I remember the smell of burned paper.
My mother stood barefoot by the hearth, holding a page between two fingers as flame licked its edges. Her hair was unusually down, her eyes fixed not on the fire but on me.
"Some things are too dangerous to write," she said.
I must've been seven. I'd stolen her quill that morning and drawn glyphs in the garden soil. I didn't know what they meant — not really — but something had pulled them out of my hand like water down a drain.
"Are they spells?" I asked. "The glyphs?"
She didn't answer. She just let the page curl into ash and fall.
I stepped closer, small enough then to press my cheek against her skirt. She smelled like ink and salt and smoke.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"They're memories the world tried to forget."
And then she was gone.
---
The mountain loomed ahead me like the spine of the world.
I reached the final bend in the rusted trail, my feet blistered from the climb, my breath almost a lump in my throat. Mist curled between the stones like it had a world of its own. The trees were thickening, black rock and cold wind and silence — the kind that makes you wonder if you've already passed into some place you're not meant to be.
Then I saw it.
The Citadel of Lore.
It rose from the cliffside like something carved, not built — all perfect angles and sharp towers, half-swallowed by the mountain and rocks itself. Long banners of indigo hung from the balcony, unmoving despite the wind.
And there, at the base of the stone stair — a gate.
No guards.
No herald.
Just two enormous iron doors, etched in a script I didn't know.
I stepped forward.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, with a sound like breath being drawn after too long beneath the water, the doors began to open.
Not with grandeur. Not even fully. Just enough for a body to slip through.
And oddly,
I hesitated.
What if this wasn't meant for me?
What if it was?
I crossed the threshold — and the gate closed behind me without a sound.
The doors sealed behind me with a hush, like the mountain exhaled.
Inside, the air was colder. Cleaner. It smelled of candle smoke, old ink, and something faintly metallic — like blood. The corridor stretched forward into dark stone lit by flickering sconces. Words I couldn't read were etched into every wall, fading into shadow.
No one greeted me. Am I even in the right place? I'll never know until I find out.
So I walked.
After a dozen turns and stairwells, I entered a vaulted atrium, shaped like quills and scrolls. High above, a skylight of violet glass cast rippling light across the floor — a massive mosaic of a wolf devouring the sun.
There were people here.
Three stood by the far dais: a woman in robes of midnight blue, her hair bound in silver thread; a younger man beside her with ink stains on his fingertips; and behind them, a third figure in armour, watching with arms folded.
The woman stepped forward.
"Cressida Ashvale," she said, voice echoing through the dome. "Daughter of fire. We have waited longer than you know, your teammates or should I say classmates had already began their journey"
I didn't answer. I didn't trust my voice not to shake.
She extended a gloved hand and pressed a silver medallion into my palm — a quill surrounded by seven rings.
"This is your token. It will grant you access to the Lesser Halls. Lose it, and we will not replace it."
I nodded, fingers closing over the cold metal.
The man beside her — the scribe — finally spoke. "She doesn't look like a threat." The woman arched a brow. "That's because you haven't read her bloodline."
I stiffened. "You've read my bloodline?"
The scribe — younger than I expected, sharp-featured, with a voice that could slice silk — turned to me properly now. His eyes were pale, almost colorless, and held the kind of intelligence that made me want to look away.
"I'm Reis Ivendale," he said. "Third-year. Keeper of Glyph Indexes. I'll be overseeing your preliminary trials."
The man beside her — the scribe — finally spoke.
"She doesn't look like a threat."
His voice was low and unhurried, the kind of voice that rarely needed to be raised to be obeyed. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing wrists inked with thin lines of faded glyphs. Not decorative. His fingers — long, elegant, stained dark at the tips — tapped absently against the spine of a leather-bound ledger.
He hadn't looked at me yet. Not really.
When he did, I felt it like a weight shifting in the room.
Cool gray eyes met mine — the shade of old parchment left too long in the dark — and for a moment I forgot how to stand still. His gaze wasn't curious or cruel. It was clinical. Exacting. Like he could see what I'd buried and filed it away without permission.
"Cressida Ashvale," he said, repeating my name like a problem to be solved.
"I'm not here to cause trouble," I said.
He smiled, faintly. Not unkind. Not warm either. "No one ever is."
