The glyph-etched walls of the Ring of Echoes shimmered faintly, even in the dim morning light.
Lyric sat on the cold floor near his window — knees pulled close, shirt half-buttoned, hair unbrushed. His room was quiet, except for the occasional hum from the tattoo wards woven into the tower's foundation. The ring was always humming, as if remembering something it couldn't quite forget.
His fingertips traced the edge of the sigil on his shoulder. The first one. The visible one. The one carved into him during the rite at age seven. House Velastra's mark — a serpent looped around an ivory sun — swirled with pale, flickering ink when his thoughts drifted too far.
But beneath that sun… lower, hidden under skin, under memory… the second mark waited.
It had appeared the same night as the first. He hadn't told anyone. At first, he hadn't even understood it. A mirror-mark. Something older. Something not supposed to exist.
It never bled like the others. It didn't glow. It pulsed, sometimes, with breathless quiet. And always — always — it knew when someone was watching.
He never let anyone see him undress fully. Not even his dorm steward. Especially not them.
At breakfast, the Ring of Echoes was almost empty — not because it lacked students, but because no one lingered here. The Ring had a reputation. Haunted, some whispered. Cursed, others said more bluntly.
Lyric didn't mind the silence. The fewer eyes, the better.
He bit into a dried fruit slice, chewing slowly, eyes tracking the shift of steam rising from a neighboring table's tea. His classmate from the Ring of Thorns — a girl with barkskin hands and a sideways laugh — stared at him too long before looking away.
He could feel it again. That tickle at the back of his spine. The hidden mark reacting.
Later that day, in Glyph Theory, Professor Halvern's voice echoed from the front of the lecture hall, "All divine symbols are shaped by intention. Not truth. Not virtue. Only belief."
Lyric's quill hovered over his notes. He stared at the chalk diagram — the God of Law's sigil interlocked with Cael's crest, both pristine. Measured.
He glanced at his hand. It shook slightly.
In the margins, he wrote:
"What if belief is fractured?"
Invocation Combat brought him face-to-face with a son of House Thorne. The match wasn't personal — just another name on the roster. But the boy fought like it was.
Lyric blocked the first strike, parried the second, then ducked as a sunbind arrow nearly seared through his sleeve. The Thorne boy grinned with too many teeth.
"You don't belong here, ghost-mark," the boy hissed mid-spin, his tattoo flaring with molten gold. "Velastra's not even a house. It's an excuse."
Lyric didn't speak. He just shifted his weight, inhaled — and let the hidden pulse in his chest slow everything around him.
For a moment, just a blink, he felt the world pause.
Then he struck.
The match ended in a draw. But no one spoke to him afterward.
That night, back in the Ring, he opened the small mirror embedded in the wardrobe drawer. Dim light caught the edge of the second mark, curling faintly along his ribs like an old whisper etched in forgotten language.
He touched it.
It felt colder than skin. Older than the gods.
From behind him, a knock echoed against his door — one, then two, then silence.
He didn't answer.