Surveillance Glass
---
The next morning, everything had changed.
No announcements were made. No staff confronted him. No student dared speak of it openly. But Ash knew. He could feel it.
The school was watching him now.
He woke up to find a silver disc embedded into the stone wall across his bed — a Surveillance Glass, disguised under the illusion of a torch mount. A Class 5 enchantment. Illegal to use on under-ranked students. Impossible to erase by normal means.
Ash stared at it.
> "They're afraid."
That was good.
Fear meant hesitation.
And hesitation bought him time.
---
💠
At breakfast, the other Black Wing students stared at him like he'd grown horns.
The girl from before — the one who had called him a corpse — now looked at him with cautious interest.
"You're either a genius," she said finally, "or a walking death curse."
Ash didn't respond. He just sipped the gray bean broth they called "sustenance."
"Name's Riven," she offered, sitting across from him. "Riven Ilex. Remembered the life of a hedge-priest who catalogued poison frogs. Useful for about ten minutes until I failed alchemy class and got dumped here."
Ash nodded.
"You?"
"I don't remember," he said. "Not in the way they expect."
She leaned in. "But you can cast. You made Caelion look like a damp candle."
"I didn't cast," he corrected. "I… deleted."
Riven blinked. "You deleted his magic?"
"No. I deleted the concept of his spell… before it could exist."
Silence.
Then, Riven whispered, "What are you?"
Ash looked at her, tired. "That's the question, isn't it?"
---
💠
Later that day, Ash was called to the North Wing Archives — a place usually reserved for faculty and Class 4 students.
He arrived alone.
The doors were engraved with memory-seals: glowing blue threads that flickered as he passed. Inside, the hall was dim and cold, with shelves stretching into shadow.
A woman waited for him at the central table.
She wore no robes, only a simple black uniform — the symbol of the Crownshade Internal Observation Bureau stitched to her collar. A silent watcher.
She did not ask him to sit.
"Your name is Ashriel Veil," she said without looking up. "Your academic file lists no remembered identity, no bloodright spell, and no elemental inheritance."
"Yes."
"And yet, yesterday, you nullified five consecutive attacks cast from a lineage of ancestral memory. No chant. No counter-sigil. No mana flare."
"Yes."
She looked up.
"I've seen that only once before. In the final month of the Codex Wars. From a spellcaster who had no lineage, no wand, and no past."
Ash's pulse slowed.
"What happened to that caster?" he asked.
The woman's mouth twitched. "They were erased from history. Entirely."
She leaned closer.
"And now… we wonder if they were you."
---
💠
That night, Ash couldn't sleep.
Not because of fear.
Because of her.
Riven.
She was dreaming too loud.
He crossed the hall and cracked open her door.
And froze.
She was sitting upright in bed, eyes shut, scribbling the same sigils he had drawn in his notebook.
One after another. Not copied. Not remembered.
Rewritten.
When he stepped closer, she whispered in a voice that was not hers:
> "The Codex bleeds. The author returns.
The erased will speak in tongues again."
"The glass cannot hold the flood."
Her eyes snapped open.
She saw him.
Then she collapsed.
The Sigil That Dreams
---
When Riven woke, her eyes were glassy and wild.
Ash handed her water. She drank it without speaking.
He didn't ask if she remembered what she said in her sleep. She didn't ask why his hands were covered in ink.
The silence between them wasn't awkward.
It was heavy. Measured. Sacred.
Finally, Riven whispered, "I saw it again. The book with no cover. Pages full of symbols that breathe."
Ash froze. "Did it speak to you?"
She nodded.
> "It didn't want to be remembered.
It wanted to be rewritten."
---
Later that day, a slip was left on Ash's desk.
No sender. No seal.
It read:
> "Tower of Echoes. Sixth bell.
Come alone. Bring nothing.
—P."
Ash knew that letter. That signature.
Professor Prentiss.
Known in whispers as The Half-Ghost.
No one had seen him teach in months. Rumor said he walked into the Mind Vault during an experiment and forgot how to speak. Others said he wrote spells that folded time into itself. No one knew for sure.
So of course Ash went.
---
The Tower of Echoes lived up to its name.
Every step echoed three times — once in sound, once in memory, and once in something else Ash couldn't name. The deeper he went, the louder the whispers grew.
