The dome sighed open with a low mechanical hush, revealing the night sky like a yawning mouth of stars. Lynchie stepped inside alone, boots tapping against the celestial mosaic etched into the floor, each tile whispering some forgotten constellation's name beneath her steps. High above, the heavens stretched raw and unfiltered, framed by the crescent ribs of ancient brasswork and silverlight alloy. The Observatory Dome was never meant to be comforting—it was meant to make you feel small.
Behind her, the iris-locked entrance sealed with a quiet hiss. No students were permitted entry this late. She had slipped past the curfew runes only because the Dream-Weaver Warden had not returned from the last ripple flare. She wasn't supposed to be here, and yet she was exactly where something in her blood told her to go.
She paused at the center platform—a dais of pale obsidian, polished so fine it reflected the stars beneath her feet. She knelt and reached into the inner fold of her robe, withdrawing the Ledger she'd claimed from the forbidden alcove. It hummed faintly in her hands, responding to the pull of the overhead stars. The ink inside glowed faintly now, glyphs shifting as though they knew the sky was watching.
"Your name isn't just ink, is it?" she whispered. "You're a fragment. A will."
The stars above shifted—not visibly, but with weight. The silence deepened. Something was aware of her.
The Dream Dragon egg, which she had hidden in her satchel beneath a layer of old lecture scrolls, began to vibrate. Its shell shimmered with pale blue scales veined in starlight. It hadn't moved since the Trial of the Spiral Wards. But now, it pulsed to the rhythm of the heavens.
Then she heard it—a second breath.
It was not hers. It was behind her.
She rose slowly, turning. The dome was empty.
And yet not.
There were whispers. Threads of sound coiling around the edge of perception. Names spoken in the First Tongue. Her knees trembled. The observatory was not just a building. It was a vessel. A memory chamber. A sealed whisper-vault.
A wall section shimmered.
Then a door—no, a starfold—peeled open in midair, revealing a stairway spiraling downward beneath the dome.
She should have called for help.
She didn't.
Her hand closed around the Dream Egg. The Ledger floated up of its own accord, pages turning until a blank one stopped dead. The ink bled sideways, forming not text but a circular sigil—an eye, a flame, a root.
Her breath caught.
She descended.
And above her, the dome sealed. The stars continued to burn—watching, waiting.