POV: Arthur Starlight
I woke up screaming.
Not from a nightmare.
Not from fear.
From something deeper. Older. Like the bones beneath my skin had been rewritten—and now the story was tearing itself back out.
My back arched. My jaw locked. My thoughts cracked under the weight of whatever power had burned through me.
The pain wasn't pain.
It was memory.
It was fire.
It was echo.
My breath hitched, shallow and ragged. The infirmary ceiling above me blurred—too bright, too distant, like it didn't belong to the same world anymore.
And then—
Another scream.
Not mine.
Across the room, someone else jolted upright. Violent. Raw. A shadow thrashing against light.
Vanitar.
The boy from the Archive. The one with the pale skin, the ash-white hair, the eyes that didn't match the fear he always carried.
I barely knew him.
But right now—he looked just as broken.
He clutched his left hand, fingers twisted, veins blackening like ink spilled in ice. His breath tore out in short bursts. His eyes were wide—blank, not glowing this time. Just scared.
The damage spread. Crawling. Crawling up his arm like something was unmaking him from the inside.
He didn't see me.
Didn't look.
Just whispered something I barely heard over the ringing in my ears.
"No… not again… not again…"
Again?
The word stuck in my head. Heavy. Loaded. As if this wasn't his first time being hollowed out by something he couldn't control.
I tried to move. My legs didn't answer. My chest felt like it was holding in a storm that wanted out. My right hand twitched—reflex, memory, something else.
The sword.
It wasn't there anymore, but I could still feel its shape. Still feel the pressure it left behind—the scar it carved into reality.
Vanitar doubled over, gasping, his shoulders shaking. The black in his hand deepened—draining color, draining heat, draining… presence.
He wasn't just hurt.
He was unraveling.
And I didn't know what to do.
Didn't even know him.
But something told me—
Whatever happened in the Archive… didn't end there.
It followed us.
And it wasn't done yet.
I could still feel the scorch marks under my skin.
Not pain. Not exhaustion.
Just… the aftertaste of power that didn't ask for permission.
Vanitar hadn't spoken since we collapsed. He lay across from me, breath steady, face unreadable, except for the way his blackened hand trembled every few minutes like it was still dreaming of what it had done.
And then—
She entered.
Not with fanfare. Not with guards.
Just a presence so dense the room stopped to feel it.
The light didn't follow her.
It adjusted to her.
A tall, impossible figure stepped past the threshold, as if the chamber had been built only for her arrival.
Widowlight.
The name tasted like a sword unsheathed in silence.
She was draped in mourning silk that didn't sway, only flowed, like it remembered gravity but had chosen something better. Her hair fell in silver-white lengths, not aged, but emptied of time itself. Every step she took unraveled expectation.
Her skin shimmered like carved moonlight. Her eyes—black wells without bottom—took inventory of the world the way an autopsy takes apart memory.
When she stopped before us, the silence wasn't respectful.
It was afraid.
She didn't sit at first.
She examined the scorch in the stone. The melted glass. The broken glyphs. The giant outline of a creature now gone—erased, not defeated. Nothing left but a memory of failure, imprinted in ash.
Then she turned her attention to us.
To me.
To Vanitar.
And sat.
"A Protector Beast," she murmured, folding herself into the broken stone as if it were a throne, "Class B. Designed to contain forbidden knowledge. Structured for invincibility against students of your tier."
Her voice was soft.
But the words stabbed.
"Yet it didn't survive… ten minutes."
No one replied.
Not because we were hiding anything.
But because we didn't know how to explain it.
"You didn't block its attacks," she continued, looking to Vanitar, then to me. "Because it never landed one."
She let that fact hang like a guillotine.
"Tell me, Arthur. Did you summon your weapon?"
I shook my head.
"No. It appeared. It moved before I did."
Her gaze slid to Vanitar.
"And you?"
He hesitated, clutching his hand again.
"I didn't activate anything. I didn't even think. It just—"
He stopped. His eyes—those pale gray-sapphires—darkened.
"It acted without me."
Widowlight's lips twitched. Not quite a frown. Not quite a smile.
A memory, maybe.
"This has never happened. Not in all the archives of the Pale Order."
"Two first-levels. Two unknown Evolvanths. No activation. No defense. And a beast designed to kill—annihilated."
She stood.
Power followed her like a loyal beast.
"You are not evolving," she said quietly. "You are being awakened."
Her mourning-blade vibrated once, humming with ancient, dead light.
"I have seen grief take form. I have seen the laws of death cry mercy. But I have never seen power act before the wielder's will."
She turned, but spoke once more before vanishing behind the veil of white mist that formed with her steps.
"This is not strength. It's not control. It's a message."
"Something older than us is starting to write again."
And we were the first lines.