The dream was always the same, yet never clear.
Kaelen stood on a plain of ash and shattered stone. The sky was a bruised purple, bleeding into the red of a dying sun. The air tasted of ozone and iron. He was fighting, his greatsword a familiar, brutal weight in his hands, but his enemies were shadows—twisted forms that bled darkness. He fought not for glory, but for a single, desperate purpose: to reach a point of light.
A figure knelt at the epicenter of the carnage, haloed in a radiant, golden glow. Silver hair streamed in a magick wind. He couldn't see her face, but a profound, soul-deep certainty told him she was everything. The keystone. The one who must not fall.
He would fight through armies, through hell itself, to stand between her and the tide.
But he was always too slow. A shadow would detach itself, becoming a blade of impossible darkness. It would arch toward the light. And he would run, his muscles screaming, his roar of denial tearing from his throat—
He woke not with a gasp, but with a silent, full-body jolt, his hand already clenched as if gripping a sword hilt. The guest chamber in the academy was dark, predawn grey seeping around the curtains. The sheets were damp with cold sweat.
He sat up, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. The phantom taste of blood and regret coated his tongue. The ache in his chest wasn't from exertion; it was grief, vast and hollow, for a loss he couldn't remember.
For weeks, the dream had been a vague torment. Since arriving at the academy, it had sharpened. The silver hair had become more distinct. The sense of catastrophic failure is more acute.
And today, in the Map Room, sunlight had turned Lady Rosalind Thorne's hair to liquid silver.
Coincidence. It had to be. The noble girl was a swirl of contradictory rumors: a lovesick fool, a dutiful heir, and a social exile. She was sharp, with surprising tactical insight, but she was not a figure of holy light on a battlefield. She was a pawn in the southern game, one who had publicly snubbed the Crown Prince.
Yet, when he'd asked if they'd met, the raw pain in her whispered "No" had felt like a lie. It was not a malicious lie, but rather one filled with grief.
He couldn't return to sleep. Dressing in simple clothes, he left his chambers. The academy was a tomb at this hour. His feet, acting on an impulse he didn't understand, carried him not to the training grounds, but to the archives.
He needed context. He needed to chase the ghost out of his head with facts. He would look up House Thorne's military history and their alliances. He would prove to himself that the strange, solemn girl with the saint's hair was just that—a strange girl.
The archive's night lanterns were still lit. At a large table in the central hall, another lantern burned.
She was there.
Rosalind Thorne sat amidst a fortress of books and scrolls, her silver-blonde head bent over a massive tome. She looked exhausted, with shadows under her violet eyes, but her focus was absolute. She didn't hear him approach. She was tracing a line on a map with her finger, her lips moving silently.
He recognized the map. The map she was tracing was not the Thorne March. It was a historical chart of the Northern border from a century ago, detailing the old fortifications along the Abyssal Rift—knowledge considered obscure, even for most knights.
What was she doing?
He stood in the shadows, watching. This was the girl who had given him crisp data on river fords. Now she was studying forgotten battle lines against supernatural threats. The disconnect was jarring. The blue thread of intuition he always followed in battle tugged hard.
He stepped into the circle of light.
She looked up, and for a split second, before surprise could mask it, he saw it again—not pain this time, but a staggering, profound relief. As if his appearance was the answer to a desperate question she hadn't voiced. It was gone in a flash, replaced by wary alertness.
"Your Grace." She began to rise.
"Don't." He pulled out the chair opposite her and sat, the motion making her freeze halfway up. He nodded at the map. "The Old Ramparts. An unusual topic for a spring term paper."
She slowly settled back into her chair, closing the tome with deliberate care. "I observe that history repeats itself. The past often holds warnings for the present."
"Warnings of what?"
"Of walls that crumble from neglect. Of threats that are forgotten until they are at the gate." Her voice was low, each word measured. She was speaking in code, but he spoke that language fluently.
"You believe the Rift is awakening." He stated it flatly, a challenge.
She met his gaze without flinching. "The monster waves grow stronger each winter, do they not? The intervals shorten. Your presence here isn't just about academy inspections. You're gauging the Empire's readiness. You're looking for allies who see the storm, not just the courtly sunshine."
It was as if she'd reached into his private thoughts. A chill that had nothing to do with the drafty hall crept down his spine. No one, not even his counsel, put it so bluntly. The Crown dismissed his reports as the "North's perennial pessimism."
"You speak treason," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Or prophecy."
"I speak observation," she countered. "A wall ignored will fall. And when it does, it won't just be the North that burns." She looked down at her hands, clenched on the table. "You can't hold it alone forever."
The words echoed the unspoken fear in his heart. The weight of his duty, the loneliness of that vigil, was a constant companion. To hear it named by this enigma of a girl was unsettling.
"Why do you care?" The question was raw, stripped of diplomacy. "What is the Thorne March to you, truly? You've spent your life here, playing courtier."
For the first time, she looked less like a noble and more like a soldier cornered. "Maybe I'm tired of playing." She took a slow breath. "Maybe I've seen what happens when the wolves get through the wall. In my dreams."
The word hung between them. Dreams.
His silver-gray eyes locked onto her violet ones. The archive faded. The dusty silence became the ringing silence after a battle. In that endless moment, the ghost from his nightmare and the girl before him were superimposed. The silver hair. The solemn, knowing eyes. The aura of a fate too heavy to bear.
It's you.
The realization didn't come as a shout but as a deep, seismic shift in his understanding of the world. He didn't know how or why, but the grieving figure in his dream and Rosalind Thorne were connected. She was his impossible, holy burden.
He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes as she looked at him. Panic flared in hers. She stood abruptly, the chair scraping loudly. "I've taken too much of your time, Your Grace. Forgive me."
She was fleeing. Again.
"Lady Thorne." His voice stopped her. She paused, her back to him, trembling. He didn't know what to say. The questions were too vast, too insane. Are you a saint? Are you my ghost?
He settled for a soldier's order. "The world is full of people who see only what's in front of them. You see the horizon." He rose. "That is a rare thing. Do not let this place," he gestured to the walls of the academy, "blind you to it. Or silence you."
She glanced over her shoulder, her profile etched in lantern light. The grief and relief were back, battling on her face. "What should we do if the horizon is on fire, Your Grace?" What then?"
"Then you fight," he said, the words from his dream rising unbidden. "You protect what light remains. At any cost."
A single, traitorous tear escaped her eye, tracing a swift path down her cheek. She wiped it away as if scorched, gave a jerky nod, and fled into the shadows of the stacks.
Kaelen stood alone in the pool of light, the ghost of his dream solidifying into a living, breathing, terrified girl. The silver-blue thread between them, now visible only to her, blazed like a cable of starlight in the dim archive.
He didn't understand. But for the first time, the crushing loneliness of his duty lessened, not because the burden was shared, but because he now knew, with unshakeable certainty, that he was not the only one fighting a war from a dream.