The sky shimmered above the academy dome like a tense breath waiting to be exhaled. Lynchie followed the subtle pull—an internal thrum that guided her past the faculty quarters, past the observatory arches, and toward a shuttered alcove concealed behind a hanging mural of the Spiral Bloom. The air was dry and faintly metallic here, as if it had not been stirred by breath or wind for ages. Her fingers traced the glyph-stitched curtain, and the moment she pushed through, time folded.
Within lay a room of amber-lit silence.
Dust floated in angled beams. Scroll racks towered above her, their shelves packed with sealed glass cylinders that pulsed faintly like sleeping veins. In the center stood a lectern, too narrow for traditional tomes, yet precisely shaped for a rolled artifact.
A single presence stirred within the chamber: a hunched, half-blind archivist beast.
Its body was hunched like a moth-winged jackal, robed in a membrane of translucent silk. Its face was hidden beneath a lattice of mirrored hexagons, each segment shimmering with runes Lynchie could not yet read.
"You were not summoned," the beast whispered, though it did not speak aloud. The words thrummed directly against Lynchie's marrow.
"I followed a resonance," she answered, her voice quieter than her thoughts.
The creature unfurled a fingerlike claw and touched the edge of the lectern. "Then you must claim what was written before your name."
A drawer opened with a breath. From within, the creature drew a cylinder etched in spiral calligraphy. The glyph on its core spun and unfolded in dreamlike rotation, revealing a series of bestial sigils—each one shimmering in hues unseen by mortal vision.
"The Hidden Ledger of Beasts," it intoned. "Only readable by those with bonded astral traces."
She touched it—and reality shifted.
The scroll unfurled itself mid-air, casting a constellation of beast sigils around her. Each sign hovered, alive with faint memories.
The Ourovine —a serpent with wings of frost and molten gold, born in starwrecks and dreamshards.
The Wispfen —a stag with antlers of drifting mist, breathing spores that sow sleep and remembrance.
The Skallunox —a crusted leviathan who sings to the dead, carrying bones in its tidal wake.
Her breath caught as one sigil pulsed brighter than the rest: a coiled, eye-less wyrm nested around a luminous mirror.
The Dream Dragon.
Her heartbeat stuttered.
"This one sees you," the archivist said, tilting its lattice face. "It has always seen you."
As the Dream Dragon's sigil burned against her chest, a mirror formed midair—silver and soundless. Within it, Lynchie saw herself not as she was, but as she might become: haloed in astral scales, whispering names to stars.
"This is not a choice," the creature whispered. "Only recognition. The bond is made."
Before she could reply, the mirror blinked out. The scroll sealed itself and retracted like breath into a crystal cocoon.
The archivist faded.
And Lynchie, hands trembling, stepped back into the corridor—her mind burning with names she didn't yet understand, and a heartbeat no longer entirely her own.
Somewhere beneath the academy, an ancient wyrm turned in its sleep.