The Vault

The next morning, the sky above the Arcanum was washed in an eerie silence, as if the clouds themselves were holding their breath.

Rumors spread like spilled ink. A forbidden duel. Ancient wards flaring back to life. Whispers of a student gone mad, though no one could decide whether it was Jules Everhart or me.

Jules, for his part, was nowhere to be seen. Officially "ill." Convenient.

I didn't speak of the duel. Not even to Calen, though he gave me a look during breakfast that made it clear he knew something had happened.

But I could feel it. Something inside the summoning vault had woken up. And it knew me.

Or thought it did.

The sensation hadn't left me since last night. The echo of that unplaceable voice was still brushing the edges of my thoughts. I remembered the strange glyphs flickering to life beneath the arena. The eye beneath the moon. The presence that stared back at me not with hostility… but familiarity.

I didn't want to admit it, but some part of me had recognized it.

That was the part that scared me most.

Later that day, as I tried to focus on Professor Ilvern's dry lecture on glyph etymology ("The eighth-century reformation of symmetry lines changed everything in offensive warding circles, particularly against undead…"), a faint pulse echoed in my chest.

The pendant.

Lyria's gift.

I pulled it out discreetly, pretending to adjust my collar. It was glowing softly, no brighter than a dying ember. But it pulsed with a rhythm, as though in time with something beneath the earth.

My fingers tightened.

The summoning vault was calling me back.

I waited until dusk.

No guards patrolled the old vault corridors—not officially. Technically, the lower summoning wings had been sealed since the "Runeburn Incident" a decade ago. Students weren't banned from them. But no one was expected to go snooping, either.

I stepped past cracked stone archways, where moss was creeping along the grout. The further down I went, the colder the air grew. Not the natural cold of depth, but a lingering, stale pressure. As though the space had been left untouched for centuries.

When I reached the vault floor, the arena was just as we'd left it. The glyphs that had awakened during the duel were now dim, their glow faded. But it wasn't gone.

I traced my hand along the circular pattern, half-expecting it to bite back. But instead, the glyphs flared once—just for a second—as if greeting me.

At the center was a sigil I didn't recognize. An open book, with a single eye inked on its spine. Around it: binding marks in Old Othryl, a language that was no longer taught.

Except I understood them.

Memory rose from my mind unbidden, like cold mist.

…bind the soul to the page… record the name forgotten… feed the fire beneath the ink…

I staggered back, clutching my temple. These were not memories I had. These were memories someone had buried in me.

And the seal in my mind, the one I'd felt in the Trial of Binding, shuddered.

Just then, I heard footsteps.

Someone else had come.

I darted behind a pillar just as a voice called out into the chamber.

"You're not as subtle as you think."

Lyria Vex.

She stepped into the vault's glow, her conjurer's staff held loosely over one shoulder like a parasol. Her expression was unreadable, but the charm at her neck pulsed in sync with mine.

"I thought it might be you," she said, glancing at the central glyph. "Did it speak to you?"

"You knew?"

"I suspected," she said, tracing a smaller rune along the edge with her fingertip. "Everhart's duel wasn't just theater. Someone—or something—is using these old spaces to test… candidates."

"Candidates for what?"

She gave me a sidelong look. "To remember."

We didn't speak on the way back. She didn't press me, and I didn't thank her. There were too many ways about this, and I didn't know which ones were traps yet.

But I knew this: something was waiting beneath the Arcanum. And whoever had sealed it away had done so using my family's magic.

The Ashborn legacy wasn't just cursed; it was silenced. Erased.

And now, it was waking up.