Character Spotlight: Nox Arsen
(Set one night before the Academy duel in Chapter 10)
The moon over Solvyr didn't rise.
It watched.
A still, silver thing — a celestial pupil — peering down at the spires of flame that crowned the Academy. Most never noticed. Most didn't know. But Nox Arsen wasn't like most.
He stood atop the highest roof of the Concord Spire, boots perched on the edge like he was daring gravity to reach for him.
Below, students laughed in firelight.
Above, the Monolith shard pulsed faintly — the one salvaged from Kaien's Rite.
He lit a match. Not to smoke. To listen.
The flame bent toward him.
As if afraid.
Nox Arsen was not his real name.
That was long buried beneath the flame-seared scars on his back, the chained scripts in his lungs, the Rite he'd survived when he was six — the youngest Hollowborn ever recorded.
But unlike Kaien, he had no anomaly to show for it.
He simply lived.
And in doing so, became an impossibility.
He'd been the first to find Kaien during the Monolith disturbance. He saw the eye. The reaction. The fractured starprint beneath Kaien's feet. But when the overseers came, he lied.
Because truth didn't protect people.
It marked them.
Just like it had marked her.
Nox closed his eyes, remembering the girl who had once screamed a song of flame at the stars — before the Scriptorium had taken her.
"I see you, Kaien," he muttered.
"I know what's whispering in your spine."
He didn't fear Protocol Zero.
He recognized it.
Down below, the Protocol surveillance grid shimmered.
Unseen, a red glyph pulsed: [UNSYNCHRONIZED ENTITY DETECTED]
Nox vanished from the spire.
Elsewhere — deep beneath Solvyr — he passed through maintenance tunnels and forgotten chambers. Not trespassing.
Returning.
He touched the engraved walls of the First Hall of Nullity, where ancient Ascendance failures were archived in flame-sealed glass.
Each one whispered. Not out loud.
But in memory.
He approached a sealed panel and placed his palm to it.
It recognized the burn marks.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Inside, a flickering projection displayed an archived combat log from fifteen years ago.
[Subject: Protocol Zero.]
[Status: Non-repeatable. Expunged.]
[Result: Cataclysm.]
[Operator: REDACTED.]
[Location: REDACTED.]
Nox watched the grainy recording.
A boy — not Kaien — burned a city into silence.
Not with fire.
With negation.
The same strange aura Kaien had channeled in the arena.
"So it wasn't a fluke," Nox whispered.
"They made another one."
Behind him, a voice coiled from the shadows.
High, soft, barely there.
"You shouldn't be here, Arsen."
Nox turned. Slowly.
A figure in obsidian robes stepped from the gloom. No face, just a mirrored mask.
A Severance Agent.
"Not yet," Nox said calmly. "You don't need me yet."
The masked figure tilted its head. "The Scriptorium disagrees."
Outside Solvyr, a carriage rolled up a hidden road.
Inside sat Professor Velle, reading a sealed letter. The wax bore a mark Kaien wouldn't recognize yet:
A stylized broken flame over an eye.
Beneath it, the letter read:
"The Unwritten are forming a locus. We require containment before convergence."
— The Concord of Light
Velle folded the letter and stared at the stars.
"Too early," he muttered. "Too loud, too soon."
Nox stands at the cliff beneath Solvyr.
He lifts his hand.
A burning rune flickers across his fingers: [RITE OF ECHO — PHASE ONE]
His voice is cold.
"If Kaien fails the next test, I'll be forced to kill him."