[ESHE – Glyph Rank: D | Resonance Tier: 1 – Spark]
Eshe crouched beside the ashes of the beast, hand outstretched.
Its corpse hadn't just burned.
It collapsed into itself, like the magic holding it together got deleted.
She swept her hand through the air.
A faint afterimage of a glyph flickered — incomplete. Scrambled. Wrong.
"What is that?" she whispered.
Amani didn't respond.
Instead, she looked up toward the heavens, silent.
Then Eshe's glyph pulsed. A vision hit her like lightning.
[Initiating Divine Vision: Tier 1 – Solar Lineage Detected]
She wasn't in the canyon anymore.
She stood in a hallway of the Academy—but it was on fire.
Statues broken.
Walls bleeding divine light.
Students—dead. But glowing. Marked by glyphs.
She saw one trying to crawl away. His glyph had exploded — burned into his skin like molten code.
His eyes were hollow.
Then… the glyph moved across the floor like a virus, spreading, infecting walls, warping the building.
And then—screaming.
The kind of screaming that cracked souls.
"They said we would ascend—"
"—But they buried us first—"
Eshe collapsed.
[AMANI – Glyph Rank: C | Resonance Tier: 2 – Pulse]
She caught Eshe just in time.
The girl was trembling. Glowing again. Her glyph spinning too fast.
"Easy. Breathe."
Eshe looked up, dazed.
"There was… a hallway. The Academy. But—before. Something happened before all this. Like… years ago."
Amani stiffened.
"You saw it too?"
Eshe blinked.
"…You've had the visions?"
Amani didn't answer directly.
Instead, she reached into her belt pouch and pulled out something strange:
A black glyph crystal, fractured down the middle. Buzzing faintly with dark light.
"I found this two days ago. It was inside a trial beast. Not one like this… but similar."
She held it between two fingers.
"It's not ours. It's from the predecessors."
Eshe's breath caught. "You mean—?"
Amani nodded.
"The students from the first class."
🏛️
Celestial Tribunal – Secret Wing (The Veiled Table)
Seven thrones did not sit here.
Only three.
Hidden. Unnamed.
One of them leaned over a pool of shifting starlight, watching the two girls below.
"They're getting too close."
Another spoke: calm, mechanical.
"They will need to understand eventually. You cannot hide the Collapse forever."
The third voice laughed.
"Let them see. Let them dig. The dead left enough warnings. It's only fair."
Above the pool, a symbol spun:
A broken Eye of Horus, cracked right down the middle.
[Back Below – Amani]
She stood slowly.
"We're not just surviving this school," she muttered. "We're digging through its grave."
Eshe looked around the jungle nervously.
"If the first class fell here… does that mean we're being tested the same way?"
"No," Amani said coldly.
"We're the cleanup crew."