Echoes of the White Flame
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The silence that followed the clash was not natural.
It rang across the hollowed halls of Astral Academy like a wound in the fabric of sound itself, echoing not with voices, but with absence. The air felt thinner in his absence. Colder. Students moved like ghosts now, uncertain and unanchored, with the absence of Aelros Val'Taren—The Teacher in White—weighing on every breath.
The Headmaster had offered no comfort. Only a vague announcement that Aelros was "away on urgent personal matters." But those who had stood beneath his shadow, who had felt the quiet power of his presence, knew better. He hadn't left. He had been taken.
In the training hall once shattered by the confrontation with Serath Kaelren, scorch marks and fractured tiles were left untouched. A monument of shame. Of loss. Class Zero returned here daily—not to mourn, but to remember.
Kael stood before the crater left by Aelros's final stand, fists clenched, flames dancing at his fingertips. "We weren't ready," he muttered. "We thought being near him made us strong. But he was the one shielding us the whole time."
Nyra, seated at the edge of the scorched ring, ran a finger over a crack in the marble. Her Void-bound eyes shimmered with unreadable thoughts. "Three months. They've bought themselves three months, but the seal won't hold longer. He'll return. The Ninth won't allow it otherwise."
Selune stood silently, gaze fixed on the empty archway where Aelros had once appeared each morning. She could still feel the lingering strands of Origin magic—tainted, suppressed. She whispered, "He was never just our teacher. He was the tether to something ancient. Something the Pillars fear."
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Missions in Silence
Without warning, Astral Academy had mobilized.
The Seven of Class Zero—no longer just cadets, but field operatives—were being sent to the farthest reaches of the known territories, handling threats that previously only senior Arcanists faced.
There had been no grand announcements. No honors. Their missions came in sealed crystalline glyphs left at their dormitory doorstep.
Lyra had been sent to the coastlines of Shimmerdeep, where distorted Light Pillar energy had caused entire villages to vanish into reflected realms.
Kael journeyed to the Fire Ridge—a volatile caldera zone brimming with uncontrolled Flamebound anomalies, remnants of a Pale General's aftershock.
Riven faced a collapsing gravitational field around the Ruptured Hollow, his Pillar of Gravity pushing back against nature's fraying laws.
Sera was deployed to Coldvale, a borderland choked in darkness where whispers were said to infect minds and awaken memories not their own.
Elias entered the Rift Gardens, summoning long-forgotten beast-spirits to stabilize flora corrupted by Summoning decay.
Nyra patrolled the edge of the Mirror Expanse—Void Manifestations forming dreamlike versions of people who shouldn't exist.
Selune—despite her hybrid affinity—was tasked with nothing. Officially.
Unofficially, the Headmaster had asked her to remain behind. Not to protect the Academy, but to listen. The Ninth was stirring.
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Fragment of the Beginning
Selune sat alone at night, tracing the remnants of an ancient rune across the broken wall outside the old archive tower. The stars overhead blinked like slow-beating hearts. One of them pulsed, then stilled.
"It calls again," she whispered.
A soft breeze stirred. Not wind. Something older.
She closed her eyes—and for a moment, her mind was not her own. A spiral. A memory not hers.
"He was born of the Beginning... not Flame, not Void, but what comes before."
The voice was neither male nor female. It felt like a dream remembering itself.
Selune staggered back, heart pounding. She placed a trembling hand over her chest.
"The Ninth is no gift. It is memory. And it remembers Aelros."
Flashback – The Moment of Sealing
Three months earlier.
At the edge of the Fractured Expanse, five figures stood encircling the bleeding form of Aelros Val'Taren.
Serath Kaelren—once brother-in-arms, now Void-crowned executioner—raised a hand wrapped in darkness and said coldly, "Begin the Rite."
Around him, the four Pale Generals—Ignar, Grel, Thal, and Nyrren—each extended their Pillar-corrupted artifacts. Twisted flame, inverted light, reversed gravity, and rifted spirits all surged into a sigil in the air.
Aelros knelt, breathing slowly, one eye dimmed.
"You were my friend," he said to Serath. "You knew the stakes. You knew what this would do."
Serath did not flinch. "And you knew you could've stopped it—if you'd only let him out."
The second personality stirred within, but Aelros gritted his teeth. "He doesn't decide. I do. And I choose to not become what they fear."
The sigil glowed white-hot.
"Then you choose chains," Serath said, and with one final command, they invoked the Crucible of Stillness.
Light shattered.
Time blinked.
And Aelros was gone
---
Class Zero's Resolve
They knew he wasn't dead. That was never the question.
But as the missions grew harder, and whispers of corrupted Pillars grew louder, the question became: Can we hold until he returns?
Kael, returning bloodied from the Fire Ridge, found Sera already back. Her cloak was tattered, her eyes darker. She did not speak, only nodded. Mutual survival. That was all.
Elias sent word via spirit-bound glyph: "Rift stabilizing. But something looked at me from the other side. I think it knew Aelros."
Lyra's mirror shard arrived next. Her voice trembled through the glyph: "They aren't just reflections. They're memories. One of them was him."
Selune stared at their returning messages, eyes wide with the burden only she seemed to carry.
"The Ninth doesn't just remember," she said aloud, her voice breaking. "It waits."
The Seal Weakens
Five months.
That was how long the seal was designed to last.
It broke in three.
Deep within the Crucible, in a world between thoughts, a crack split through the frozen horizon. Aelros opened one eye.
"They thought silence was my prison," he whispered.
Around him, echoes of old battles danced like fireflies—moments remembered by the Ninth Pillar.
He raised one hand. The seal trembled.
The voice inside him stirred.
"Ready?"
Aelros did not reply.
He simply stood.
And the Crucible began to burn.