At the base, he found a round chamber with copper walls and no doors.
Professor Prentiss stood at the center, dressed in robes with fading runes. His eyes were milky white — not blind, but burned by years of forbidden seeing.
He didn't turn when Ash entered.
"You've seen the sigils."
Ash said nothing.
"You've drawn them."
Still silence.
Prentiss finally turned, and his voice softened.
"You've dreamt them."
Ash clenched his jaw. "How do you know?"
The professor raised a trembling hand and unrolled a scroll.
It wasn't parchment. It was skin.
On it: the same sigils Ash and Riven had drawn.
But aged. Ancient.
Etched in blood and ash.
"These symbols are older than memory. Older than the Codex. Before magic was named… it was erased."
Ash whispered, "You've seen them before?"
"I studied them for years," Prentiss said. "I tried to recreate the sequence. But it never worked."
"Why not?"
"Because I was only a scholar," the professor said softly. "Not a source."
Ash's breath caught. "You think I'm the source?"
"I think," said Prentiss, "you are what the Codex tried to bury."
---
💠
Ash returned to the Black Wing with no answers, only more questions.
Riven was waiting.
Before he could speak, she unrolled her sleeve.
There, on her arm, a sigil had burned itself into her skin.
Not ink.
Not branded.
Grown.
"I didn't draw it," she said.
Ash stepped forward.
It wasn't any of the ones he knew
.
It was new.
Still forming.
Alive.
He placed his hand near it — and the Surveillance Glass in the room shattered.
Ash didn't sleep that night.
Neither did Riven.
They sat on the floor of the old storage alcove behind the dormitory baths, notebooks spread between them. In total, they had twelve sigils — six Ash had drawn, five Riven had dreamed, and one that appeared, unbidden, on her skin.
None of them matched known sigils in the Codex of Recognized Magic.
Worse — none of them appeared on the Surge Registry, which catalogued all dangerous or unstable runes.
"These aren't just forgotten spells," Ash murmured.
"They're deliberately erased."
Riven frowned. "Which means someone knew them once… and wanted to make sure no one ever could again."
Ash looked up.
"What kind of spell is worth erasing from reality itself?"
---
They went searching.
Not in books — but in the seams of the academy itself.
Black Wing students weren't allowed in the lower vault halls after second bell, but Ash didn't care. He'd already broken every law of spellcasting. One more wouldn't hurt.
They found it behind a collapsed stairwell in the abandoned south wing: a door without a handle, carved with strange lines that shimmered when Riven stepped near.
Ash drew one of his sigils across it — the one that looked like a spiral eating itself.
The door disappeared.
Not opened.
Not destroyed.
Erased.
Inside, the walls were made of memory glass — sheets of crystal that recorded moments long past.
And the floor was covered in a fine black dust that shimmered like powdered ink.
"Where are we?" Riven whispered.
Ash knelt, touching the dust.
It hummed.
A memory began to unfold in the glass.
---
A voice filled the chamber. Low, deep, and familiar.
> "If you are hearing this… then the Codex has failed."
Ash froze.
It was his own voice.
But older.
Colder.
> "They will try to silence you. They will call you a curse.
But you are not broken. You are the remainder.
You are what magic left behind when it learned to lie."
Riven clutched his sleeve.
"This is… your future self?"
Ash shook his head slowly. "No. This is… my past."
The voice continued.
> "The erased magic cannot be taught. It must be remembered backward.
Start with the last sigil. Trace it in sleep. Speak it only in silence.
Then find the other. The girl. The one who dreams."
Riven's breath caught. "Me?"
Ash looked at her.
> "Together," the memory said, "you are the key.
Not to power.
But to the rewrite."
The voice faded.
The room fell silent.
The dust on the floor began to swirl — as if something beneath the stone was breathing.
Riven backed up. "We should go."
But Ash didn't move.
Something was forming in the glass again.
A new image.
No — a face.
And it was watching them.
---
💠
They didn't speak as they returned to the dorm.
Both shaken.
Both marked.
Both… awakened.
When Ash opened his notebook later that night, he found a new symbol had been drawn inside.
He hadn't written it.
And neither had Riven.
It simply… appeared.
Curved, simple, elegant — like a question with no lang
uage.
It was labeled in strange, fragmented handwriting:
> "13. Do not speak this one yet.
