The weeks after the Twelfth Gate incident passed like pages turned too quickly.
The academy returned to its rhythm—lectures echoing through spell-fortified halls, duels flaring in open arenas, cauldrons bubbling in apothecary towers. But beneath that surface of order, rumors swirled.
Some whispered of a realm that almost collapsed.
Others of a student who reformed it.
But Argolaith didn't answer questions.
He was searching for answers of his own.
From the moment he had returned from the sealed layer of the Twelfth Gate, his mind had burned with one purpose: to understand what he had been shown.
The being—neither god nor mortal—had granted him visions of reality's infrastructure: of anchors and sigil-roots, of planes suspended like veins in a cosmic organ. It wasn't a spell. It wasn't theory.
It was a blueprint.
But blueprints required study.
