Rowan backed away, the echo of his own footsteps drowned beneath the eerie stillness of the robed figures. The Silent Ones made no sound - no whisper of fabric, no breath, nothing. Just presence, cold and ancient.
"Stay calm," he whispered to himself. The wand was still in his hand - though it had dulled from black bone to ash-gray. But it hummed, alive. Watching, like they were.
Then one of the figures spoke. A voice like wind through a tomb:
"You are not supposed to exist."
Rowan's throat closed. "Why are you here?"
Another stepped forward, a crackling scroll in its pale hand. The parchment unrolled itself, stretching impossibly long - covered in names.
So many names. All crossed out.
Rowan caught a glimpse near the bottom - one name not yet struck:
Rowan Vale.
"They did it to the others," came a voice from behind him.
Rowan turned to see Lyra and Avery. Lyra's silver eyes were wide, trembling - not with fear, but fury.
"They erased every student the Thirteenth House ever marked," she said. "Every one of them hunted down. Forgotten."
"They're here to finish the job," Avery added, already drawing his wand.
The Silent Ones began to chant. Low, inhuman syllables that made Rowan's skin crawl. Magic older than the Twelve Houses. The kind that eats through memory and time.
Rowan gritted his teeth, stepping forward.
"They erased the Thirteenth House. Burned our names. But you missed one thing," he said, lifting his wand as blue fire ignited around him.
"You forgot to erase me."
The flames roared, lighting up the corridor like a rising sun - blinding and unnatural.
And Rowan Vale, the name they tried to burn from history, fought back.
The blue fire surged from Rowan's wand - not wild, but purposeful, as if it remembered what had once been stolen. The Silent Ones recoiled for the first time, their parchment scrolls curling in the heat. Their faceless hoods turned toward Rowan in unison.
"You've awakened it," Lyra whispered. "The memory fire."
Rowan didn't understand, but the fire did. It spiraled out around him in glowing runes - ancient symbols that hadn't been seen since before the war. The stone walls of Blackthorn Academy trembled. Dust fell like snow. Somewhere deep beneath the school, something stirred.
The parchment in the Silent One's hands began to burn - only the names of the Thirteenth House.
Avery yelled, "They're trying to erase us again - now, in real time!"
Rowan lifted his wand higher, the flames pulsing like a heartbeat. "Then let them remember."
The blue fire shot outward, slamming into the scroll with a force that shattered the air. Sparks flew like stars across the dark corridor as the names once struck through began to reappear - etched in flame.
Rowan's name burned the brightest.
The Silent Ones screamed - not aloud, but into the minds of everyone present. A psychic shriek of rage and unraveling memory.
And then, as suddenly as they had come, they vanished - leaving behind scorched stone and the scent of old magic.
Silence.
Avery coughed, blinking in the glowing aftermath. "Okay. That was… a lot."
Lyra stepped forward slowly, eyes wide with awe. "Rowan… you just made history remember."
Rowan's wand was still burning, but softer now. The fire no longer threatened to consume him. Instead, it wrapped around his hand like a tether. Or a promise.
"They tried to erase us," Rowan said quietly. "But they forgot something."
Lyra tilted her head. "What?"
Rowan turned to her, his expression unreadable.
"You can't destroy a house that was never built with walls."
From somewhere behind them, the school bell tolled - except this time, it rang thirteen times.
And everyone in Blackthorn Academy heard it.
The thirteenth chime echoed through the halls of Blackthorn Academy like a funeral knell - low, haunting, and ancient. Students froze mid-spell, professors dropped their wands, and somewhere in the highest tower, the Headmistress stood still as stone.
Because that bell had no physical form.
It hadn't tolled in over two centuries.
And now, it rang for Rowan Vale.
Down in the hidden corridor, Lyra's face had gone pale. "That bell is a summons," she whispered. "But no one's alive who should be able to hear it."
Avery's voice was hoarse. "It rang for him."
Rowan stared down at the wand in his hand. The blue flame had vanished - but its echo lingered in his bones. "What does it mean?"
Lyra stepped toward the stone wall that had once hidden the Thirteenth House's names. Slowly, as if unsure what reality she was stepping into, she pressed her hand against the scorched runes.
"They know you're awake now. The Academy. The Order. The Throne beneath the School."
Avery blinked. "Wait - what throne?"
Lyra didn't answer. Her silver eyes locked on Rowan's. "We need to leave."
They didn't get far.
As they reached the upper halls, the light shifted - everything around them flickering between the present and something far older. Banners of the Twelve Houses peeled back to reveal symbols beneath them - twisted, wild, and unfamiliar.
Rowan's heart raced. "It's happening again. Like the battlefield—"
"No," Lyra said. "Not a vision. The veil is thinning. You're waking things up."
And then, in the hall ahead, the Headmistress stood waiting. Cloaked in black, her wand drawn, eyes gleaming with a power older than the school itself.
She didn't speak to Rowan.
She spoke to the fire inside him.
"The Thirteenth House was buried in blood, boy. Do you really think we'd let it rise again?"
But Rowan was done being afraid.
He stepped forward, his voice steady.
"You didn't bury it. You tried to burn it. And fire remembers."
And behind him, as if summoned by his words, the hidden door opened again - revealing the thirteen wands, still waiting on their altar of ash.
One of them lifted into the air.
And flew straight into Rowan's hand.
The wand struck Rowan's palm like a bolt of lightning - cold, not hot. Cold like forgotten magic. Cold like something buried for so long it had learned to shiver.
It hummed in his grasp. Not with obedience, but recognition. The kind that whispered: Finally, you're here.
The Headmistress recoiled.
"You shouldn't be able to touch that," she hissed. "It's cursed. It was sealed."
"It was waiting," Rowan replied.
And it was.
The wand - longer than most, carved from shadowwood and inlaid with silver veins - began to glow. Blue fire raced up his arm, twining with the same runes that had marked him when he first opened the letter. Only now… they spread. Up his throat. Across his chest. Down his back.
Rowan didn't scream.
He let it happen.
Because in the fire, he saw everything.
He saw the first wielder of the Thirteenth Wand. - a prince who vanished in the war.
He saw twelve heads of houses, cloaked in white, binding the Thirteenth House in chains of light.
He saw the truth erased from books, names scraped from tombs, entire bloodlines hunted into extinction.
And then - he saw a child. Hidden in plain sight. Left with no memory. Left in the care of a world that had forgotten what it feared.
He saw himself.
"Rowan," Lyra whispered. "What's happening to you?"
His eyes opened.
And they weren't brown anymore. They shimmered like molten silver.
"I remember," he said. "Who I was. Who I'm meant to be."
The Headmistress raised her wand. "Then you already know you won't leave this place alive."
Rowan raised the Thirteenth Wand.
"Neither will your secrets."
The world didn't explode.
It split.
Blue fire roared from the floor. The ceiling cracked, spilling starlight into the Academy's halls. Statues shattered. Old enchantments screamed.
And all across Blackthorn, other students began to wake.
Because Rowan wasn't the only one.
The Thirteenth House was never one person.
It was many.
Forgotten. Hunted. Hiding.
And now - rising.