The refectory was half-full when Caelus arrived, but the quiet pressed heavier than a crowd. Silver plates clinked softly and steam curled from wooden mugs, but conversation died at his approach. He barely noticed. Sleep had abandoned him, and the fever of the Archivum still clung to his skin like dried ink. His hands bore the faint tremor of too much knowledge consumed too quickly, and behind his eyes, words burned like brands. He slid onto the end of a long table with a bowl of cold broth and bread he wouldn't eat.
Dren found him before the first sip. He looked different again; not just confident, but poised, eyes bright and strange like someone who'd stopped being afraid of pain. He sat without asking and leaned in with a crooked smile. "You missed our midnight stroll," he said, voice light, teasing. "I waited. Even had snacks."
Caelus said nothing at first. The warmth in Dren's voice didn't match the sharp lines of his new posture. The boy he'd known had slouched like someone carrying too many secrets. This Dren held himself like he was built of knives.
"Where were you?" Dren asked again, quieter now. "You look like death and something that outran it."
Caelus stared at him. "You've changed."
Dren blinked. "Yeah. Isn't that the idea?"
"No. Not like this." Caelus leaned in, lowering his voice. "Two days ago, you were panicking about exams and barely holding a shield weave. Now your aura's steady. Your hands don't shake."
Silence passed between them, tension bristling just beneath the surface of their breath.
Dren exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. "There's something I need to tell you. After classes. Come to my dorm, Room 213, Solstice Hall. Don't stand me up this time. I swear, if you do, I'll hunt you down and drag you there by your soul-thread."
He smiled again; wide and full of mischief but the worry behind his eyes never left.
Caelus wanted to ask more. But the bell tolled through the towers of Blackspire, deep and resonant like something stirring from sleep, and the students began to rise in quiet waves. Dren stood with the others and touched Caelus's shoulder briefly before vanishing into the crowd.
The corridors were strangely hushed that morning, tension strung through the air like a drawn bow. Caelus had just stepped into the outer hall of the Lyceum when he heard the shouting, students pressing to the windows, gasps muffled behind hands.
Outside, beyond the glass, came the sound of hooves and pain.
He moved to the arching panes and looked down at the central courtyard. A caravan had arrived; four carriages covered in bloodied canvas, a stretch of enchanted stretchers held aloft by glyph-weavers. The doors swung open, and what spilled out was worse than any rumor.
Fourth-year students, injured and broken. Faces pale from blood loss. One had no eyes. Another screamed in a voice not their own. Professors trailed behind them, robes shredded, sigils burnt into their skin as if torn out mid-incantation.
Some were not moving at all.
A cluster of faculty moved to intercept the crowd that surged toward the courtyard, forcing them back with calming sigils and barriers of air. Then the Chancellor appeared.
Caelus had never seen him up close, only heard whispers of Chancellor Orian Veylan, an immortal practitioner of Aether-binding and dream-wrought memory, who'd served during the Ivory Scouring. His presence was a cold wind against the skin. He wore deep black robes stitched with constellations that moved slowly of their own accord, his eyes like molten silver.
He spoke not to the students but to the magic around them, his voice carrying through the stone like thunder behind closed doors.
"Calm. Stillness. All shall be handled."
The storm that had begun to rise faltered. Fear bent its knee. Even the air seemed to bow.
The crowd dispersed reluctantly, the murmurs leaving echoes behind like smoke from an extinguished flame. Caelus turned away, unease coiling in his gut. Whatever had happened beyond the gates of Blackspire, it had been real, and fatal.
His lessons that day passed in a haze of wonder and dread.
In Elemental Concordance, they practiced attunement to minor echoes; fragments of dead spells that lingered in physical places. The professor had them kneel in a ruined part of the east tower and close their eyes until the echoes whispered. Caelus heard a lullaby in a language he didn't know and tasted rust when he inhaled.
In Thaumaturgic Ethics, they studied historical trials; the time Blackspire had judged one of its own, a high-level Hollowed accused of using binding magic on another student's soul-thread. The instructor spoke of the Tribunal Flame, a magical fire that revealed not truth, but intent. Caelus wondered what his blood would show if placed in that fire.
