The interior of the Seer's Division was unlike anything Kael had seen within Emberlight Institute.
Where most wings were constructed with austere stone and regimented corridors, this one felt… fluid. The hallways curved like living veins through the building, and pale silver-blue lights pulsed from the crystal veins running beneath the floor—dreamstone, if his memory was correct. Extremely rare. Highly reactive to spiritual resonance.
The air hummed faintly with emotion—not noise, but mood. Hushed, expectant.
Lirae led him in silence, her posture calm, but eyes darting between paths with practiced familiarity. Her long coat fluttered behind her, stitched with subtle runic sigils. She wasn't just a student here.
She belonged to this place.
"Why did you bring me here?" Kael asked, voice low but sharp.
Lirae didn't slow. "Because the relic within you responded to something it recognized—and in the process, you disrupted more than just Riven's glyphwork."
"You're talking about the dome?" Kael narrowed his eyes.
"I'm talking about what was inside him. That wasn't his energy, Kael. It was tethered." She paused at a sealed gate—smooth obsidian stone veined with sigils. "Something's feeding powers to chosen candidates across the Institute."
Kael crossed his arms. "Then investigate them. I didn't ask for your dreams."
"No," she replied without flinching, "but you caused them. You fractured the future."
The door responded to her touch, opening into a round chamber with a pool of mirrored water in its center.
The walls were lined with floating memory-crystals—pale and humming. Students sat cross-legged around the edges, blindfolded, meditating. One opened her eyes as Kael entered and immediately flinched back, as if scorched by his presence.
"He's unstable," the student whispered. "He's carrying… too many selves."
Lirae's voice cut through the air like a blade. "He's protected. More than you understand."
Kael's gaze swept the room. His eyes landed on a sigil above the pool—three interlocked rings, faintly glowing. The same symbol had once flickered across the inside of his mind when the relic first activated.
"Your Division studies fate," he said quietly. "Visions. Echoes of things that haven't yet occurred."
Lirae nodded. "We watch for disruption. And you, Kael Aetherborne, are the loudest scream in a century."
"I didn't ask to be."
"But you're still the one being heard." Her voice dropped. "What you unleashed in the arena wasn't just energy. The seal around Tier Ten flickered. Not broke. Flickered. Enough for something to peer through."
Kael's pulse slowed. "Then it was watching?"
"No." Her eyes darkened. "It recognized you."
Meanwhile…
In the depths of Emberlight Institute, where sunlight never reached, a figure stirred behind layers of crystal and iron.
A masked cultivator, wrapped in ceremonial bindings, watched the duel's recording via a hovering memory-crystal. Around him were relics sealed with molten sigils, and the lingering aura of time-forgotten cultivators.
He watched the moment Kael's body shimmered—the resonance of three aspects blending in a single strike.
The masked man leaned forward. "Syncretic Ascension… has returned."
Another voice, whispering like the rustle of leaves over a tomb, asked, "Do we move now?"
"No," he replied. "Let the shadows play a while longer. But alert the Circle. If the Triune Path rises again…"
He paused, voice lowering to a reverent hush.
"…then the war we buried is far from over."
Back in the Seer's Division…
Kael stood before the mirrored pool. Its surface shimmered not with light, but with memory—his reflection shifting into versions of himself he had never lived.
One where he bled in chains.
One where his body had fused into a celestial gate.
One where he stood atop a mountain of shattered relics, eyes golden, no longer human.
"Why show me this?" he asked.
"Because you asked who you are. And the answer is not singular," Lirae said. "You are convergence, Kael. Every choice you make has weight."
Kael touched the surface of the pool.
Visions flared—runes, wars, a white flame swallowing a realm.
Then darkness. A gate. A voice—
"He remembers…"
Kael yanked his hand back. Breath shallow. The pool stilled.
Lirae stepped forward, concern flickering across her face, but she said nothing.
He turned to her. "You still haven't told me what you want."
"To help," she said.
Kael's gaze hardened. "I don't believe in help. I believe in purpose."
"Then maybe that's why you're here." Lirae's eyes held something deeper—buried grief, unspoken conviction. "Because your purpose may be the only one strong enough to fracture what binds the heavens."
Kael didn't respond.
He turned and walked toward the exit, leaving the Seer's pool behind.
But the voice from the vision echoed in his mind.
He remembers…
And Kael knew—
The relic wasn't just awakening.
It was remembering something he had forgotten.