The woman beside him gave a small, deliberate sigh. "Reis Ivendale is one of our senior students. He'll be overseeing your preliminary trials."
"Trials?" I asked.
"Four," Reis answered smoothly. "One for memory. One for intent. One for resilience. One for truth."
"And if I fail?"
"Then the Citadel will pretend you were never here." He tilted his head, studying me. "But I don't think you'll fail. You wouldn't have made it through the gate if the ink hadn't already started to claim you."
I frowned. "What does that mean?"
Reis didn't answer.
He only looked at the medallion now hanging from my neck — the silver quill within seven rings — and then back at me.
"Rest while you can," he said softly. "The ink remembers more than blood."
Then he turned and walked away — not rushed, not reluctant. Like time bowed to him, not the other way around.
I stood in the echo of his footsteps, unsure whether I'd just been warned or welcomed.
Then someone coughed behind me — lightly, like they didn't want to interrupt a spell.
When I turned. I saw a girl about my age who stood beneath one of the columns, hugging a thin journal to her chest. Her cloak was slightly too large, slipping off one shoulder, and her coppery hair was tied back in a messy knot. Her boots were muddy. Her eyes were sharp.
"First years aren't supposed to stand around after initial observation," she said. "But you wouldn't know that. Because no one tells us anything."
I blinked. "Are you—?"
"Assigned to help you? No. But I got lost last year and ended up cleaning ink vats for a week. So. I'm doing my part for the uninformed."
She stepped forward and extended a hand. "Thalia Dorne. Enchanter's daughter. Illegitimate. Highly sarcastic. I collect curses and bad habits."
I shook her hand before I could stop myself.
"Cressida," I said.
"I know. The Ashvale girl. Whole tower's whispering." She paused. "You walk quieter than I expected."
"I wasn't trying to be quiet."
"Exactly."
Thalia grinned, then tipped her head toward a side corridor. "Come on. Your chamber's in the South Tower. Don't worry, they only assign the cursed ones to the east wing."
I followed her, grateful for the distraction.
The corridors grew narrower as we walked, the stone darker. Students passed by in scattered groups, some barely older than me, some wearing robes marked with glowing thread. I caught snippets of conversation in languages I didn't recognize, the scent of chalk and burning wax thick in the air.
At one point, we passed a boy with silver rings in both ears who nodded slightly at Thalia and gave me a long, assessing look. She ignored him.
"You'll meet everyone at the orientation feast," she said, glancing at me sideways. "That's if you survive Trial One. Glyph Memory, right?"
"How do you know that?"
"Everyone starts there. You'll be fine." She hesitated, then added more quietly, "Unless you freeze up when the Inklight touches you."
"Inklight?"
"You'll see."
---
My room was little more than stone and silence.
A cot. A desk. A wash basin. A single candle. The token medallion gleamed on the hook beside the door. On the desk, someone had left a bundle of folded robes — and a square of paper written in thin, angular hand:
TRIAL ONE: GLYPH MEMORY.
DAWN. ATRIUM OF ECHOES.
Underneath, the same symbol I'd seen earlier: a quill through circles.
Thalia glanced at it over my shoulder and winced. "They gave you the silence glyph. First glyph I ever botched."
"What happens if you mess it up?"
She didn't answer.
Just patted my arm lightly and said, "Try not to dream in symbols tonight. They bleed through, and this room is yours just for tonight, you'll share rooms with our teammates, that's if you survive trial one."
Then she left me alone, the door closing with a soft click.
---
That night, I didn't dream at all.
But I did wake once, to find a shape carved faintly into the frost on the window.
Not drawn by my hand.
A glyph.
Watching.
Waiting.
I didn't sleep.
At dawn, the Citadel's bells didn't ring. Instead, a deep hum moved through the stone, like breath drawn through a hollow throat. The warded walls stirred to life, whispering the names of the newly marked.
I dressed in silence.
The robes were stiff, stitched with thread that shimmered faintly under torchlight — not gold, not silver, but something older. My hair was braided and pinned tight around my head. My boots creaked as I stepped into the corridor.
Thalia was already waiting.
She didn't smile this time.
"They're calling your tower early," she said. "You'll be in the first wave. Atrium of Echoes is two floors below the western library. You'll know it by the sound."
"The sound?"
"You'll see," she said again — and walked beside me, but not quite close enough to touch. She makes me wonder if no one is ever going to actually tell me what is going to happen.
