It began with the wind.
A breeze where there should be none. Inside the library's sealed west wing, parchment fluttered. Candles flickered without breath. Ancient tomes flipped pages like fingers dragged across them.
Then came the light thin strands of it crawling across floor tiles in curved, deliberate lines, glowing faintly like veins awakening beneath skin.
And finally... the name.
*"Elowen."*
Spoken in the hush between heartbeats, heard by no one and by all.
---
Caelum woke gasping.
His shirt clung to him, soaked with sweat. The faint pulse of his Sigil was quiet, but something else buzzed at the edge of perception like standing near a tuning fork humming just outside audible range.
Lira stirred on the bunk above.
"You felt that too?"
He didn't need to answer. She saw it in his face.
"The Sixth is waking."
He nodded. "It begun."
---
By midday, Arcvale was uneasy.
Teachers whispered in staff lounges. Hallways were swept twice, wards recalibrated. The upper courtyard was sealed with no explanation.
Seren passed through the crowd like a ghost, unbothered, unblinking.
Reian caught up with Caelum near the fountain, jaw tense. "There's chatter. The head Warden summoned the Harmonizer Division. That only happens when the Vault sensors detect breach-level activity."
"They know," Caelum murmured.
"They know something happened. But not who."
Not yet, he thought grimly.
---
High above, in the sealed glass observatory of the east tower, the Council of Elders convened in partial quorum.
Elder Varnin, robed in storm-gray, examined a glowing tablet. "The Vault's resonance rose point-zero-three on the Echo tier. Unprecedented in two centuries."
Elder Ysira adjusted her gloves with distaste. "That chamber has been locked by edict for over two hundred years. What could've possibly?"
"Someone went in," said Elder Telvar, voice hard as frost. "The question is how. And why now."
Behind them, Warden Hale stood silent, arms crossed. His gaze flicked to the window.
"Perhaps the Sigil-bearers are further along than we thought."
"Impossible," Ysira said. "Three, at most, are confirmed. And even then"
"The Fifth has awakened," Hale cut in.
Silence.
Telvar turned slowly. "You're sure?"
He nodded. "The disruption pattern matches no known arcane model. The Vault... spoke. And it wasn't through Varrow."
---
Caelum sat beneath the hanging lantern tree in the western garden, legs drawn up to his chest.
He didn't speak.
He listened.
Every shift of wind, every spark in the air, every whisper of the earth below his feet. He could feel the shift like someone tuning the world ever so slightly off-key.
I know you're out there, he thought. Elowen.
That was the name. He'd heard it in the dream or not a dream, exactly. More like a memory that easn't his. A girl surrounded by mirrors, light reflecting endlessly around her... and none of it reaching her.
She's resisting.
Afraid.
Like I was.
A twig snapped.
He turned.
It was Seren.
"You saw her too," they said, not a question.
Caelum nodded. "She's close."
"Too close," Seren said. "And so is the Council."
Later that evening, Eo dragged in a thick ledger from the restricted archives.
"I found something."
They huddled in the hidden alcove beneath the library the same place they'd first studied the legends.
Eo flipped to a bookmarked page. It was written in old Veil-script, hard to translate. But one symbol stood out Equilibrium.
"It was used once before," she whispered. "About seventy years ago. During a convergence event."
"Another Vault awakening?" Reian asked.
Eo shook her head. "Worse. A collapse. A Sigil-bearer tried to suppress their resonance for too long. When it finally broke free…"
She tapped the text.
'A thousand glass threads snapped at once.'
Caelum closed his eyes.
Elowen is nearing that point.
Lira leaned back, arms folded. "So what now? Wait until she explodes?"
"No," Caelum said. "We find her."
Reian gave him a look. "In a school with five thousand students and a surveillance system crawling up our backs?"
"She'll stand out," Seren murmured. "Equilibrium isn't quiet. It balances everything around it. Which means"
"she's in the middle of a magical breakdown," Caelum finished.
Eo's eyes widened. "Then we look for zones of stillness. Places where magic fails too evenly. Like it's been reset."
---
By the third night, they found their first sign.
The alchemical lab had been shut down after three separate experiments failed all involving opposite elemental reactions.
"They didn't cancel each other," Eo said, crouching over the runes. "They harmonized. That's not how it works."
Caelum ran his fingers along the chalk marks.
A faint spark flared under his touch.
Not heat. Not light.
Stability.
He exhaled.
"She was here."
---
In the Council tower, Hale studied the moving constellation map tracking sigil resonance.
Three were clustered together.
One... moved alone.
And one
One kept disappearing.
He smirked.
"You're close, Sixth," he whispered.
He turned to the Harmonizer captain.
"Activate the perimeter around the eastern tower. Do not alert the staff. Use internal mages only."
Ysira frowned. "You're setting a trap."
He didn't look back.
"I'm setting an invitation."
---
That night, Caelum dreamt again.
He stood inside a mirrored corridor. It stretched infinitely in both directions.
In one mirror, he saw himself but older, eyes colder.
In another, he saw Garron Varrow, hand outstretched toward him.
And in the center stood a girl long silver hair, hands pressed to the glass.
Her lips moved.
"I didn't want to break the world."
He reached for her.
She vanished.
---
At dawn, the five gathered again.
"She's near the eastern tower," Caelum said. "Last piece of the pattern. That's where the Vault lines converge."
"Same place the Council's tightening its grip," Reian said grimly.
Seren stepped forward. "Then we move fast."
Lira cracked her knuckles. "Time to beat fate to the punch."
Caelum looked toward the horizon, where the sun caught the tower's glass dome like a silent eye.
Hold on, Elowen. We're coming.