The upper terrace of Sanctum Magna was never truly empty, but it often felt that way.Perched high above the northern wings, it overlooked the entire campus—the shifting courtyards, the dorm towers, the spires where mana chimed like wind through hollow bones. At this hour, the world felt still, but not peaceful. Still like breath held too long. Still like a waiting room before something began.
Kyle stood there as the sun broke against the horizon in its final act of defiance, casting the sky in bands of bruised orange and deepening blue. The shadows stretched like reaching arms.
Luwen Wick stood at the terrace's edge, opposite where Kyle lingered—a dark silhouette against the bleeding sky. His coat whipped in the wind, his stance relaxed but not unaware. Kyle got the sense he'd been there for a while. Thinking. Watching.
Kyle stepped forward, his boots echoing off the stone.
"You came," Luwen said, without turning.
Kyle didn't respond right away. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out the folded parchment."Professor Iskra told me to give this to you. I assume you're the senior—Luwen Wick."
Luwen nodded, still gazing toward the horizon. He opened the letter, read it silently, then folded it again with slow precision and tucked it into an inner pocket of his coat.
A long moment passed before he spoke again.
"You've been near it."
Kyle frowned. "Near what?"
Luwen finally turned to face him. His eyes were unreadable—too old for someone his age, but not in a way that spoke of wisdom. More like someone who had seen things, and didn't want to see them again.
"The pressure. The whisper. The wrongness in the air. You walked too close to something that remembers being buried."
Kyle's shoulders tensed. "You're talking about what happened at the archway?"
"Yes and no. I'm talking about what's under it."
The wind shifted. Colder now.
Kyle hesitated. "It felt like something was watching me. But what do you mean, what's under it?"
"It was," Luwen said calmly. "And more than that—it was listening." He didn't answer the question directly.
He moved past Kyle, leaning against the balustrade as he looked down at the garden paths far below.
"That part of the Sanctum—most students don't even think about it. The arch, the wall behind it—it's a dead zone in the layout. Deliberate, yet never lasting. Like covering a crack with a painting and hoping no one looks too closely."
Kyle joined him, uncertain. "What crack are you talking about, senior?"
Luwen tapped the stone beneath their feet."In reality. In memory. In truth. In magic."
He turned, voice lowering to something sharp and thoughtful."The east wing wasn't always a wing. It was a vault. Before that, a wound. The rest of the academy was built around it like scar tissue."
Kyle subtly flinched at the mention of the east wing.
"You say that like it's still open."
"It never closed," Luwen replied. "They just got good at ignoring the bleeding."
Kyle tried to shake the chill crawling up his spine. "So what do you want from me, telling me all this?"
"I don't want anything. Professor Iskra does. Maybe Tepes too. They're watching your resonance."
Kyle blinked. "What does that mean?"
"It means you and whatever's waking up down there... are similar, in a way." Luwen's gaze sharpened. "But even I don't know if that's good or bad. You're cracked in just the right way."
Kyle stepped back. "This doesn't make any sense, senior. What's all this about?"
"It didn't make sense for me either," Luwen said, too quickly.
Another silence fell—this one heavier. Kyle watched the last of the sunlight bleed from the sky. Dusk folded in around them like dark silk.
"Why'd she send me to you?" Kyle asked. "She said you'd speak to me."
"She's right." Luwen leaned on the railing again. "Because I've seen this before. Not here. Somewhere older. Before the Sanctum. I saw what happens when something old wakes up in someone young. It doesn't ask permission. It just moves in."
He pulled out the parchment again and held it up."This isn't a message. It's a request."
"For what?"
"To watch you."
Kyle's eyes narrowed. "Watch me for what?"
Luwen's voice turned distant. "Signs. Changes. Triggers. You're walking closer to the edge than you think. And you're not alone. You've seen them too—the moments that don't make sense. The heat when there's no fire. The shadows that don't move. The echoes without a source."
Kyle's breath caught. The archway. The flicker. The dream.
"…Yeah," he admitted.
Luwen gave a slight nod. "Good. That means you're not lying to yourself."
He pushed away from the railing and began walking toward the tower stairs.
"Get used to being a question, Kyle. Some of us never get to be an answer."
Kyle turned after him. "What happens if whatever's down there breaks free?"
Luwen paused, one hand on the door.
"Then we find out whether it remembers mercy."
And with that, he vanished into the shadows of the stairwell.
That night, Kyle dreamed.
Not like before. This wasn't a drifting sequence of disconnected images.This one held him—locked him in.
He stood in a corridor lined with mirrors. Dozens. Hundreds. Their frames were rusted gold, their surfaces clean but wrong. None reflected him.Each one held a different version of Ardenhall.
In one, the academy was crumbling and overgrown.In another, it floated above the clouds like a sanctum of gods.One showed it swallowed by void.One showed it silent, everyone frozen mid-motion—eyes wide, mouths open in eternal scream.
And one—
One mirror showed him.
Not as he was, but twisted. Standing beneath the archway, cloaked in shadow not cast by light, eyes glowing with something not of this world. His form shimmered—part boy, part thing. Fingers too long. Voice echoing not in words, but implications.It looked at him from the other side. And smiled.
The glass cracked. Kyle raised his hands to shield himself.
Behind him, a voice spoke.
It was his own. And not.
"Control your fate... before fate controls you."
Kyle spun—
And woke with a jolt.
His room was dark. Moonlight sliced the chamber through the high window.
His breath came fast.
Then he realized his hand hurt.
He looked down.
His palm was bleeding—faintly. And in it, clenched tight like it had been held all night, was a thin shard of mirror glass.
And it was real.