The Star That Shouldn't Burn
The next morning, Solvyr's sky didn't light.
Clouds had thickened into an amber overcast, casting the Academy in a sullen bronze. The Protocol Towers, usually radiant with structured flame, stood cold — their glyphwork dimmed.
Whispers moved faster than wind.
"The Second Rite failed."
"They're calling him Nullflame."
"He bent the glyphs. That's forbidden."
Kaien moved through the halls like a ghost — except ghosts were noticed.
He was not.
No one met his eyes.
No one acknowledged the ash-marks curling over his hands.
No one but Ayari.
In the Garden of Branded Flame
She was waiting by the cracked sundial, as though nothing had changed.
"You set a record," she said.
"You failed in a way that rewrote part of the testing chamber."
Kaien crossed his arms, trying to hide the glyph-burns.
"It didn't feel like failure."
She turned toward him, expression unreadable.
"It wasn't. But they'll call it that. Because if you're not the story they've written… you're a threat."
Silence.
Then her voice dropped to a whisper.
"They think you're from before the Loom."
Kaien frowned. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing," she said too quickly.
Too late. The seed had been planted.
Elsewhere: The Hidden Archive
Professor Velle moved through the labyrinthine archive beneath the Academy — flame-lit and sealed by ancestral locks. Each door opened with glyphs etched in Old Ascendant, a language even most faculty had forgotten.
He arrived at a sealed chamber.
Inside: Nox, standing beside a hollow sarcophagus.
"It's awake," Nox said simply.
Velle's hand trembled. "Then we must choose."
"No," Nox whispered. "He must choose."
They turned toward the coffin. Within, resting on velvet flame, was a mask — carved from molten obsidian, glowing faintly with the symbol of a forgotten Protocol.
Climax Beat: Protocol Activation
Later that night, Kaien dreams again.
But this time, the dream isn't his.
He sees:
Cities burning under stars that bleed.
Children without shadows.
Glyphs forming chains instead of flames.
A version of himself… smiling as the world fractures.
"You are not the first Kaien," a voice says in the dark.
"But you may be the last."
He wakes to find his bed levitating an inch off the ground.
The mark on his chest glows faint blue. Protocol Zero pulses beneath his skin like a heartbeat.
"Make your choice."
"Will you become what they fear — or what they forgot?"
Kaien walks to the Ascendance Tower's balcony.
The sky, long quiet, suddenly shudders — not with light, but with absence.
A single glyph appears overhead:
"ZERO."
The Tower bells explode in flame.
Protocol lockdown initiates.
And across the sky, a constellation disappears.