Elira woke before the bells.
She hadn't slept much—not with the letter still unfolded on her desk, whispering secrets from a hand she hadn't held in years.
"Not all ghosts stay dead.""Not all enemies come with blades.""Trust no one in gold.""Your mother was right."
She ran her finger over the parchment again. The handwriting was careful, deliberate. Too sharp to be Caelum's. But that last phrase… it struck a chord so deep it echoed through her bones.
It was something her mother had once whispered while brushing Elira's hair by candlelight, when the palace halls felt too quiet and too dangerous.
"The court smiles with silver teeth, my little thorn.When in doubt—don't trust the ones who wear gold."
The bell tower chimed three times, calling all new initiates to their first classes.
Elira wrapped herself in her uniform—deep charcoal robes lined in faded violet, the crest of Thorne Division stitched subtly over her heart: a broken circle crossed by a jagged mark. It felt more like a warning than a badge of honor.
She walked alone through the cold corridors. Students from other divisions moved in flocks, laughter echoing, magic flickering at their fingertips.
But when she passed, the space around her always grew quiet—like the air knew not to touch her.
The Chamber of Convergence
Her first class was held in the Chamber of Convergence, an amphitheater carved directly into the cliffside. The ceiling was transparent glass enchanted with sky-reflection spells—showing not just stars, but constellations long erased from modern maps.
Elira took a seat at the topmost row.
There were only eight students in Division Thorne. Each of them scattered as if allergic to closeness.
Below sat the twin boys with sea-glass eyes and matching scars. To the right, a girl with platinum rings running the length of her braid. A boy with soot-stained gloves stared blankly ahead. Another wore an iron collar—perhaps voluntary, perhaps not.
Each one looked like a half-finished story.
At the center of the room, a tall figure materialized in a swirl of black mist.
Her robe shimmered like oil in moonlight. Her hair moved as though submerged in water. When she spoke, her voice echoed from every wall.
"I am Professor Varin. Welcome to the part of the academy they do not talk about."
A glowing script danced in the air behind her, fading into a sigil unfamiliar to most.
"This is your first and only formal lesson in Unwritten Magic."
Elira leaned forward slightly.
"Unwritten magic," Varin said, "is what exists before language.Before theory. Before control.It is memory turned into force. Emotion honed into spellwork.The art of making magic out of pain—and refusing to forget."
She waved her hand, and the walls began to shimmer.
Every student's surroundings dissolved into something personal.
Elira blinked—and found herself not in the classroom, but in a memory.
She stood in a bedroom of pale stone.
A girl in white kneeled beside a dying woman. The woman's lips trembled with unspoken words, but her hands—scarred and shaking—burned a pattern into the girl's wrist using nothing but raw magic.
A silver rune. Buried in pain.
"They won't kill you," the woman rasped. "They'll erase you. Learn to be what they can't define."
Elira staggered back as the illusion melted away.
Her heart beat too loudly in the sudden silence.
Around her, the other students looked shaken too—some in denial, some already suppressing what they'd seen.
Varin stood in the center again.
"That was your first spell," she said. "Most of you didn't recognize it until now. But it's yours. Your core."
A piece of parchment appeared on every desk.
Blank—except for a rune in the center.
Elira's was deep silver-black. Sharp angles. A twist of lines that made no sense—yet felt like home.
Varin spoke once more:
"You'll learn plenty of written spells, diagrams, chants.But this—this is yours alone.You either master it… or it masters you."
The Whisper Beneath the Rune
Class ended without further instruction. Students slipped away, heads bowed, the chamber still thick with unsaid thoughts.
Elira remained.
Professor Varin hadn't moved from the scrying wall. She was tracing shapes in the air—sigils too old for textbooks.
Elira approached slowly.
"You recognized it," Varin said, not turning.
"The memory," Elira replied. "It's one I've never stopped carrying."
Varin turned at that.
"Good. Most students run from pain. That makes them predictable. You... aren't."
"Why show us at all?"
"Because some truths can't be taught. They have to be awakened.Aetherhold's wards protect you from blades and curses.But not from your own past."
Elira hesitated.
"Someone in this academy knows who I am. Who my mother was."
"Yes," Varin said. "Several someones, in fact.And not all of them want you alive."
She stepped closer. Her voice dropped.
"Be careful who sees you bleed, Elira Caelis.Magic leaves traces. And this school... has predators who feed on old blood."
That night, Elira returned to her room in Thorne Hall.
The wind howled past the stone windows. Somewhere far off, a bell rang once—an unscheduled signal.
She ignored it.
Instead, she sat at her desk and unfolded the parchment again. The rune still pulsed faintly. But now—
—something had changed.
A second symbol had begun to appear beneath the first, rising slowly through the paper like ink through old cloth.
She held it closer to the candlelight.
This symbol wasn't one Professor Varin had shown.
It was curved, elegant, with five mirrored arcs interwoven in a spiral—so familiar it hurt.
She remembered it from the night of her mother's death.
It had been burned into the back of her mother's wrist. A hidden sigil no one could explain.
Until now.
This was her mother's mark.And it was rising—from within Elira's own parchment.
But how?
She turned the paper over.
There, barely legible, was a word written in old Caelithian dialect.
"Rekindling."
Not a command.
A title.
A promise.
And suddenly she knew:
Someone inside Aetherhold knew her truth.Knew what had been buried.And was calling her—not to survive—But to reclaim.