The war did not begin with fire.
It began with silence.
A silence so complete that even magic hesitated to breathe.
At the heart of the High Conclave, seven circles of stone lay embedded in the obsidian floor, each one carved with sigils older than the nations they governed. The chamber itself was a cathedral hollowed from the mountain's spine—vast, cold, and designed not for worship, but for containment. Every surface was layered with nullstone and binding runes meant to absorb excess power, to remind those who stood within that magic was not meant to be free.
For centuries, the Seven Circles had remained unbroken.
Tonight, one of them trembled.
Eryndor felt it before anyone else acknowledged it.
The sensation was subtle—no more than a pressure behind the eyes, like a thought that did not belong to him. He stood at the edge of the Third Circle, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight despite the years weighing on his bones. His robes bore no insignia of rank, yet no one mistook him for anything less than authority. Power clung to him quietly, disciplined and sharp.
His gaze never left the Seventh Circle.
It pulsed faintly, its sigils glowing with an uneven, hollow light that did not reflect off the floor but seemed to sink into it. That alone was wrong. Magic was meant to leave residue—to stain the world when disturbed.
This did not stain.
It erased.
A murmur rippled through the chamber as others began to sense it. The sound was restrained, fearful in a way only the educated could manage. These were not apprentices or hedge sorcerers. They were the High Conclave—mages whose names shaped treaties and ended wars without armies.
And none of them spoke lightly.
"The resonance is unstable," said Calyrex of the Fifth Circle, breaking the silence. His voice was precise, sharpened by decades of political maneuvering. "That circle has not been accessed in three generations."
Eryndor did not turn his head. "It was never meant to be accessed again."
Calyrex stiffened. Several others exchanged looks.
The Seventh Circle was not forbidden because it was cruel.
It was forbidden because it was final.
Magic, at its core, obeyed laws older than language—exchange, balance, cost. The Seven Circles were not merely tiers of power; they were philosophies, boundaries drawn by mages who had once nearly destroyed the world learning where magic must end.
The First Circle governed the physical: flame, frost, force.
The Third bent space and perception.
The Fifth fractured thought and will.
The Seventh did something far worse.
It unmade.
Not destruction. Not death.
Erasure.
To invoke it was to remove not only a body or a soul, but the idea that the thing had ever existed. Names vanished. Records failed. Memories collapsed inward like rotten beams. History itself recoiled, confused by the absence it could not explain.
Even gods hesitated before it.
"The wards are responding," another mage said, her voice tight. "Someone is attempting to—"
The tremor intensified.
A hairline crack spread along the outer sigil of the Seventh Circle, glowing briefly before dimming again. The light it gave off was wrong—neither bright nor dark, but empty, like a hole punched into reality.
Eryndor exhaled slowly.
So. It has begun.
"Seal the chamber," he said.
The words were calm. Measured.
Every head turned.
"That is a declaration," Calyrex said sharply. "If the Circles lock themselves—"
"—then the world will hear rumors instead of truths," Eryndor replied. "And rumors can still be controlled."
The Conclave did not rule kingdoms.
It ruled restraint.
Kings feared armies. Empires feared rebellion. But the world feared mages who no longer feared consequence. The Seven Circles were the promise that magic would never again rewrite the world unchecked.
Now that promise was cracking.
A young mage near the eastern pillar collapsed to one knee, clutching his head. Blood trickled from his nose, dark against the pale stone.
"I can feel it," he whispered. "Something is being… removed."
"From where?" Calyrex demanded.
The mage swallowed hard. His voice shook—not from pain, but from confusion.
"My sister," he said. "She lives in the south. I remember her face. I remember her voice."
A pause.
"I can't remember where she lives."
The chamber froze.
"I know I wrote to her," the mage continued, eyes wide with terror. "I know there was a city. I know I stood on its streets."
He pressed his palms against the floor as if the stone might answer him.
"But when I try to remember its name," he whispered, "there is nothing there."
No one spoke.
This was not theory.
This was not precedent.
This was the price, paid in real time.
Eryndor closed his eyes—not in denial, but in acknowledgment.
Somewhere beyond the mountain, beyond wards and sigils, a place had lost more than its name.
And the world had not noticed.
Not yet.
The Seventh Circle pulsed once more—then went still.
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was waiting.