The Atrium of Echoes was not a hall, it was a cave carved into the mountain's spine.
Stone pillars lined the edges like frozen soldiers, each carved with runes older than the kingdom's language. The air smelled of cold metal and parchment ash. The ceiling soared above us, smooth as glass and darker than coal. Seven mirrored glyph-circles had been carved into the floor, each pulsing faintly beneath layers of shifting silver mist.
We were thirty-four when the doors sealed behind us.
Only those chosen would walk out.
Reis Ivendale stood beside the Arch scribe, his hands clasped together. He looked the same as he was yesterday except for the ink stains on his fingertips had faded. He didn't look at any of us directly, but I could feel the weight of his attention like static — not unkind, but sharp. He had the look of someone who already knew which of us would fail. He knew I wasn't going to make it, and I'll just prove him that all his assumptions weren't always true.
A bell rang — soft and hollow, as it vibrated through the cave.
A name echoed across the chamber. But none of the arch scribe or the higher officials moved their mouth.
"Initiate Arlen Tyre."
A boy stepped forward — lean, serious, sweat beading across his temple. He was no more than three years older than me. He took his place in the centre of one of the circles. The mist receded.
Seven glyphs appeared in the air before him, hovering like blades. A crescent with a tail. A spiral made of thorns. A twin star flanked by broken wings. A shard that bled downward like ink. And a few more which I couldn't recognise.
They flickered and shifted, testing him. He hesitated. His eyes darted between each glyph trying to make out its outline. And then he chose a spiral.
It vanished. His circle remained dark. A beat passed. Then the ground beneath him pulsed red.
The mist swallowed him.
Failed.
A warden with thick robes retrieved him. No words were spoken. The higher ones didn't even look at him. His footsteps echoed hollow against the stone as he was led out a different door — one that did not open again.
"Initiate Cressida Ashvale."
Well fuck it. While his name was almost a loud whisper, mine was like thunder, angry ones that comes in the middle of an ocean.
I stepped forward, and I could already feel my palms slick. Every heartbeat was like a drumbeat against my ribs. Whispers stirred around the chamber. I didn't meet anyone's eyes.
Of course they knew who I was, and judging by the shocked reactions my mother must've been a respected one and I wasn't going to let her down, not because I love her but because I refused to let the weight of her name crush me. I'd wear it like armor.
When I stepped into the glyph ring, the world changed.
The moment my boot crossed the silver threshold, the circle beneath me flared—not with the soft white-blue glow the others had stirred, but with a crackling violet light, edged in black. It wasn't mist anymore. It was smoke. Smoke that smelled faintly of burnt ink and ash.
Across the room, a ripple passed through the scribes. Even the Arch scribe shifted his stance.
Then came the glyphs. Not seven, like the others. Not even nine, like I thought at first.
Thirteen.
They spiralled into the air — symbols I didn't recognize, couldn't have, even after all those years sneaking into my mother's study. They weren't the standard glyphs of the Citadel; they were older. Raw. Some looked like teeth. Others like starbursts, dripping with hooked tails. One shimmered faintly gold before cracking straight down the centre.
A low hum filled the Atrium, almost too low to hear — except I felt it in my spine. Deep and ancient.
One glyph burned brighter than the rest: a jagged fang suspended over a circle — the symbol of the Ashvale line, though no scribe had carved it in over a decade.
I stepped toward it instinctively. Reis moved in the shadows. I raised my palm. Said nothing. The glyph rushed toward me.
No one else had been touched by their glyph. But this one pierced me like a brand.
The circle beneath me shuddered. Lines fractured across the floor. The columns groaned. Well I don't think this is going to end well.
Somewhere deep in the mountain, a bell began to ring — not the ceremonial kind, but a warning bell. The sound of something old stirring.
My blood burned violet. My veins glowed. And then — I heard it.
A voice.
Low. Female. Ancient.
"You are not the first."
I fell to my knees, gasping. The smoke squeezed my lunges out. A few minutes later, the mist had vanished entirely around me. Only scorched stone remained.
Reis stepped forward and said something I couldn't hear.
The Arch scribe raised a hand and spoke louder: "The glyph has answered. It has… remembered."
Everyone stared. Some in awe. Some in fear. Me? I could barely breathe.