Runework was calmer; days spent carving glyphs into slabs of obsidian, their task to inscribe a functioning sigil for silence. His first glyph screamed when activated. His second hissed. His third finally worked; an eerie absence of sound that pressed against his skin like a shroud.
But it was in Necrosophy where the veil between knowledge and forbidden blurred. The professor, an old woman with one eye and a jaw fused with gold wire, made them sit in a circle and listen to bone music; runes etched into femurs and skulls from executed traitors. The hum of it throbbed in Caelus's chest, and he saw flashes; faces not his own, pain not his own, a memory where someone screamed the name "Aeris" as they bled out on stone steps.
When the class ended, he stood outside in the dusk a long while, waiting for his hands to stop shaking.
He didn't head straight to Dren's dorm. He almost didn't go at all. But curiosity was a hunger that wouldn't be denied. He walked the path alone, Solstice Hall looming ahead like a promise and a warning.
Room 213. Dren had left the door unlocked.
The moment Caelus stepped inside, the wards sealed behind him.
It was a simple space; bare stone walls, a desk covered in old parchment, a single cot with a threadbare blanket. Dren sat cross-legged on the floor, a circle of chalk around him pulsing with faint violet light. He looked up.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he said before Caelus could speak. "But you need to hear what I'm about to say."
Caelus remained standing. "Start talking."
Dren's eyes were tired now. The sharp brightness from the morning had dimmed, replaced with something deeper.
"You're not the only one who's different," he began. "This place, it's not just a school. You know that by now. It's a machine. A forge. It doesn't just mold us; it feeds off us."
Caelus said nothing.
"I was recruited by the Hollow Thorn," Dren continued. "A resistance cult. Or at least, that's what they call us. We don't worship anything. We remember. My people—my real people—we lived in the Aether-shard plains, where the Empire broke the sky to extract the Echo wells. Blackspire trained the ones who burned our cities. They made the spells that killed our elders."
Caelus felt something shift in the air, a slow revelation folding open like paper soaked in ink.
"My brother was taken," Dren said. "He showed signs of resonance; like you. They brought him here. He didn't survive First Vein. They called it failure. We called it murder."
Caelus's throat was dry. "So you came to... what? Infiltrate them?"
"To learn. To find others like you, like me, before the system eats them alive." Dren leaned forward, the violet light catching the edge of his face, and for a moment, Caelus saw not a student, but a survivor. A weapon shaped by loss.
"I saw you in Initiation. You shouldn't have made it through the Trial, but you did. You bled in rhythm. That's Bloodglass. And you didn't break. Not fully. That means you're still free."
Caelus's voice was low. "Why tell me this now?"
"Because time's running out," Dren said. "You saw the injured fourth-years. That wasn't just a mission. That was a culling. The academy sent them into the Shard Rift to test the new resonance weapon. Only the ones with pure bloodlines were protected. The others were fodder."
The room was suddenly too small. Caelus moved to the wall and pressed his hand against the stone, grounding himself.
"You're not alone in this," Dren said. "But you need to choose. The Hollow Thorn doesn't save everyone. Just the ones who can unmake the tower from within."
Caelus turned slowly. "And you think that's me."
"I know it's you," Dren said. "I felt it when you passed me in the dorm hall. Your Echo touched mine. I've been waiting for the Codex to choose someone. Now I think it has."
Caelus's blood went cold.
He hadn't told anyone about the Codex.
Not one word.
Dren stood, his eyes solemn now. "The Archivum doesn't sleep. And neither do the things that want you silenced. You'll be tested soon, Caelus. When it comes... don't trust the academy. Don't trust the Bloodwing. And for the love of the old gods, don't put the Codex back."
He reached into his robe and handed Caelus a folded slip of parchment. "This will show you how to reach the Hollow Thorn. When you're ready."
Then, without another word, Dren stepped back into the chalk circle. The glyph flared; and he vanished in a blink of violet light, leaving only the sigil humming in the stone.
Caelus stared at it a long while, the silence growing louder.
And outside, far away, the bells of Blackspire tolled again; low, deep, like a warning echoing through the bones of the academy.