The room was still — as if it had swallowed its own breath.
She stood by the door, sea-thread cloak dripping saltwater that hadn't touched the air outside. Her presence carried something ancient. Not power. Not threat.
Witness.
Lyric didn't speak. He watched her watching him — not like a rival or spy, but someone appraising damage only they could see.
She stepped past the ward line.
No resistance. No flare.
His mark burned anyway.
"Don't speak his name," she warned softly.
Lyric's voice cracked. "Who is he?"
She touched the ink at her collarbone — a curl of silvered glyph that pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
"Memory isn't passive. Orryn was the first to prove that. But he wasn't content to remember."
She met his eyes.
"He wants to become the thing we remember."
They sat across from one another in the silent dormitory, surrounded by half-scrawled notes and ink stains. Outside, the wind hissed through the spires.
"I'm Saelrine Varnyx, heir of Oryllae."
She said it like a title she'd already buried.
"My family sent me here to spy. But not on you."
She unrolled a strip of sea-paper — the sacred vellum used for divine correspondence. Lyric stared. The glyph across it flickered between languages.
"You're marked by Orryn. You shouldn't exist. But you do."
He said nothing. His jaw tightened.
She slid the paper closer.
"So now we have to choose: let the gods erase us, or use the thing that made us wrong to break them."
Lyric's breath caught.
"You want an alliance?"
"No," she said. "I want a witness."
The second mark flared, unbidden.
For a moment, Lyric saw her.
Saelrine, but not here — a younger version, wreathed in tidal light, kneeling before a ruined shrine, whispering a name no one else would remember.
His head spun.
"You've heard him too," she murmured.
He nodded.
"I don't trust you," he said quietly.
"Good," she replied. "Neither do I."
She stood. "Meet me tomorrow. Before the veil bells. The moonwell near the aqueducts."
She paused in the doorway.
"Tell no one. Not even the gods."
Then she left — leaving behind only salt and silence.