The village whispered more now.
Not just about the altar, or the lights, or the glyphs that hadn't been seen since the Glyph Epoch.
No. They whispered about the boy.
The Threadless.
The Threadborn.
The anomaly in peasant skin.
Ari.
He hadn't left the crypts for days, but news traveled faster than fear. The fact that he still breathed after activating a broken Sigwall—that had reached the capital's outer circles.
That had reached her.
She arrived on a thunder-laced morning, seated on a spell-carriage that hovered inches above the muddy road, powered by air-thread runes pulsing along its bronze wheels.
She stepped down with a kind of elegance that wasn't taught. It was coded into her blood.
Azure velvet coat.
Ivory wand with a floating crystal core.
A crest stitched across her collar: Aetherrose, one of the Six Pillar Houses.
And when she spoke, it wasn't to the crowd.
It was to Ari, who stood barefoot in the doorway of the run-down commonhouse, mud splashed to his knees, and a scrap-bag of root vegetables in one hand.
"Ari Solen," she said, not asking.
He blinked.
"…Yeah?"
"I'm Cerys Aetherrose. First-seat candidate of the Aetherrose Line. Prodigy of Veilbinding."
"And I'm here to recruit you."
They sat across from each other in the village chapel's ruined vestibule. She didn't flinch at the broken windows or the faint scent of spellburn in the stone.
She leaned forward.
"You activated twelve glyphstones."
"You echoed a Class-7 barrier spell."
"You have no visible Thread."
Ari narrowed his eyes. "You're from the Capital."
"Sanctum Academy," she corrected. "I saw the logs. I decrypted the altar's sigstream myself."
He didn't speak.
She smiled faintly. "The system doesn't know what to make of you. That means you're valuable. Dangerous. Which means the Academy wants you."
"I'm offering a sponsored invitation. Class-Twelve Probationary. Full resource access. Housing. Training. You'll start lower than nobles, but above commonlineage."
He stared. "Why?"
Cerys hesitated. Just for a second.
"Because I think you're not from here."
Ari's blood chilled.
She didn't press.
"One week. That's when I leave. If you want in—be at the northern road before dawn. But if you're staying…" She stood. "Then stay small."
That night, Ari sat in the crooked little home he shared with the Solen family—a retired candlemaker and his wife, both gray-haired and soft-spoken.
They'd taken him in when he was a shivering, half-dead toddler on the edge of town. No questions. Just warm broth and a bed by the hearth.
"Threadless or not, you're our son," they'd said once.
They didn't understand magic. Or glyphs. Or why men in crested robes kept whispering near their fence.
But they understood love.
Ari looked at them as they sat by the fire, the old man carving a whistle for the neighbor's kid, the woman darning socks with fingers warped from wax burns.
He clenched the folded Academy seal in his hand.
"I might be gone a while," he said softly.
His mother looked up. "Is it because of the spell again?"
He nodded.
His father sighed. "Then go. Before someone tries to take you instead of ask."
That night, Ari walked to the clearing where the Sigwall had collapsed.
He activated System Echo. Let it hover in passive. Just to test the new trait: Echo Memory.
Then he remembered a dream.
Or not a dream—something older. A spell that had no glyphs. No sigils. Just… shape.
Signum: [RECALL.PRIME.MIRROR]
Type: Forbidden Construct // Origin: Unlogged
Effect: Generate simulated spell-thread from imitated output.
He tried to Echo it.
The system hesitated.
Echo Warning: This construct does not exist.
System Response: "Do you wish to create it?"
Y/N
Ari said nothing.
But somewhere in the trees behind him, the Observer Thread stirred again.