The scream of magic echoed across the campus.
At first, no one understood it. It came like a thunderclap with no storm - just a pulse in the ground, a hum in the walls, a sudden flicker in every torch and crystal lamp across Blackthorn Academy.
And then, they remembered.
Students all over the castle clutched their heads as flickers of memory - memories they had never made - flooded back like broken rivers. Dreams they'd long ignored. Marks they'd hidden. Powers they'd been told not to speak of.
It wasn't just Rowan.
It never had been.
In the House of Ash, a quiet girl with frost in her veins whispered a name she didn't know she knew.
In the House of Echoes, a boy with a voice that shattered mirrors dropped to his knees, eyes wide, mouth bleeding light.
In the library's forbidden wing, a first-year reached for a book that hadn't been there yesterday - and found her family crest inside it, burned beneath thirteen stars.
And in every corner of the school, they heard it.
A voice - Rowan's voice - reverberating through the stones themselves.
"We were never gone. Just silenced."
Down in the shattered hall, Rowan stepped forward, the Thirteenth Wand still pulsing in his grip. Blue fire twisted around him like a cloak, but he no longer feared it.
Lyra was at his side, eyes full of awe and fear.
Behind them, Avery stood with his fists clenched, ready for war.
The Headmistress tried to cast a binding spell - but it unraveled in the air, torn apart before it could form.
"Impossible," she breathed.
Rowan's voice was steady. "You kept us asleep."
He raised the wand.
"But now we wake."
Across the school, thirteen ancient seals cracked open - doors, runes, memories, weapons. Things buried. Things feared.
The Thirteenth House had never truly died.
It had been waiting.
Now, Rowan Vale stood at its heart - chosen not by bloodline, but by fire.
By the truth.
And as the old walls groaned and the Order of Twelve rushed to contain what they could no longer control…
The lost war began again.
Only this time - it wasn't just history.
It was prophecy.
And Rowan Vale was no longer a mistake.
He was a message.
And the message was:
You should have finished the job.
The air crackled with ancient energy as Rowan stepped into the Vault of Wands - an underground chamber sealed for centuries beneath Blackthorn's foundations. Dust spiraled through the silence, stirred by power too old to name.
Twelve pedestals stood in a circle, each carved with a different house sigil - Flames, Echoes, Ash, Bone, Stone, Storm… all the Houses of the Twelve. On each pedestal rested a wand, worn but humming with magic.
At the center: an empty thirteenth pedestal.
Rowan's fingers tightened around his wand - the Thirteenth Wand - its obsidian wood threaded with glowing blue veins. It pulsed once, as if recognizing its kin.
Lyra walked beside him, her eyes wide. "This place… it wasn't in any map."
"Because it was never meant to be found," Rowan murmured.
Avery stepped forward and squinted at the carvings. "These aren't just any wands. They're the first. The Originals."
Rowan nodded. "The founders of each House."
The Thirteenth Wand in his hand trembled. As if it, too, remembered.
Suddenly, the wands on the twelve pedestals stirred. One by one, they rose from their stones, levitating in the air. Dust fell like rain. The sigils beneath them glowed red.
Then - without warning - they turned on Rowan.
Twelve beams of magic shot toward him.
Rowan braced for pain. But it never came.
Instead, the beams hit the Thirteenth Wand - and were swallowed whole.
Silence followed. Then - a whisper.
Not from Lyra. Not from Avery. Not even from Rowan.
But from the wands themselves.
"You should not exist…"
"…but we remember you."
The wands dropped, clattering back onto their pedestals.
The thirteenth pedestal cracked open.
A second wand rose from the depths. Silver and black. Twisted like two paths becoming one. The wand that should never have existed.
Lyra gasped. "There were two?"
Rowan stared at it, his heart pounding.
And deep in his mind, a memory - not his - began to rise.
A battle.
A betrayal.
A secret pact between the Thirteenth and one of the Twelve.
Rowan's breath caught.
"We weren't destroyed," he whispered. "We were divided."
Avery looked between him and the silver-black wand. "Which means…"
Rowan's voice dropped, cold as ash.
"There's another."
Rowan didn't reach for the second wand.
He couldn't.
It hovered above the thirteenth pedestal, humming with power older than the Academy itself. A wand split in two shades - silver and black, woven like fate and memory. The moment he looked at it, it looked back.
"Rowan…" Lyra's voice wavered. "I think it's calling someone else."
Before he could answer, the room began to tremble.
The walls of the Vault groaned, stone grinding against stone, as the air thickened. Magic pulsed like a heartbeat - too fast, too loud. And then—
Footsteps.
A figure stepped through the archway behind them, silhouetted by flickering torches. Cloak of dark violet. Hood pulled low. But Rowan felt it instantly - that pull, that impossible familiarity.
The stranger raised their head.
And Rowan stared into a face that mirrored his own.
Not older. Not twisted by time like the version from the battlefield.
But the same.
Identical.
Same eyes. Same jaw. Same scar above the brow.
No - not the same.
This Rowan… had no wand.
But the silver-black wand floated to his side.
And chose him.
A sharp crack echoed through the Vault as the wand landed in his hand.
Avery drew his dagger. "Who the hell—"
"I'm Rowan Vale," the stranger said. "The real one."
Silence.
Rowan felt his world tilt.
"I was born of the Thirteenth House," the stranger continued. "But I was hidden. Raised inside the Order. Trained by those who erased our bloodline."
The stranger stepped closer.
"I didn't know the truth until the wand called to me."
Lyra whispered, "But if you're Rowan…"
The stranger's silver eyes met hers. "Then who is he?"
All eyes turned to the Rowan we've followed since the beginning.
He staggered back.
"No," he muttered. "No, that's not possible."
The second Rowan raised the wand, its light casting twin shadows across the room.
"Maybe you were created. A fragment. A copy. A shield meant to protect the truth."
And then he smiled.
"Or maybe I'm the lie, and you're the weapon."
The Vault began to crack.
The Twelve Wands lit up again.
And fate demanded a choice.
The Vault shook as if the earth itself recoiled from the truth.
Two Rowans.
Two wands.
And only one fate.
Blue fire crackled along the cracks in the floor, licking upward like it recognized them both - and couldn't decide who it belonged to.
"I'm not a copy," Rowan whispered. "I have memories. I feel pain. I bleed."
The other Rowan - the one the wand had chosen - tilted his head. "So do ghosts. So do shadows. That doesn't make you real."
Avery stepped in front of the Rowan he knew. "I don't care what that wand says. He's the one who stood beside us. Who fought. Who bled. Who almost died for this."
The stranger's silver eyes flicked to him. "And yet the Vault only opens for bloodline heirs. Only responds to the one meant to sit the lost throne."
He stepped forward, wand glowing brighter with every breath.
"I didn't come to fight you," he said. "But if you don't leave, the Vault will make the choice for us."
The stone beneath Rowan's feet pulsed. Then cracked.
It was splitting - literally. One side of the chamber bathed in cold silver light, the other in wild blue flame. The thirteenth symbol blazed above both sides of the Vault, warping, as if unable to settle on a single shape.
Lyra's voice was quiet but urgent. "Rowan… I think this is the Trial."
"The real one," Avery added, jaw clenched.
Rowan looked at the boy who wore his face, who held the wand, who might be him - or might be something else entirely.
Then he looked at the flames gathering in his own hand.
"Maybe I am a weapon," Rowan said, eyes flashing.
"Good," said the other. "Because the war isn't over."
The Vault exploded with light, swallowing them both.
The Trial had begun.
And only one Rowan would emerge.