The dome did not shatter—it split. A single, hair-thin fissure ran down the sky like a crack in stained glass, splitting the midnight firmament with unnatural symmetry. Beyond it, the stars shifted.
No. Not stars.
Eyes.
Lynchie's breath caught. Something looked back through that seam. Not with interest. Not with hunger. But with recognition.
Then the fissure blinked.
The vision vanished.
She staggered, her knees buckling slightly from the pressure that had wrapped itself around her skull like invisible chains. For a second, she'd felt like her thoughts weren't hers. Like her memories were being… skimmed. Sampled. Measured.
"Professor Salareth—what was that?" she whispered, the tremble in her voice betraying more than fear. It was awe. A small voice inside her, a voice she didn't recognize, whispered: It saw you.
The professor lowered his hand and slowly turned to face her.
"An echo," he said simply. "A ripple across the Veil. You shouldn't be able to perceive it."
"But I did," she replied. "It looked at me."
"No," Salareth murmured, narrowing his eyes. "It recognized you."
A sharp thrum passed through the ground beneath them. Across the campus, the bell towers rang wildly—not from any clapper, but from vibrations in the earth itself. Something deep below had stirred.
Students burst from their dormitories in scattered clusters, robes flapping, their shouting unintelligible over the din. Several faculty members sprinted toward the center of campus, channeling barrier wards. Crystalline arcs of pale light formed over key walkways. But none of it would matter.
Because above them, the sky blinked again.
This time, something pushed through.
It was small—smaller than a person—but impossible to mistake. A hollow-shaped form, vaguely humanoid, with limbs of flowing shadow and a face that writhed like ink in water. It tumbled from the rift and landed in the middle of the sacred observatory garden, exactly where the convergence ritual had ended.
And it screamed.
No sound escaped its mouth—only color. Light bled from the thing in pulsating waves, washing the lawn in an inverted glow like the negative of a photograph. Flowers wilted. Ivy cracked. Statues crumbled.
Salareth's hand snapped up again. "Get behind me, Fuentes."
But Lynchie didn't move.
The creature stopped screaming. It turned toward her.
Not Salareth. Not the crowd of confused professors running toward them. It turned toward her.
And it knelt.
The silence that followed was louder than the sky.
Salareth didn't breathe.
Lynchie's fingers curled at her side, a flicker of golden static dancing between her knuckles.
The creature reached toward her, a gesture neither hostile nor gentle, and where its fingers extended, a glyph burned into the air—a spiral of seven circles, each glowing with a different starlight hue. She had never seen it before, and yet she knew what it meant.
The Spiral of the Unmade Halo.
The Hollow-Breed… was offering her allegiance.
That was when the dome above actually cracked.
Not a ripple. Not a fracture. A violent, echoing tear, like a mirror falling into itself.
A chunk of celestial crystal—one of the observatory's floating keystones—fell.
Salareth reacted too late.
The creature lunged forward—not at Lynchie, but into her—as if seeking refuge. It passed into her chest like vapor drawn into a flame.
And Lynchie collapsed.
Her last thought before the darkness took her was not of fear, or power, or even pain.
It was a question.
"Why do I know its name?"
Then the stars blinked once more—and didn't reopen.
Not this time.