Aegisspire's gates looked smaller than Kael remembered.
Not physically.Just… diminished.
As if the Mourningwood had stolen something from the world and refused to give it back.
Team Seven passed through the obsidian arch in silence.
The guards didn't speak. They barely looked up. Their eyes were hollow. Tired.
They'd seen teams come back broken before.But not like this.Not so quiet.Not so… changed.
Inside the academy walls, Master Haldran met them without expression.
"You retrieved the relic?"
Torin handed over the blackened crystal orb without a word.
Haldran took it. Studied it.
"This is corrupted."
"It was bound," Elyra said. "Sealed under divine symbols. We didn't break them. We… witnessed them."
Haldran's eyes flicked to Kael for just a moment too long.
Then he nodded.
"You'll be debriefed tomorrow. Until then—rest. You're dismissed."
They walked away.
And the stars began to move.
Not visibly. Not to the ordinary eye.
But Kael felt it.
One constellation vanished.Another shifted—forming a new curve.A glyph in the sky.Echo.
Lira was the first to break the silence.
"You're not what you say you are."
Kael didn't answer.
She didn't press. She didn't need to.
Dain, though, stepped in front of Kael as they reached the dorm entrance.
His voice was steady.
"You could've killed us. In the forest."
Kael looked at him.
"You didn't."
Kael didn't blink. "No."
"But you could have."
"Yes."
Dain held his sword—still sheathed.
"I don't know what you are," he said. "But I think I trust you anyway."
A beat of silence.
"Because you saved us?"
"No," Dain said.
"Because I think you regret it."
That night, the sky cracked.
Not with thunder. Not with storms.
With memory.
Across Elyndor, scattered dreamers—mages, priests, madmen—woke gasping.
Some wept.
Some screamed.
And one, far below Aegisspire, deep in the Hollowdeep, smiled.
In a sealed chamber beneath the academy, lit only by the glow of shifting leyline veins, a figure sat cross-legged on the stone.
Robes of gray. Skin veiled by runes.
Eyes closed.
Breathing in rhythm with something… old.
The relic they watched pulsed once.
Twice.
Then glowed a color that hadn't been seen since the Divine War.
"The Echo lives," the figure whispered."And the name begins to return."
Back in his bunk, Kael did not sleep.
He watched the stars through the high window.
And knew the sky was remembering.
Not just him.
But all of them.