Chapter Seven – The One Who Was Stolen From
Part Three – Beneath the Flame That Did Not Die
It was not on any map.
Not anymore.
The tower had once belonged to the outer ring of Lyceum watchpoints—satellite sanctums used during Solara's time. Small structures. Remote. Quiet. Built not to defend, but to remember.
Zephryn found it by accident.
Or memory.
Or both.
It was broken.
One side had collapsed into the cliff it stood on, ivy growing through the splinters, its upper window shattered. But the base still stood. And the door, though blackened with fire, still bore the carved emblem of the Lyceum's first crest.
Not the crest of the current Doctrine.
Not even of Caelus.
Older.
He stepped inside.
Dust swirled around his boots, catching light from the broken tower window. The room was circular. Shelves lined the walls, but the books had long since crumbled into silence. The only thing that hadn't fallen was the center stone.
A circle. Inlaid. Slightly raised. Covered in moss and ash.
He knew it.
Not from the outside.
From dreams.
He stepped to it and sat cross-legged before it, just like she had taught him to sit. Palms open. Breathing low. Not controlling it—just listening.
The stone remained cold.
He reached into his cloak and pulled out the cloth—the crimson piece the boy had handed him. He folded it once. Set it before the circle. Then, for the first time since Solara died, he whispered not a name—
But a note.
Not a spoken one. A cast.
Soft.
Unstable.
Real.
His glyph answered. Slowly.
It hummed up his arm—not as flame, not as lightning, but as something unformed. The spiral glyph beneath his sleeve shimmered, flickered, and then stabilized.
Just for a moment.
Then the circle lit.
Faint. Pale blue. A resonance ripple spread outward from it, humming low beneath the floor, the kind of tone you didn't hear—you remembered.
He closed his eyes.
And the room did not vanish.
It answered.
⸻
A flicker of firelight. A shadow against the stone wall.
Laughter, faint. Her voice.
"You always hum too early."
His voice, young. "I just want to get it right."
"Right doesn't matter, Zeph. Only true."
A pause. Then:
"If I ever vanish… I want you to come here."
"Why?"
"Because this place never forgets."
⸻
He opened his eyes.
The glyph had faded again. The circle dimmed. The cloth still sat, folded and untouched. But something in the room had changed.
He rose. Walked to the far wall—where the books had rotted away.
Behind them, etched into the bare stone, he found a mark. Not a message. Not a glyph. Just an image.
A single eye.
Closed.
Crying a flame.
He reached out. Touched it.
His mark pulsed.
His breath hitched.
And for a brief moment, he didn't see the tower.
He saw her.
Solara.
Standing at the edge of a Veil not yet torn open. Holding something in her hand. Not the Crystal Monarch.
Something else.
She looked back at him—but not as he was now. As he had been then.
And then she whispered something.
But he couldn't hear it.
The vision vanished.
And he was alone again.