Katsu walked through a forest drained of life.
The trees around him were oaks but bleached, brittle, stripped of color like the world had exhaled and forgotten to breathe back in.
The air felt hollow. When a twig cracked behind him, it didn't echo. It shattered the silence like glass.
He pivoted instantly.
A figure lunged from the shadows, cloaked and fast.
Katsu's hand moved faster.
Magic bloomed in his palm.
A swirling sphere of violet and black, water twisted through shadow until it shimmered like starlight reflected in deep current. It pulsed once.
Then broke apart into a storm of incantation rings. Glyphs flaring in concentric bursts.
Each one a fragment of something older. Something colder.
"Draco Meteor," he whispered, the words slicing the air.
His fingers flared open—then clenched. The spell compressed. A starless burst veered toward the attacker.
The cloaked figure flinched—but too late.
They were caught mid-step. And torn apart.
Light and silence collapsed around him. Katsu blinked—
And woke.
He was back in the carriage.
The velvet seat beneath him jolted slightly as the wheels cut through the old road. Snow laced the edges of the windows. Across from him sat Sydney Keahi, her golden eyes wary but calm. Rei Dravantiir leaned against the wall, arms crossed, unreadable as ever. Juju von Soryuun gazed out the glass, quiet and distant.
The Academy's outer towers had finally disappeared behind them.
Katsu didn't speak. Neither did they.
But for the first time since entering those black gates, the road ahead felt real.
And the dream he'd just left behind?
It hadn't felt like a dream at all.
"That's not good," the Leviathan murmured. Her voice coiled low in his mind—not loud, just certain.
"What do you mean?" Katsu replied without moving. He sat across from Rei, eyes fixed on the frost-laced glass. Juju was beside him, quiet. Sydney sat near the front, silent for once.
The Leviathan exhaled.
"Some of my sight is bleeding into you," she said. "You've touched the edge of precognition."
"You can see the future?"
The carriage jolted.
A pothole cracked the silence. Sydney flinched. Juju's gaze flicked his way, then vanished back into the trees. Rei didn't move at all.
And Katsu wondered—for the first time in miles—why it felt so tense.
That was it.
The gates were gone.
No more high walls. No more stone wards. No more eyes watching from windows above.
It reminded him of Earth. Of Micah.
That first breath of adulthood, when you're supposed to go out, find your house, claim your name.
No more parents.
No more protections.
They'd left the Academy's shadow behind.
Now all they had was each other.
And that would have to be enough.
The silence hung thick.
Glass humming, wheels groaning beneath their weight.
Until her voice coiled around his thoughts again.
"Yes," she said. "I can see the future. But only in fragments. Slivers."
A pause. Heavy, loaded.
"Before those Academy children tried to carve you open, I saw it. Your death. And every time I glimpse forward, it's the same."
He didn't answer.
"Your death," she repeated, softer this time. "That's all I'm ever shown when it comes to you."
Katsu's fingers twitched. The frost on the window traced downward in jagged veins. Sydney stirred slightly across the cabin, shifting her weight—but didn't speak.
"But this time," the Leviathan added, a shade of confusion slipping through, "I couldn't see anything. Your dream... I wasn't in it."
Katsu's breath hitched, but only once.
"What did you see?" she asked.
No demand. Just curiosity. Sharp. Watching.
He stared out the window, voice low in his mind.
"A forest drained of color. A cloaked figure. I killed them with magic I've never used before."
A beat.
"A dream?" she asked.
"Felt like a memory."
"No," she said at last, quiet and certain. "It wasn't a memory. And it wasn't a dream."
Katsu blinked. His reflection flickered in the glass—distant, uncertain.
"Then what was it?"
She didn't answer right away.
Then, soft as a scar forming beneath skin:
"It was a warning."
The carriage rolled on, wheels crunching snow like bones beneath velvet. Juju blinked slowly, as if sensing something shifting. Rei's gaze flicked once toward Katsu, then away.
And still the Leviathan whispered, her voice curling through him like rising tide.
"Whatever's coming next... you've already seen it. Whether you realize it or not."
Katsu pressed his hand to the window.
The cold bit at his palm. But something deeper pulsed beneath it. Not temperature.
Not magic.
Just knowing. Behind him, Juju spoke, her voice soft but clear.
"One way or another… we're all heirs, aren't we?"
Rei didn't even look up.
"We've had this conversation." His tone was flat. Cold. "Why are we circling back to it?"
Katsu turned to him, quiet. Watching.
He didn't say anything.
But the question lingered in the quiet between them.
Why now?
Why that word?
Heirs.
Heirs to what? Names carved into stone? Houses that only mattered behind Academy walls?
All of them, maybe.
All but… her.
Sydney.
"Yeah," she said at last, turning. Her cloak shifted with her, the pointed hood swaying like ears in the lantern light. "We're all heirs."
Her voice wasn't bitter.
Just certain.
Like she already knew what came with the title—and what it would cost.
"I'm heir to the Sacred Flame of the West," she said quietly. "There are four pillars scattered across Aelbyrn. Four ancient fires older than the nations that claim them."
She glanced toward the window, her reflection lost in the snow-glass blur.
"The Academy sits closest to mine. That's why I'm here."
A pause. Short. Inevitable.
"And the others aren't."
The words sank like stones into water. No one rushed to fill the silence.
Not Rei, who leaned back with his arms folded tighter than before.
Not Juju, who watched with a look halfway between fascination and calculation.
And not Katsu.
Because he was still watching her—not just the words, but the weight behind them.
She's not here to learn.
She's here to burn.
Sydney's gaze cut across the cabin, gold eyes sharp in the lantern glow.
"It's not about status. Or bloodlines. Not really. It's about what the fire remembers. And who it chooses not to forget."
No one spoke.
Because deep down, they all knew:
None of them had come here by chance.
Not a single one.