Light swallowed her whole.
It wasn't pain this time, not the burning, searing kind that peeled her apart, but weightlessness, a slow unspooling of everything she was.
Elara's scream fractured in her throat as the light thinned, shapes forming around her. The wind hit her face; stone met her palms.
Warm, sunlit stone.
For a moment, she couldn't breathe. The air was thick with morning light, soft and golden, nothing like the fractured skies she'd grown used to.
Her head spun. The ringing in her ears faded slowly into birdsong, faint, distant, impossibly normal.
Lucien landed a few feet away, his cloak flaring like a shadow before settling against the grass. He straightened in a single smooth motion, eyes narrowing as he scanned their surroundings.
It was the Academy courtyard. Whole again.
No cracks. No blood. No violet mist.
Just sunlight streaming through the archways, and laughter drifting faintly from somewhere within the halls.
Elara's pulse stuttered. "Lucien," she whispered. "We're back."
He didn't answer. His gaze swept over the scene with the quiet disbelief of a man standing in the echo of a dream. "No," he said finally. "We're somewhere the world thinks is before."
They weren't alone.
A group of students crossed the far end of the courtyard, robes crisp, their chatter bright and unburdened. Elara recognized one of the voices before she even saw the face.
"Kael," she breathed.
The young illusionist looked younger than she remembered, his reddish hair shorter, his grin unscarred by war. He was tossing a coin in one hand and conjuring a phantom bird in the other, earning laughter from a circle of apprentices.
Elara's throat tightened. Kael had died trying to defend the west tower.
But here, he was alive.
"Don't," Lucien said quietly, sensing the step she wanted to take. "This isn't real."
She turned on him, anger rising to cover grief. "Maybe not for you."
Lucien's eyes softened, but he didn't reply.
The faint pulse of magic above them, that golden hum in the air, didn't belong to either of them. It vibrated with the same frequency as her mark, but higher, older, almost… curious.
The world was alive. Watching.
****
When the bell rang, the illusion of normalcy deepened. Students filed toward the main hall, chattering about morning lectures, dueling practice, spell rotations, every sound a knife of memory.
Elara couldn't bear to stand still. She followed them, slipping into the shadow of a colonnade, the familiar stone pressing cool against her back.
Lucien followed, silent. His presence at her side was heavy, too real for this echo of the past.
They stopped near the fountain. Professor Dalen stood there, younger, unscarred, explaining the theory of runic inversion to a circle of students. His voice was animated, his laugh unguarded.
Elara swallowed. "He's alive too."
Lucien studied the professor, his expression unreadable. "If the Veil rebuilt this from memory, it means we're inside its recollection. It remembered Dalen, Kael, everyone. But it can't tell what's memory and what's prophecy."
"What does that mean?"
"It means it's not done rewriting us."
The moment stretched, too still, too perfect.
Then the air rippled.
A pulse of violet shimmered over the fountain's surface, and every student froze mid-motion, like marionettes with their strings cut. Even the sound of the bell hung suspended, half a note too long.
Only Dalen moved. Slowly, deliberately, he turned toward them. His eyes, kind and worn even in youth, glowed faintly with the same light that marked the Veil's call.
"Elara Vane," he said quietly. "And Lucien Ashfall. You shouldn't be here."
Elara stepped forward, heart hammering. "Professor—"
"Don't call me that." His voice trembled, edges fraying into static. "I'm not him. I'm what the Veil remembers of him."
Lucien's tone darkened. "Then why speak at all?"
Dalen smiled, a sorrowful thing. "Because some memories refuse to fade." He glanced between them. "You're walking a path that was sealed for a reason. The Veil doesn't rebuild what it loves — it rebuilds what it fears losing."
Elara frowned. "What does it fear?"
He met her gaze, and his voice lowered. "You. Both of you."
Before she could reply, the illusion cracked again.
The students flickered, laughter turning to static. Kael's phantom bird exploded into light. The fountain burst upward, water turning to shards of glass suspended midair.
Lucien caught her hand as the world around them folded inward, light bending and memory collapsing.
"Hold on—"
The courtyard shattered like a mirror, and they were falling again.
They landed hard on stone.
But not the courtyard. Not the ruins.
Elara groaned and pushed herself up, and froze.
They were standing at the base of the central spire, the heart of the Academy, except the tower was whole and glowing with a pulse that matched her heartbeat.
Lucien's gaze rose to the light circling its peak. "That's it," he whispered. "The Veil's anchor."
Elara's mark flared. "Then this memory isn't passive. It's alive. And it's calling to us again."
They began climbing.
The higher they went, the heavier the air became. The stairs pulsed with veins of silver and gold, like blood moving through stone. Each step seemed to echo a heartbeat not their own.
When they reached the top, the door stood open, and the mirror waited. Whole.
The obsidian surface hummed softly, a living thing.
Elara's throat tightened. "This is before it began."
Lucien's reflection flickered, the boy and the man overlapping, light and shadow spiraling. "Do you think it knows what it becomes?"
"Does it matter?" she asked.
"Yes," he said softly. "Because if it remembers… maybe it's been waiting for us all along."
The mirror rippled.
"Vessel. Key. Cycle incomplete."
And the world fractured again.