Unless you want the stars to notice."
The Sky That Glitched
---
That night, the stars blinked.
Not twinkled.
Blinked.
One by one, they vanished from the sky above the academy, not with the softness of clouds or eclipse, but with the sharp, digital snap of a light being switched off.
Students across the towers didn't notice at first. The ambient magic that maintained the sky dome buffered small anomalies.
But Ash felt it.
The moment he saw the 13th sigil appear in his notebook, the temperature around him dropped.
His breath fogged.
Time lagged — for just a heartbeat.
And then…
Something knocked.
Not on the door.
Not on the wall.
On the fabric of his room.
Like someone pressing fingers through a silk sheet… trying to reach him from the other side.
---
Riven's voice came through the thin wall.
"Ash. You feel it too?"
He opened his door and found her standing barefoot in the hallway, hair wild from sleep, eyes wide.
"The sky," she said. "It's off."
Ash nodded. "Something's trying to get in."
Riven clutched her arm — the sigil etched into her skin had begun to glow faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"We triggered something," she whispered.
"No," Ash said softly. "We woke it."
---
They ran.
Not through the main halls — but through the spine of the academy, past the kitchens, past the sealed greenhouse with its venomous plants, past the Echo Archive where forbidden names were stored in jars.
Toward the north bell tower.
It had the best view of the dome. No illusions. Just raw sky.
But as they reached the spiral steps, they heard it:
> A low, clicking hum.
Like bone scraping metal.
Riven froze. "That's not a spell."
Ash pulled her behind him, reaching for his notebook.
But the 13th sigil began to blur.
Shift.
Writhe.
On its own.
It didn't want to be used.
Not yet.
> "Ash…"
Riven was looking behind him.
Something had followed.
---
The corridor darkened.
Not with shadow, but with anti-light — a presence that sucked away definition. The walls, once stone, now rippled like water.
Ash couldn't see it.
But he could hear it breathe.
Not through lungs.
Through words.
> "Unwritten. Unclaimed. Unchained. Return to static."
Then the voice reversed. The words unsaid themselves — collapsing into silence.
Ash stepped forward, tracing one of the early sigils in the air — a counter-null rune that had unmade Caelion's magic in the duel.
He cast it.
The ripple… flinched.
Not hurt.
But surprised.
Like it remembered him.
Ash whispered, "You knew me before."
The darkness paused.
Then the voice said:
> "You are the last.
You should not have returned.
The Rewrite was sealed."
Riven stepped beside him. "Then why do I remember too?"
Silence.
And then the creature answered, but not in words:
With a scream.
Soundless. Yet shattering.
The air cracked.
The ceiling fractured — lines of lightning breaking through reality itself.
Riven fell to her knees, holding her head.
Ash dropped the notebook. Pages flew like birds.
One sheet — the one with the 13th sigil — landed face up.
And the moment it touched the ground…
It activated.
---
A ring of silence exploded outward.
Not empty silence — but true void.
The ripple-beast shrieked — or tried to — and then collapsed, not in defeat, but in disassembly.
It didn't vanish.
It forgot how to exist.
Ash ran to Riven, pulling her close as the silence rippled outward.
Dust fell from the stone arches. The walls of the tower trembled. One of the overhead windows shattered into mathematical symbols before reconstructing backward — time snapping like a rubber band.
Then — stillness.
The sky outside the dome returned.
The stars reappeared.
But they were in new positions.
---
Ash helped Riven stand. She was shaking.
"What was that thing?" she whispered.
Ash didn't answer right away.
He looked at the sigil — the 13th one — now burned into the stone floor, refusing to fade.
"It wasn't a monster," he said slowly.
"It was a patch."
Riven frowned. "Like… a magical fix?"
Ash nodded.
"Something came to correct a glitch. To make sure the rewrite never happened."
Riven looked up at the altered stars.
"But we already started it."
---
Back in their room, the Surveillance Glass was gone.
Not shattered.
Not removed.
Erased.
Ash sat at his desk.
One line from the memory glass chamber kept echoing in his mind:
> "You are not broken. You are the remainder."
He stared at the sigil on Riven's arm — now fully formed, shaped like a star that had fallen into a circle.
And he understood.
They weren't learning magic.
They were becoming it.
---