The journal smelled of smoke.
Even tucked beneath Anaya's robes, its charred edges left faint smudges on her fingertips, as though fire had claimed it once and might claim it again. She carried it back to her dormitory like contraband, heart pounding at every corner she turned.
That night, with curtains drawn tight and a single candle burning low, she opened it.
The handwriting was uneven, jagged in places as if written in haste. The first page bore a name: Kaelen Deyr.
A real name. A real life. Not erased, not yet.
Her breath caught. She whispered it aloud, as though speaking it gave the erased student breath again.
Kaelen.
She didn't keep the discovery to herself. By the following evening, Leila, Kato, and Rafael crowded into her dormitory, their faces half-lit by flickering light.
"Read it," Rafael urged, leaning forward, eyes gleaming.
Anaya turned the pages carefully. The ink was faded but legible.
To whoever finds this: know first that I was not mad. I was not cursed. I saw what was true — that glimpses are not destiny, but prisons.
Leila gasped softly. "Prisons…"
Anaya continued.
The Academy teaches us that to walk against your glimpse is to tear yourself apart. That to break it is to break the world. But I learned the opposite: the world breaks us to keep the glimpse intact.
Kato shifted uneasily. "This is dangerous talk."
"Keep listening," Anaya said.
The entries unfolded like confessions. Kaelen had been a Transfer, born far from the Academy's gilded walls. Their glimpse had shown a destiny of servitude, a life spent as a shadow behind others. But their resonance rebelled — glimpses around them fractured, twisted, reshaped.
At first, I thought I was cursed. Then I realized I was free.
Rafael let out a low whistle. "Free… or doomed."
Page after page detailed Kaelen's training, the punishments they endured, the whispers that followed them.
They called me unstable. They called me danger. But what they feared most was not my weakness. It was my choice. I could choose. And if I could, so could anyone.
Leila's hands tightened in her lap. "No wonder they erased him."
Then came the warnings.
The Academy will not allow rewriters. They will erase you, not for what you do, but for what you prove is possible. Trust no Headmaster, no Council. Trust only those who have seen the lie and lived.
The words seemed to pulse from the page. Anaya felt them resonate in her bones.
But scattered among the warnings were instructions.
Pages filled with diagrams of circles inscribed with runes. Notes on disrupting glimpses deliberately, bending them instead of shattering them. A ritual for hiding resonance, cloaking it so that Seers could not detect it.
And darker still: sketches of a ritual called Ashbinding.
To sever a glimpse from its owner is to free them — or destroy them utterly. It is power the Academy uses to erase, but it can be stolen back.
Kato swore under his breath. "This is—this is too far. Playing with things we don't understand."
Leila's eyes glittered. "But it's proof. Proof that he resisted. Proof that we can."
As they read, Anaya felt the room grow heavier, as though Kaelen's presence leaned over their shoulders. The words were not just history — they were invitation.
But invitation to what?
Freedom? Or ruin?
The last entries chilled her most.
If you are reading this, I have failed. My name will be ash in the mouths of history. But know this: the Academy fears us because we are their truth. We are not broken. We are the mirror that shows them their lie. If they come for you — and they will — remember: you are not alone. Even erased, I will echo in you.
The ink at the bottom was smudged, blurred as if by tears — or blood.
Anaya closed the journal slowly, her throat tight.
For a long time, none of them spoke.
Finally, Rafael broke the silence. "So what now? We've got warnings, we've got forbidden rituals, we've got a ghost telling us to fight back. What do we actually do?"
Anaya looked at the faces around her. Leila, fierce in her quiet resolve. Kato, torn but loyal. Rafael, reckless but burning bright.
She felt the fire catch in her chest, Kaelen's words echoing in her pulse.
"We learn," she said. "We prepare. We won't be erased."
The next weeks were dangerous ones. By day, they remained ordinary students: attending lectures, sparring in the courtyard, pretending to worry over exams. By night, they deciphered Kaelen's diagrams, tracing wards, practicing resonance cloaking until their heads ached.
Leila mastered the concealment runes, weaving them into bracelets and rings that dulled their resonance to the Seers. Kato tested the edge of Ashbinding with a blade dulled by chalk, shuddering at its power. Rafael turned the warnings into strategies, maps of how they might move if the Academy closed in.
And Anaya — she walked the line Kaelen had left, her power stretching, reshaping. For the first time, she wasn't just reacting. She was learning to bend.
But with every step, she felt the noose tighten.
Mira was watching.
She caught Anaya's eye one afternoon in the training hall, her smirk sharper than ever. "You're hiding something, Transfer. I can feel it."
Anaya forced a smile. "Maybe you're imagining things."
"Maybe," Mira said softly. "But the last time I imagined this much, someone disappeared."
The threat hung in the air like a blade.
That night, Anaya dreamed.
She stood in the Chapel of Glimpses, but the mirrors showed not her face, nor her future, but Kaelen's. His eyes burned white, his hand outstretched.
If you follow, you will burn.
She woke gasping, the journal clutched tight against her chest.