Chapter 15: “The Dormant Girl” ---
Chapter 15: "The Dormant Girl"
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It rained the next day.
Not normal rain.
Ash-gray droplets that steamed when they hit stone.
The academy's wards held, barely.
Students were ordered indoors.
But Yui stood outside, drenched, unmoving.
The rune on his palm pulsed with heat.
The flame didn't come.
It watched him from just above his shoulder—silent, cautious.
As if it knew what came next.
---
In the eastern wing of the academy—the side students never walked without permission—a gate opened that hadn't moved in fifty years.
Not by magic.
By heartbeat.
Inside, behind walls sealed with both light and shadow, she woke.
---
The girl didn't move at first.
Her eyes opened, but her body remained still.
Red veins crawled up her neck like vines.
She breathed once—and the walls trembled.
Two attendants stepped back, fearful.
"She's stabilizing," one whispered.
"No," said the other. "She's remembering."
---
Elsewhere, in a hidden observatory lined with mirrors, Kael knelt.
Not to pray.
To report.
In front of him, a figure of pure glass stood tall—no face, just a mask that shifted shapes as it listened.
Kael's voice was steady.
"The second gate responded. The third... is resisting."
The mask changed again—this time into Yui's face, eyes hollow.
The glass figure spoke in a voice like breaking ice.
"He carries the memory, but not the will. Yet."
Kael nodded. "And the girl?"
"Awakened. But incomplete."
---
Back in the dorms, Yui finally moved.
His hand burned. The rune was no longer a scar.
It was spreading.
Thin cracks of black light traced his veins like circuits.
Lucen burst through the door, eyes wide.
"You opened the box," he said. Not a question.
Yui didn't speak.
He just showed his hand.
Lucen staggered back.
"That's not a mark. That's a tether."
---
Later that night, Yui was summoned again.
Not by the academy.
By the flame.
It moved on its own now, guiding him out through old servant paths, under staircases, through forgotten doors.
He ended up deep underground—beneath even the library archives.
At the final threshold, he found a mirror.
Just one.
Small. Cracked.
And glowing faintly with blue light.
Inside it, a girl stared back at him.
Not Seris.
Not the silver-haired girl.
Someone else.
Familiar.
She tilted her head.
"You remember me, don't you?"
Yui stepped back. "No. I—"
She smiled, sad and soft.
"You were the one who held the door closed."
A pause.
"And I was the one they locked behind it."
---
Above ground, the Headmistress walked with Kael through the courtyard beneath moonlight.
"She's bleeding memory into him," she said.
Kael nodded. "She's not supposed to know him."
"She doesn't. Not consciously."
The Headmistress looked up at the clouds—split like teeth across the sky.
"Then we're out of time."
---
In his room, Yui didn't sleep.
He sat before the mirror, watching it.
Waiting.
And on the other side, she waited too.
No name. No records.
But her eyes were full of truth.
Truth he used to know.
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End of Chapter 15