Kaelen had never heard silence like this.
Not even in the blackened ruins of his childhood home. Not during the nights when memory tried to kill him with dreams. Not even when his glyph had first burned the world white.
This silence was deeper.
It listened.
The Tribunal chamber beneath the Tower's eastern root was colder than stone had any right to be. Its walls glowed faintly with layered sigils—seals of truth, memory, and silence. No echoes lived here. No lies could breathe.
The envoy who led him in still hadn't spoken again.
Three figures waited at the edge of the circle. Robed. Masked. One bore the sigil of Judgment. Another, Inquiry. And the third—was marked by Void.
Kaelen didn't know what that meant. But he felt it looking through him.
"You are Kaelen," one voice rasped. Not a question.
He nodded slowly. "Yes."
A pause. Then another voice, feminine, sharper. "Student of the Academy under a false name. Sigil class unknown. Allegiance undeclared. Glyph resonance outside charted structure."
Kaelen felt his pulse in his throat.
They already knew.
"You are not here under arrest," the first voice continued. "You are here under Observation."
That word didn't make him feel better.
"Why now?" he asked.
The envoy turned slightly. "Because you touched something you should not have."
"I've only—"
"You entered the Dreaming Reliquary two nights ago. You made it to the third veil. You triggered an Echo Path."
Kaelen froze.
"How do you—?"
The Tribunal didn't answer. The sigils on the walls brightened slightly.
"You saw her," whispered the Void-masked one. "Didn't you?"
Kaelen's mouth went dry.
Selene.
He didn't say it. He didn't have to. Something in the room shifted, like breath inhaled by the stone itself.
"You carry a mark," Judgment said. "An echo of the Veritas line. We believe your glyph is not evolving—it is awakening."
Kaelen's fists clenched.
"Then why not kill me?"
That silence again.
Finally, the envoy spoke, softly.
"Because we don't know what else would wake with you."
Selene didn't wait for the doors to open.
She forced them.
The professor guarding the eastern wing tried to stop her. He didn't succeed.
She'd masked her glyph, but only barely. She wasn't trying to hide anymore. She was trying to get to Kaelen before it was too late.
The Tribunal would not kill him outright. Not unless they had cause. But cause was something Kaelen seemed to collect without meaning to.
And this time, Selene knew what the consequences could be.
Because she remembered something they didn't.
A buried truth only her dreams had shown her.
He's not just echoing Veritas. He's repeating something older.
The glyph under her sleeve pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
Her plan was insane.
But she was out of time to think.
Seraphine stood frozen in the Archives.
The letter hadn't been meant for her.
She shouldn't have seen it.
But when her superior left it open on the scribe table, unsealed, unsigned, and reeking of Tower ink, she couldn't not read it.
"The anomaly has reached Phase Three. He is recalling. Suppress or recover before Emergence. The Tribunal does not agree on his disposal. Veil the witnesses. Clean the fragments."
Seraphine's hands trembled.
They weren't planning to question Kaelen.
They were preparing to erase him.
The parchment slipped from her fingers.
She had to move.
If she lost him now—if she let the Tower strip him from memory like they did all the others—they'd lose everything.
She reached for her glyph and didn't look back.
Kaelen stood at the center of the Tribunal circle.
The questions had changed. No longer about his magic. Now about the visions.
About the glyph that pulsed at the edge of shape—never quite the same twice.
"You are not the first," the Inquiry voice said softly. "But you are the first to survive the third veil. That should not be possible."
Kaelen met their gaze.
"Maybe it wasn't supposed to be."
"What did you see?"
He hesitated.
Then, quietly—"Her hand. A sigil like mine. And something… something behind her. A tower made of bone and stars."
The Void-masked figure straightened slightly.
Judgment leaned in. "Do you remember her name?"
"I think I do."
"And?"
Kaelen's eyes flashed silver.
"Selene."
The reaction was instant.
The Tribunal chamber flared with suppressed glyphs.
The memory seal behind him began to rotate, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Pull him out—now—" someone snapped.
But it was too late.
The glyph on Kaelen's palm surged to life, not with fire—but with memory.
A vision struck through the circle like a bolt of lightning.
—Selene in chains, standing before a throne made of shattered sigils—
—Kaelen, bleeding from the eyes, whispering her name before the glyph brands ignited—
—Seraphine turning away as the Tower burned behind her, her eyes glowing with glyphs she never should have known—
The Tribunal reeled.
"Stop him—!"
But they couldn't.
The glyph burned outside of their pattern.
And for a moment, Kaelen wasn't Kaelen anymore.
He was the one who had come before.
He opened his mouth.
And spoke a name that hadn't been uttered since the first collapse.
The memory seal shattered.
Selene reached the lower level seconds too late.
The Tribunal chamber exploded with light.
Magic poured from the cracks, burning blue-white against the sigil-warded stone.
She threw up a shield instinctively—too late to fully absorb it, but enough to keep from being blinded.
And then—through the veil of smoke and memory dust—she saw him.
Kaelen.
Unmoving.
Collapsing in the center of the circle.
She ran to him.
No one stopped her.
The envoys were stunned. The Tribunal had fallen back, glyphs destabilized.
She dropped beside him, her hands cradling his head.
He was still breathing.
Barely.
"Don't you dare," she whispered. "Don't you dare leave me again."
His eyes fluttered open.
And for just a second—they weren't Kaelen's.
"I found you," he whispered, voice older than the chamber itself.
Then he passed out.
Above them, in the upper tower archives, Seraphine watched the glyph storm from a shattered window.
She didn't go down.
Didn't break the rules.
But her eyes burned as she turned away.
Because in that moment—watching Kaelen call another girl's name—she realized something she'd been trying to avoid.
This wasn't just magic anymore.
She was falling for someone who had already loved another version of her.
And maybe never stopped.