The stars above Aetherveil dulled behind a thin film of clouds by morning, as if reluctant to witness what would follow.
Caelum didn't sleep that night. Not because of fear, but because the resonance in his veins wouldn't still. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw fragments—faces he didn't know, battles he couldn't remember, and a single burning sky that seemed to scream without sound.
He sat in the observatory's upper gallery now, legs folded on a cushion, watching light edge its way across the city's spires.
Rheia found him there.
"You didn't come back to the dorm," she said quietly, holding two warm cups.
He looked over his shoulder. "Didn't want to deal with questions."
"I told everyone you fainted from spell fatigue."
"Thanks."
She set the cup beside him and sat down, eyes following his toward the skyline. "Do you believe her?"
"I don't know," he said honestly.
Rheia was silent for a moment. Then: "I do."
He turned.
"She's not lying," she said. "I felt her mana. It's not normal. It's like—like looking at a sun through a veil. It burns even when she tries to hide it."
"Because she's a Choir survivor?"
"Maybe. Or maybe because she's something older."
Caelum stared at his own hands.
He hadn't used his conduit since that night. Hadn't dared.
That same morning, deep beneath the Ivory Hall, Serapha stood alone in the crystal chamber reserved for sealed conversations—enchanted walls preventing any form of scrying or Weave-divining.
A single voice addressed her from the shadows.
"Do you remember what you once were?"
She didn't turn.
"I remember what they made me."
"That's not what I asked."
She was quiet for a breath. Then: "I remember the mountain. The cathedral. The first burning."
The voice hissed, barely human. "And do you remember the boy?"
Her eyes flickered. "Which one?"
"The one who bled silver."
She inhaled sharply.
That was memory.
Old memory.
Before the Choirs had fallen. Before the cities had fractured. Before the Boundless System had been fractured and rewritten.
Before the Weave bled wrong.
"Yes," she whispered. "I remember Caelum."
Thirteen years ago…
The Hollowtrace Cathedral had been burning.
Not from siege. Not from rebellion. But from within.
They said a Weavesinger child had ruptured the sanctum—split the sealed leyline by screaming his name aloud without a ritual.
They said he shouldn't have existed.
Serapha had been twelve.
Already trained in the Choir's rites. Already wearing the ink-blood of the Silent Verses on her forearms. Already taught to suppress fear.
But when she found him—half-buried under rubble, his small body leaking silver-blue light—she had felt something tear open in her.
Not pity.
Recognition.
He was screaming without sound. Reaching for her with a hand wrapped in stars.
She didn't hesitate.
She pulled him free and whispered her name into his ear.
Not the one the Choir had given her.
Her real one.
The Weave heard.
And obeyed.
And then they both forgot.
Now…
The voice in the shadows receded.
And Serapha stood alone, teeth clenched.
They didn't know what he was yet. They only knew what he could become.
But she remembered.
Not just the boy.
Not just the fracture.
She remembered what they buried beneath the Hollowtrace ruins.
And what would awaken again, if the Echo Crown found its bearer.
Caelum left the observatory when the bell tolled eighth hour.
He didn't return to class.
He walked instead—down through the glyph gardens, through the quiet dorm paths, to the old lecture amphitheater where students rarely went anymore.
There, he found someone waiting.
Not Serapha.
Not Rheia.
A boy in silver-threaded robes, lounging across the crumbled stone seats like he belonged in a painting.
"Caelum Vale," the boy said with a smile. "At last."
He had hair like woven moonlight and eyes that shimmered not with color but reflection. His mana didn't hum—it purred.
Caelum stiffened. "Who are you?"
"Just a messenger," the boy said, rising. "I'm here on behalf of the Crown."
Caelum blinked. "The royal Crown?"
The boy laughed. "Oh, no. Not them. They're wearing someone else's cast-off name. I mean the Crown. The one that remembers. The one that binds."
He stepped forward.
Caelum flared instinctively with inner pressure, muscles ready to reinforce—
But nothing rose.
Not because he couldn't.
Because the boy had already suppressed it.
"Your conduit is raw," the boy said softly. "Too raw. That makes it dangerous, but also precious. So here's my message."
He held out a shard of parchment. It was blank.
"Read it when it burns," the boy said. "And when you hear the stars weep, run."
Then he vanished.
No ripple. No glyph. Just silence.
Caelum stood in the empty amphitheater for a long time.
Then he pocketed the parchment.
That night, Serapha found him again.
Not on a balcony this time.
But inside the ruin archive.
Where old texts on the Boundless Theory were kept under dust.
"You met him, didn't you?" she asked.
Caelum looked up from an open scroll. "Who?"
"The Echo's messenger."
He didn't answer.
Serapha walked closer.
"Don't trust him," she said. "He isn't human anymore. He's a mouthpiece."
"For the Crown?"
"No. For something inside it."
Caelum furrowed his brow. "What's inside it?"
Serapha leaned close.
"The Weave's regret."