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1. Echoes in the Rift
The air was no longer still.
From the outer edge of the Academy's central courtyard, a wind unlike any before stirred—neither warm nor cold, but laced with intent. It carried the metallic tang of untold ages and the weight of voices unspoken. Clouds had parted not by weather's will, but by something older, something watching. As cadets and instructors alike rushed toward the elevated observation tiers, a black fissure had torn open in the sky, jagged and swaying, pulsing with faint silver threads. It looked like a wound stitched over a thousand times and now forcefully unsealed. But this was no ordinary Rift. It pulsed in rhythm, not like an earthquake nor even an unstable void tear—it sang. Only a few could hear it, a humming beneath the bones, low and impossible. One such listener was Selune Vey.
She stood apart from the crowd. Class Zero had gathered near the upper terrace, having been summoned earlier by the Academy's internal alert wards, but even among her peers—Lyra, Kael, Riven, Elias, Nyra, Sera—Selune's presence had changed. Her eyes, silver normally, now swirled faintly with strands of blue-gold, glowing as if they contained their own constellation. Her hands trembled slightly, not in fear, but resonance. The mark of the Pillar of Origin—the Ninth—had begun to surface again on her palm. She said nothing, not even as Kael shouted warnings or Lyra whispered theories about dimensional pressure shifts. Her mind was tethered to something else.
Within the Rift, a shape emerged. Not a monster. Not a malformed creature of the Pale Circle. A sentinel. Towering, smooth-skinned, armored in shimmering fractals, with a lance as long as a spear of moonlight. It did not strike. It simply descended, its feet touching the air as if gravity was a negotiable term. Time twisted around it, and some watching saw it blink into and out of clarity. Aelros appeared beside the Class, silent but present. His gaze locked with the sentinel's—and for a flicker in the layers of sight, his second self nearly awakened. But he did not act. The time was not yet right. Because the sentinel was not here for him. It had come... for Selune.
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2. The First Spiral
The moment the sentinel raised its lance, the Rift's wind ceased. Silence rushed in like a vacuum, stilling the very air. A line of light pulsed from the tip of the weapon, arcing downward—harmless, almost reverent—and struck the ground before Selune. From that point bloomed a spiral glyph, etched not in flame or magic, but in reality itself. The spiral glowed with faint whispers, each curl echoing the mark on her palm. The Ninth had called. The First Spiral had awakened.
Selune took one slow step forward, oblivious to the shouted protests around her. Kael grabbed her wrist—"Selune, wait!"—but her skin shimmered and his hand passed through like water. She was no longer fully present in this layer. She was crossing into something else. Not death. Not void. Not even a dream. A boundary between intention and memory.
Inside the Spiral, she was alone. All noise vanished. Light curled like ribbons across an endless silver plane. And then, it spoke. Not in a language she knew, but in the sensation of being known. The Ninth Pillar communicated through resonance, through memory and potential. And in this moment, Selune was shown fragments—of Aelros, standing in the heart of an ancient ruin, bearing his own mark of Origin; of a world ending and beginning in the same heartbeat; of Keepers kneeling before a radiant glyph and calling it "The Beginning."
She fell to her knees. Tears flowed unbidden, but not from sorrow. From clarity. For a second, she saw everything—and understood nothing. Then the voice came again, this time accompanied by a sensation: You are the flame before the fire. You are the fragment before the truth.
The sentinel raised its lance again, and the spiral sealed itself. Selune reappeared outside the spiral, eyes glowing with power she had not asked for, and yet could no longer live without.
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3. Aelros Watches
Aelros stood silent throughout the event. While the rest of the Academy bustled with panic or awe, and while the instructors rallied to interpret the Spiral's meaning, he merely stood—still as stone, breathing like a statue given momentary life. But inside him, his mind was racing. Not with fear, but memory. He had once stood where Selune now stood. The Ninth had chosen before. It chose again now. And yet, its voice was never the same.
He remembered the trial. Not of combat, but of self. In his youth, when he first glimpsed the Ninth's shadow beyond the eight Pillars, he had not been ready. It had called to him not in grandeur but in grief. It had shown him timelines folded into one another, destinies intertwining and collapsing. It had marked his second personality, not as a bearer of doom, but of inaction. The silent observer, the one who only interfered when the Ninth aligned fully with reality.
Today, Aelros did not awaken that side of himself. Today was Selune's reckoning. But he knew this was only the first signal. The Ninth was not a reward. It was a sentence—an awareness. And once it begins… it never lets go.
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4. The Keepers Gather
Beneath the ancient vaults of the Academy, the Veiled Keepers lit their silver lamps and convened. These were not instructors nor mere scholars, but those who remembered before remembering began. Their eyes had seen glyphs fade from creation, and one among them—Althea—had long warned that the Ninth would stir again. She placed her hand upon the Celestial Codex, flipping to the forbidden Spiral page, and nodded.
> "It begins," she said.
Keeper Vael, masked and mute, only tapped three runes. One was fire. One was time. The third, a blank spiral.
Althea continued. "Selune Vey is now marked. But this is no rebirth of prophecy. It's the continuation. The Beginning must fracture before it reforms."
From the shadows, another voice: "And what of the Outer Ones?"
Althea's expression darkened. "They will hear the Spiral. And they will awaken."
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5. After the Spiral
That night, Selune sat alone beneath the Observatory Tower. Her Spiral Lance, newly formed, leaned beside her. She had not summoned it—it had appeared, shaped by the fragment of the Beginning now imprinted on her soul. The weapon pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
Lyra arrived first, quiet and unsure. She didn't speak. She merely sat beside her. One by one, the rest came—Kael, Elias, Riven, Sera, Nyra. They said nothing, but their presence was unyielding. They had witnessed something extraordinary, something terrifying. But they were still a team. Still Class Zero.
Selune finally spoke, voice softer than the stars above.
> "I think… it remembers me."
No one questioned her. Even Kael, impulsive as he was, only stared into the sky.
The Rift above had closed. But something deeper had opened in its place.
Far across the world, in a realm untouched by time, Serath Kaelren—the former friend, the current Pale Lord—awoke from his slumber. He had dreamed of a spiral. And of a girl who bore the mark he had once failed to claim.
His grin was not kind.
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