The dueling chamber still bore scars from the battle between the 2 anomalies . Charred stone. Shattered sigils. Whispers that clung to the halls like smoke.
And yet Kael himself was nowhere to be found.
By the second day, rumors spread like wildfire. Some said the Council had executed him in secret. Others claimed Vox had spirited him away to the Abyss itself. By the third day, even instructors no longer pretended ignorance. Something had shifted. Something dangerous.
Darius spat on the floor as he passed through the training yard. "Coward probably ran. Couldn't handle the chains they were about to put on him."
But his tone lacked conviction. His eyes kept darting toward the empty corner where Kael had once trained.
Rynna, sitting cross-legged on the stone steps, shook her head. "You don't vanish under Ashen Vox's shadow. If he's gone, it's because Vox chose it."
"Which means," Serran murmured, leaning against a column, "whatever Kael is… it matters more than we realized."
Jorek stayed silent, sharpening his blade, though his jaw clenched tighter with every scrape of steel.
⸻
In another hall, lit by torchlight and silence, Veyron stood alone.
Sweat dripped from his chin. His chest rose and fell like a hammer on an anvil. He drove his fists again and again into the resonance pillar before him—an obsidian column designed to withstand the strikes of dozens. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface.
Each blow carried more than power. It carried shame. Fury. The memory of being unraveled, stripped of voice and strength by a silence he could neither block nor answer.
"Kael Ardyn…" Veyron growled between gasps. "You will not stand above me."
He pressed his palm to the cracked pillar, summoning his own resonance. A blaze of searing red flared out, shaping itself into jagged blades of energy. They hissed as they dug into stone, deeper and deeper until the pillar shuddered.
But still, it did not fall.
Veyron collapsed to one knee, sweat and blood dripping from his knuckles. His reflection stared back at him in the glossy surface of the pillar—eyes burning, lips curled in a snarl.
He wasn't broken. He wasn't finished.
Kael had taken one victory. Veyron would carve his name into every one that followed.
And unlike Kael, he would not bow to silence. He would burn it away.
⸻
High above, in the Council chamber, debate raged.
"Ardyn is unstable," hissed one Councilor. "We should excise him now, before his anomaly spreads."
"Spread?" another scoffed. "He is not a plague."
"You don't know what he is. That is plague enough."
Only the High Councilor remained silent, drumming their masked fingers against the armrest. Then:
"And Vox?"
"He shields the boy. As he always shields his projects."
A pause. Then, almost reluctant: "And how many of those projects have survived?"
The chamber grew quiet.
⸻
That night, alone in the dormitory, Rynna woke from uneasy sleep. Her window was open. The wind carried whispers that didn't sound like wind at all—low, guttural, almost words.
She pressed her palm against the sill and froze.
The world outside shimmered faintly, as if for a heartbeat the Academy itself sat on the edge of a deeper shadow.
Something was watching.
And Kael was not there to see it.