Mistress Kael didn't sleep that night either.
Even after leaving Spandrex's quarters, after her carefully measured words and the warning she barely contained behind steady eyes—she had returned to her chambers, bolted the doors, and locked every ward twice.
Then sat in silence.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Something older.
She stared at the unlit lantern above her desk, watching it the way one might watch a wound to see if it bled again. Her fingers trembled only once—when she reached for the box beneath the floorboards.
It had remained untouched for over twelve years.
Bound in flesh-threaded silk and sealed with three sigils: one of silence, one of sightlessness, and one that had no name—only a shape she'd never spoken aloud.
She unbound it slowly.
Inside was a single sheet of aged vellum.
Its glyph was nearly identical to the one on Spandrex's wrist.
But older. Imperfect. Drawn with uncertainty, not instinct.
She had failed to complete it.
She had buried it.
Kael traced the faded ink. It no longer pulsed. No longer whispered. But once—once, it had screamed.
And she had silenced it.
She was only seventeen when she first found the name Vehrash in a forbidden margin, buried in a spellbook mislabeled as alchemical nonsense. Her mentor, Master Halen, had warned her about glyphs that predated Academy discipline—about spells that responded not to words, but to need.
But she hadn't listened.
She wanted more than mastery of structure.
She wanted resonance.
She wanted meaning.
The first time she drew the glyph, it didn't respond. But the second time—it blinked. A flicker in the ink. She had felt seen.
The third time, it answered.
And the thing that answered had no name.
Only intent.
It whispered truths she never should've understood. Showed her memories that weren't hers. Spoke in her dreams until she sealed it in ash, cut the glyph from her wrist with a ceremonial blade, and buried it in inkless silence.
It was never gone.
Merely waiting for another.
Back in the present, Kael ran her fingers across her wrist. The scar was faint now. Almost gone. But the sensation that rose beneath her skin told her the wound still remembered.
And now it was awake in someone else.
Spandrex.
A boy too intuitive for his own safety. Too sensitive to things others overlooked. That was why she'd kept him close. Why she'd tested his memory, his instinct, his capacity to feel before he even knew what he was.
And why she'd watched his hands the night he drew the broken rune—the exact lines she once etched in blood.
He hadn't studied it.
He remembered it.
Kael stood from her desk, crossing to the shelves behind her. She pulled down a thick, dust-covered volume—Lexicon of Vehrash Sympathies—a copy she had scribed herself from memory. It had never been published. Never even cataloged.
Because it shouldn't exist.
She flipped it open. Dozens of symbols stared back.
Pages of warnings.
Echoes of failed bindings.
Sketches of creatures drawn from old blood and half-spoken names. Things not summoned, but invited—by grief, longing, guilt.
Or memory.
She turned to the page with the name: The First Vehrash.
It had only one description beside it, scrawled in her own terrified hand:
A formless archive of what should never have been spoken.
It does not forget.
It only waits.
A knock startled her. Not a rap—but a delicate, patterned tap. Three short, one long.
Her heart clenched.
Only one person knocked like that anymore.
She opened the door.
Professor Aelmor stood there, eyes heavy, robes unfastened at the collar. He looked like a man pulled out of memory himself.
"You felt it too," he said quietly.
Kael nodded. "It's begun again."
Aelmor stepped inside. "Which student?"
"Spandrex."
He exhaled. "Then we don't have long."
Kael closed the book and locked the door behind them. "We may not have any time."
Aelmor's gaze flicked to her wrist. "It's still there, isn't it?"
She said nothing. But her silence was enough.
"I told you it couldn't be buried," he muttered.
"I know," Kael whispered. "But I didn't expect it to choose him."
Aelmor nodded solemnly. "They never choose the ones we think they will. They choose the ones who already carry them. He didn't summon it, Kael. He remembered it."
Kael looked down at her hands. "So did I."
Aelmor placed a firm hand on her shoulder. "Then teach him. Before the others find out what he holds. Before the Academy starts asking questions."
She met his eyes. "And if it's already too late?"
His silence was long.
Then: "Then may the Vehrash remember mercy."
That night, after Aelmor left, Kael didn't sleep.
Instead, she returned to her desk, opened a blank scroll, dipped her pen in ash-mixed ink—and began to write new glyphs.
Not to bind.
Not to summon.
But to speak to what waited in the dark corners of meaning.
She could only hope Spandrex was strong enough.
Because the First Vehrash had never chosen a host before.
Only vessels.
And vessels were meant to carry something.
Even if it shattered them.