REY_REGINO

Beneath a sky that remembers forgotten names, a rift opens—and the world will never be the same.

Lynchie is no chosen one. Orphaned by fate and burdened by dreams she can't explain, she enters the gates of Vatra Arx, a floating academy suspended between stars and ruin. Within its spell-forged halls, celestial politics, ancient beast trials, and haunting whispers of the First Tongue converge.

But power comes at a cost, and destiny isn't always a gift.

As rival students clash under hidden banners and forbidden factions awaken, Lynchie must survive more than exams—she must survive truths no one dares speak aloud. Truths that twist the stars, silence gods, and splinter the meaning of life itself.

At the edge of prophecy and rebellion, a misfit may wear the crown—if she can remember who she is.

CROWN OF MISFITS

The ink-glyph doppelganger stood motionless, its form shifting like smoke trapped within a mirror. Lynchie could feel it drawing on her—pulling something unseen from the Spiral etchings beneath her skin. It wasn't merely watching. It was remembering. Reconstructing.

Vyen lifted a wardstaff and whispered a binding sigil. Glyphlight spiderwebbed outward, forming a protective net between them and the intruder. Yet the construct didn't advance. It simply stared at Lynchie with a mimicry of her own uncertainty.

"It won't attack," Vyen murmured. "It's an echo. A projected Spiral hallucination. They sent it to rattle us."

Zev stepped forward, lips drawn in a grim line. "No. They sent it to rattle her."

Lynchie refused to look away from the thing. Her mirror. Her guilt. Her threat. "They know I'm still figuring it out. How to be the conduit. How to keep myself from unraveling. They're betting I can't."

The doppelganger blinked once. Its mouth opened, but no words came. Instead, a Spiral unfurled from its throat—an unfamiliar pattern, half-recognition, half-wound.

Zev stiffened. "That Spiral... that was from your dream. The one you drew in the frost the night before your first glyph trance."

Lynchie swallowed, remembering. Remembering the cold in her bones. The Spiral she'd never learned. The one that felt given to her.

"They're using that one," she whispered.

Vyen's ward pulsed again, flickering. "That Spiral doesn't belong in any Lexicon. It's a dream-glyph. A primal imprint. They couldn't have learned it unless..."

"Unless it came from me," Lynchie finished.

Outside, thunder rolled. But it was wrong. Not natural weather, but Spiral thunder—the sound of magic folding in on itself. Caelmaar was under siege.

"We don't have time," Zev said. "We need to reach the Sanctum of the First Spiral. If this is going to war, then we fight it at the root."

Vyen hesitated. "That Sanctum hasn't opened for generations. No Spiralist even knows how to break its seal."

Lynchie turned toward the echo one last time. Her heart pounded, but it was not fear. Not anymore.

The echo shimmered, as if it sensed something had shifted. Then it dispersed, drawn back into the air like vanishing ink. No scream. No farewell.

"It felt me choose," Lynchie said softly.

Vyen stared at her. "Choose what?"

She looked down at her hands, where glowing Spiral lines had begun to etch themselves unbidden across her skin—new ones. Fierce ones.

"To become the Spiral," she said. "Not just its vessel."

Zev stepped beside her, the old hardness in his posture softened by something close to awe. "Then let's write history together."

They left the chamber in silence, a trio of purpose. Behind them, the Librarium began to hum with rising Spiral resonance, as if the very stones remembered what it meant to awaken.

And the Spiral no longer belonged to the past.

The Echo That Breaks