one thing.
Ash.
Another one.
Standing in the center of the dome.
His same face.
His same height.
His same eyes.
But the figure was smiling.
And Ash wasn't.
---
"What is that?" Ash asked, his voice dead quiet.
Ilithan answered calmly. "It's not a clone. Nor a projection. Nor an illusion. It is not made by us. We don't know how it appeared."
Ash stepped forward.
The copy mirrored him.
Every movement.
Except the eyes.
The copy's eyes were too aware.
Too... satisfied.
Ash whispered, "It's from the vault."
Ilithan nodded. "We suspected as much."
He turned to Ash.
"Do you know what it means when a reflection stops copying you?"
Ash didn't answer.
So the Headmaster did.
> "It means the mirror remembers who you were before you forgot."
---
The copy stepped out of the reflection pool.
It shouldn't have been possible.
It wasn't using magic. It wasn't breaking rules.
It was ignoring them.
Ash reached for his notebook.
The copy did not.
Instead, it raised a hand — and drew the 14th sigil in the air.
One Ash had never seen.
And the walls cracked.
But his body remembered it.
A sudden line of pain sliced down his right arm.
He looked — and saw the shape burning itself into his skin, not with fire… but from inside his veins.
> The sigil was writing itself in his blood.
---
Headmaster Ilithan stepped between them.
He raised his cane — a black staff carved from rootglass — and struck the floor.
An echo boomed outward.
The mirror-copy paused.
Not out of fear. But as if evaluating something.
Ilithan turned to Ash. "This is a test."
Ash's voice was tight. "A test of what?"
"To see if you're still you."
The copy moved again — slowly, deliberately — drawing half of another sigil in the air.
Ash felt it begin to form in his mind.
> A sigil that hadn't been written yet.
He whispered, "It's showing me my future magic…"
Ilithan nodded. "Or perhaps your past."
---
The 14th sigil flared brighter on Ash's skin.
Lines twisted toward his palm. His fingers went numb. His notebook, back in his dorm, ignited for a moment — then sealed itself shut.
Riven, three floors above, woke up screaming.
---
Elsewhere in the school — below the oldest archives — a bell that had not rung in seven centuries began to toll.
Deep and hollow.
It echoed beneath the stone.
And in the sealed prophecy vault beneath the Tower of Chains, seven locks clicked once.
---
Back in the Mirror Dome, Ash looked up.
The mirror-copy had finished drawing the incomplete sigil.
It hovered in the air, unfinished — its final stroke missing.
Ash raised his left hand and, without thinking, completed it.
The air cracked.
Time tilted.
And a second reflection — older, dustier, flickering with the weight of decades — appeared behind the first.
A shadow of a shadow.
It whispered:
> "This is what happens when a spell remembers more than its caster.
This is how the Codex collapses."
---
The mirror-copy vanished.
Not with a sound.
Not with light.
It folded inward — like a book slamming shut.
The 14th sigil faded from Ash's skin, but the scar remained.
Ilithan approached slowly. "You cast it."
Ash nodded. "I didn't mean to."
"You didn't need to. It already knew your hand."
Ilithan's voice was calm, but his eyes were grave.
"Listen carefully, Ashriel Veil. The sigils you remember are not part of our world. They were buried. Not for power. For protection."
Ash looked up. "Then why are they returning now?"
The Headmaster didn't answer.
Instead, he gave Ash a folded sheet of paper.
"I found this in a locked drawer in the old Codex vault."
Ash opened it.
> A drawing of the 13th sigil.
Below it, in tiny script:
"When
two dream the same glyph, the rewrite begins."
And underneath that:
> "If it reaches 17, the sky will split."
Riven couldn't breathe.
She had woken screaming, chest tight, head ringing, not because of pain… but because of recognition.
A symbol — the 15th — had begun to etch itself into her dreams, hours before Ash ever touched it. Before anyone had drawn it.
And now it floated, half-formed, just behind her eyes.
No brush.
No paper.
No spell.
It was already there.
Like a word you remember before hearing it.
She stumbled into the hallway of the Black Wing dorm, skin cold, lips pale.
Ash was already there.
"I saw it," he said, without turning.
"I dreamed it," she replied.
They stared at each other.
Neither had spoken the sigil.
But both knew it.
---
Later that morning, the dorms were placed under a soft lockdown.
No classes.
No notices.
Just four prefects stationed in every hallway and a low-hum from the intercom crystal, constantly pulsing with surveillance tones.
Riven sat on the windowsill, watching the sky.
Still unfamiliar.
Still wrong.
"Three students disappeared last night," she said. "No alarms. No spells triggered. Just… gone."
Ash nodded slowly. "Erased. Or sent backward."
"You think the sigils did it?"
"I think the Codex is reacting like a nervous system under attack. Every new memory we awaken… it fights harder to forget."
