The wind in the Outer Ring of Aetherion carried the scent of old parchment and summer-blooming nightshade. The path to the Archives was lined with moss-streaked stone and flickering crystal lanterns that bobbed gently above the cobbled walkway. Arin took each step slowly, feeling the slight pulse of mana beneath his feet as the enchantments reacted to his presence.
He wasn't going to the central archive—yet. The place he sought was quieter, older, tucked beneath the abandoned East Hall.
It had no name, just a door carved from ashwood and sealed with forgotten glyphs. He'd only found it because the Codex Primordial had shown him—in a dream, vague and half-erased, the sound of dripping ink and the flutter of pages leading him through the maze of corridors.
His hand hovered over the glyph. It blinked once in pale blue recognition, then fizzled out like a breath meeting cold air.
The door opened.
Inside, dust hung like mist. Shelves tilted under the weight of time-worn tomes, some rotting from the edges. The air was thick with silence, not just from age, but from wards—binding ones, meant to keep things quiet.
He stepped inside.
And paused.
There was someone else there.
A boy, his back turned, standing at a pedestal. Tall, copper-brown skin, dark hair tied in a half-knot. A longcoat hung from his shoulders like a cloak, stitched with stars. When he turned, his eyes gleamed with polished gold—a mark of Seer blood.
"Didn't expect company," the boy said calmly. His voice was mellow, like water flowing over stone. "Not many know this place still breathes."
Arin's fingers twitched. "I'm not here to disturb you."
"You won't," the boy replied. "Unless you start pulling books with blood sigils. Then we might have a problem."
A beat of silence passed before the boy offered a lopsided smile. "Lucien Valehart. Class 1-A. Rune Theory."
The name registered faintly. Selene had mentioned him in passing, back when she tried to recall pieces of the book's world. A talented seer-mage with an uncertain fate.
Arin nodded. "Arin Valemore. Class 3-E."
Lucien gave a thoughtful hum. "You're the one with no mana. Or… used to be."
Arin stiffened.
"Relax," Lucien said, already turning back to the tome he was transcribing. "The walls talk. Especially here."
Arin moved past him, deeper into the chamber. He didn't need the books. Not yet. But the air here felt closer to the Codex. It buzzed faintly in his thoughts.
He stopped in front of a broken display. Behind the cracked glass sat a single scroll—unrolled halfway, its ink faded to near-invisibility.
"What is this place?" Arin asked.
Lucien's voice echoed. "Precursor vault. Before the academy was built, this land was part of a monastic order. They studied magic through dreams. Believed the first spells were sung into the world, not cast."
Arin frowned. "How do you know all that?"
Lucien glanced at him. "I read a lot. And some of it… just comes to me."
"Comes to you?" Arin narrowed his eyes. "Like a vision?"
Lucien paused. "Not exactly. More like remembering something I never learned. Hard to explain."
"You talk like someone who knows more than they should."
Lucien smiled faintly. "So do you."
Arin said nothing more, but the suspicion didn't fade.
He sat cross-legged before the scroll. Not touching it. Just breathing.
He remembered something else.
Earlier that day, Arin had gone to the Archives for the first time. The sprawling vault of books and records was unlike any other part of Aetherion, with ambient glyphs floating overhead and scrolls suspended in crystal stasis.
Assigned to Shelf Room Twelve, Arin had met Riven Arclight and Mira Dellayne for the first time—Riven with his golden eyes and smug grin, Mira with her braided bronze hair, precision-cast robes, and lenses that caught the light like arcane glass.
They had worked in silence under the gaze of Professor Eldrin Vael, sorting fragments for the Lexicon Reconstruction Project. It was there, in a forgotten alcove, that Arin had found a sealed scroll that pulsed faintly to his touch—a moment that had stirred the Codex later that night.
And it was later that same evening, just after dusk, when Arin had wandered into the central gardens. The flowers glowed with gentle luminescence, and the path forked near a whispering fountain. There, by the edge of a reflecting pool, a girl sat scribbling glyphs into a thin, battered notebook.
She had short curls that caught the light like ink under a candle, and one eye shimmered with a strange, embedded lens.
"You're drawing the wrong rune," Arin had said quietly, glancing over her shoulder.
The girl startled, then looked up at him with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.
"And you're not supposed to be here," she replied. "These gardens are sealed to upperclassmen after dusk."
Arin had only smiled. "Guess we're both somewhere we shouldn't be."
That had been their first real conversation.
She had introduced herself as Mira. Class 2-B. Scribe track. Her eye lens, she explained, was an experimental reading graft—part of her final project.
They hadn't talked long, but there had been something… familiar in the way she tilted her head, as though always listening for things others could not hear.
Now, back in the vault, Mira stepped from the shadows of the chamber.
"You feel it too, don't you?"
Arin turned. She stood by the door in the same uniform, her eye gleaming faintly.
"I'm Mira," she said again. "Class 2-B. Scribe track." She gave a shy nod. "This place... it echoes with something."
"Echoes?" Arin asked cautiously.
"Old magic," Mira said. "Not the kind you study in textbooks. The kind that watches back."
Arin's heart jumped, but his expression remained calm.
Lucien didn't turn. "She's one of the Whisper-Touched. Sensitive to things others miss."
Mira stepped closer, her gaze flickering not just to Arin—but through him, as though sensing something she couldn't name.
"There's something in you," she whispered. "Something that doesn't belong to this world. I don't know what it is… but it's not quiet."
Arin reached into his coat.
The Codex shimmered into being.
Its violet leather cover, stitched with silver thread, hummed faintly as it touched the air. The rune etched on its front—still fractured, still incomplete—shone with a muted light.
Lucien turned finally, eyes narrowing with intrigue.
"That," he said, "is not from this era."
Arin didn't respond.
Because he knew.
No one knew of the Codex Primordial. Not in any living archive, not in whispered prophecies or celestial charts. It wasn't a relic of history. It was older than history.
Only he remembered it.
Even Selene—who had once read the book he now lived in—only recalled a shard of it. A single fragment that had bound itself to her soul. She dreamed spells and shaped glyphs she should not know. But she did not see the whole.
The Codex had chosen him.
Mira stepped forward, kneeling beside Arin.
"It's quiet now," she said softly. "But not asleep."
She tilted her head toward the broken scroll.
"You might find answers in the ink."
Arin looked closer.
And there, faintly, under the fading script, was a rune he hadn't seen before.
It pulsed once.
The Codex in his hands shivered. Then its pages turned—on their own—flipping rapidly until they stopped at a blank sheet.
Words began to bleed through, written in ink that shimmered like molten starlight.
But they weren't in any language known to this world.
Arin's breath caught.
Mira backed away instinctively. "That… that's not supposed to happen."
Lucien narrowed his eyes, his calm expression finally faltering. "Arin… what is that book?"
Arin opened his mouth to answer—
But the lanterns flickered. The ground vibrated with a low hum.
And from somewhere deep beneath the vault, a sound rose.
Not a growl. Not a screech.
A whisper. Spoken in a tongue that hadn't been heard in millennia.
Then the rune on the scroll flared—
And everything went dark.