Chapter 17 – Beneath the Crest
Some truths were hidden for good reason. But they weren't hidden well enough.
By the end of the week, someone tried to erase her from the records.
It began subtly—her name vanished from the official class rosters. Her attendance logs flickered, replaced with blank glyphs. Her House designation, already a lie, was quietly scrubbed from the public crest archive. No one announced it. No one confronted her.
They just… deleted her.
Lira noticed during a routine rune review class when the instructor handed out enchanted ledgers that glowed brighter with every student's name spoken aloud.
Everyone else's shimmered.
When her name was read?
Nothing.
No glow.
No acknowledgment.
Just silence.
Kael didn't speak during the rest of the lesson. But he didn't look away, either. His hands remained still on the desk, but his magic roiled just beneath the surface, like shadow trying to crawl out from under his skin.
Later, outside the class, he said nothing until they reached the upper terrace that overlooked the dueling courtyard. They stood behind the old statues of the original House founders—weathered, magic-eroded things that had once meant power and now just stood as memory.
"She's gone," Kael said.
Lira frowned. "Who?"
"Your file. Your crest signature. Even the forged House records. Gone from the academy archive."
She stiffened. "So I'm no one again."
"No," Kael said. "You're a threat. They don't erase accidents. They erase warnings."
Lira stepped away from the statue, pacing. The air up here was cold and dry, sharp against her lungs.
"They think if they scrub me out, the bond will just… fold in on itself," she said. "Make you forget me."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "That's not how forgetting works."
"No. But it's how rewriting works."
He paused.
Then slowly asked, "You think they're trying to overwrite you?"
"I think," Lira said, "they're setting the foundation for when they kill me and need to pretend I never existed."
Kael didn't argue.
He didn't say you're being paranoid. He didn't try to soothe her or call her reaction too sharp.
He just said, "Then we make sure they can't."
That night, Kael broke into the central registry vault.
He didn't ask Lira to come.
Didn't tell her where he was going.
But the moment he passed the threshold of the wards below the Grand Library, her Mark pulsed once—sharply—before going quiet again.
And that silence told her everything.
They'd set a trap.
He moved like a shadow.
Quiet. Controlled. Every step exact.
Kael had been raised to navigate these halls without being seen. He was one of the few students granted access to the "Tier 3" vaults during his second year—a rare privilege that required both noble lineage and top-level spell performance.
He'd used that access twice.
Tonight would be the third.
He reached the vault door just after midnight. The seal glowed faintly—House Nightshade's primary rune wrapped in the academy crest. It wasn't locked, not traditionally. It was woven into the walls, into the floor, into the very language of the building.
But Kael knew how to talk to stone.
He placed his hand on the rune.
And whispered, "Nullae voces."
The sigils dimmed.
The door opened.
He stepped inside.
And straight into a binding circle.
The net snapped closed before he even blinked.
A dozen lines of red light coiled up from the floor, wrapping around his chest, locking his legs in place. His magic resisted for half a second before the wards crushed it flat. He didn't fight it.
He didn't need to.
Because the second the wards touched him—
The bond screamed.
Lira felt it like fire under her ribs.
She didn't remember leaving the room. Didn't remember bolting down three flights of stairs. Didn't even remember shoving a Chrono apprentice out of the way when they blocked the corridor.
She ran.
Faster than she'd ever moved. The Mark burned white-hot now, her skin glowing through her shirt, every nerve in her body screaming KaelKaelKaelKaelKael—
She reached the vault door.
And didn't open it.
She tore it off the hinges.
The blast echoed down the corridor, sending dust and ward fragments spinning.
Kael stood at the center of the spell trap, arms still bound, one knee forced to the floor.
But when he saw her—disheveled, breathless, eyes glowing with magic barely held in check—he smiled.
Just faintly.
"You're late."
Lira stormed past the threshold and raised both hands.
Her light flared.
The binding runes shattered like glass under sunlight.
Kael collapsed forward onto one hand, gasping.
Lira was at his side instantly.
"They baited you," she hissed.
"They're getting desperate," he rasped.
"Good."
She helped him to his feet. Her hands trembled, but not from fear.
From rage.
"They've tried isolating us. Threatening us. Now they're trying to rewrite us."
Kael leaned against the vault wall, catching his breath. "And failing."
Lira stepped toward the registry altar—the magical heart of the vault. A glowing sphere floated above a pillar, pulsing with recorded resonance data.
She reached out.
Kael straightened behind her. "What are you doing?"
"Leaving a scar."
And then she pressed her palm to the orb.
The Mark blazed.
The registry recoiled.
Magic screamed.
But the data accepted her.
And her name—Lira Vale—etched itself into the sphere in permanent, burning gold.
No longer tied to a House.
No longer tied to falsified noble blood.
Just herself.
Just her Mark.
When the glow faded, Kael stepped forward.
And added his own.
Two names.
Side by side.
No crest.
No House.
Just power.
Truth.
And bond.
Outside, the sky cracked with thunder.
Rain slammed into the glass domes of the upper towers. The wards over the academy flared again—spiking wildly, reacting not to danger… but to change.
Lira stood in the broken vault doorway and watched the storm.
Kael joined her a second later, still recovering.
He looked at her hand.
Then took it without asking.
This time, the bond didn't pull.
It held.
Heavy.
Anchored.
Present.
Somewhere, high in the Headmaster's tower, an old rune flickered out.
A protocol, long dormant, blinked awake.
And the words once carved in the hidden chamber beneath the Seventh House vault began to burn again:
If they finish the bond—
they unmake the world.