---
In the afternoon, they received a visitor.
An older student from the Tower of Echoes — known for specializing in time magic, historical illusions, and prophecy resonance.
His robes bore no crest.
His face looked carved from sorrow.
And his first words were:
> "I saw you in my sleep.
But it wasn't a dream.
It was a recording."
Ash blinked. "What?"
The boy nodded. "You were standing in the middle of the Hall of Names. Alone. But there were hundreds of you — past versions, flickering in and out. And every time I blinked… one more vanished."
Ash stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"Name's Silas. Level 4. Ranked under the Valric sigil. But I've stopped casting."
"Why?"
Silas looked up with bloodshot eyes.
> "Because when I cast now… I see your symbols in the aftermath."
---
They met privately in the back archives of the greenhouse — a forgotten study room overtaken by frostroot and whispering moss.
Silas explained everything.
Three nights ago, he cast a prophecy loop to cheat on a codex exam.
But instead of reading his future answer key, he saw Ash.
Not present-Ash.
An older version.
Standing alone on top of the academy, holding a spellbook with no pages.
Every time Silas rewound the vision, something changed.
First, the stars.
Then, the tower shadows.
Finally… his own reflection.
> "I think your future is affecting our past," he said.
Ash said nothing.
Because he had already begun to suspect it.
The sigils weren't spells.
They were corrections.
Rewrites of time and memory… through meaning.
---
Then the air shifted again.
A cold shiver passed through all three of them.
Riven dropped her teacup. It shattered, but made no sound.
Ash turned — and saw it on the wall.
The 15th sigil.
Drawn in shadow.
No one had written it.
No one had even touched the wall.
It was just there.
Waiting.
And under it, scribbled in a childish scrawl, as if from a hand trying to remember how to hold a pen:
> "Do not trace this until you're ready to disappear."
---
Silas backed away. "Nope. Nope. That's mirror-level bad."
Riven swallowed hard. "Ash… what
does this one do?"
Ash stared at it, heart thudding.
And then, finally, he whispered:
> "This is the first one… I remember drawing before I was born."
---
The warning under the 15th sigil still echoed in Ash's mind:
> "Do not trace this until you're ready to disappear."
But it was already too late.
The sigil on the greenhouse wall began to flicker.
Ash hadn't touched it. No one had. But it was reacting… as if remembering itself through him.
The moss beneath their feet curled inward. The frostroot vines recoiled like snakes sensing danger.
Silas backed up. "It's active, isn't it?"
Ash nodded. "No ink. No blood. No chant.
But it's awake."
Riven whispered, "If this is the first Rewrite… what exactly gets rewritten?"
---
They didn't have to wonder long.
The bells tolled again — but only in the Hall of Chains.
Seven times.
Loud.
Final.
Every student felt it, even if they didn't hear it.
Even the sky blinked.
---
In the Codex Vault's lower levels, Professor Larkein was halfway through writing a lesson on anti-memory spells when he paused.
He looked up. Then around.
Then at his hand.
The chalk was gone.
He tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
He turned toward the assistant scribe.
> "Do you know my name?" he asked.
But the scribe blinked. "Sir… you never told me."
> "Yes, I did. I always do. I always—"
He stopped.
Because he couldn't remember what he was about to say.
Or where he was.
Or who he was.
The Rewrite had begun.
---
Back in the greenhouse, Ash felt time double for the first time.
A moment repeated.
The candle flickered — then flickered again.
The cup Riven had dropped reassembled, hovered… and then shattered once more.
Silas gasped. "That's not a glitch. That's a loop."
Ash clutched his chest.
He felt the 15th sigil crawling beneath his skin like it was trying to draw itself in bone.
The Rewrite wasn't a single spell.
It was a domino.
And someone had just tipped the first tile.
---
Suddenly, everything froze.
Not in temperature — in time.
Riven's breath paused midair.
Silas's blinking eye stopped halfway shut.
Ash was the only one still moving.
Except—
> There was someone else in the room.
A girl, around his age. Short hair. Pale eyes like storm glass. Dressed in a uniform that hadn't been used in over 300 years.
And she was standing where the sigil had been.
Ash opened his mouth to speak.
But the girl raised her hand and whispered:
> "You shouldn't be here yet."
Ash stepped back. "Who are you?"
> "A record.
A ripple.
A remainder."
Then she handed him a torn page.
> "This was your first Rewrite," she said softly.
"Next time, it won't spare anyone."
And just like that—
Time snapped back.
---
Riven gasped.
Silas stumbled, choking on breath.
And the sigil on the wall?
Gone.
As if it had never been there.
Ash clutched the torn page the girl had given him.
On it: a crude drawing of the 16th sigil.
Beneath it, a warning scratched in blood:
> "When the 17th is drawn, the academy won't fall.
It will be forgotten."
---