The Celestial Academy's Trial Plaza roared with excitement.
This was no ordinary day.
Once every cycle, new entrants of the academy had their crests inscribed into fire before the elder sigilstone— one of the relics of the Founding peak expert who had clear grasp into law inscription himself. The ritual determined not only status, but public standing, as each youth's Crest manifested from their veins in spectral light.
Nocth stood among dozens under the radiant ring of elder mages. His eyes wandered, though—half distracted by a girl trying to spy on him from behind a broken pillar, half by the flickering whisper in his chest.
Shae stood near him, casually sipping from a chilled gourd of violet wine, unbothered by the ceremony's grandeur.
"That's Luu," she muttered, nodding toward the awkward girl with jeweled boots and hair like gilded waterfall threads. "Daughter of a dragon, mind of a rabbit. Assigned to 'observe' you."
Nocth blinked. "Spy?"
"Poorly," Shae said, handing him the gourd. "Don't drink it, just hold it. Makes you look important."
---
The Ceremony Begins
One by one, students stepped into the ring, pressing a hand to the sigilstone. Flames leapt skyward, revealing their crest — a symbol shaped by their bloodline and awakened vein traits.
Calem stepped up early.
His crest flared with icy blue, and a blade-shaped liquid of frost hovered above him. Students gasped. A crest of the Fifth Tier — rare.
He turned, eyes daring Nocth to follow.
Nocth stepped forward next.
At first… silence.
Then the sigilstone cracked.
A sharp burst of ashen fire erupted, spiraling up into a void-shaped sigil — shifting, unreadable, yet blinding. The flames didn't just burn, they erased light around them.
Then it all collapsed into the stone, and the entire ground dimmed.
Elder Ramasu stood quickly, eyes wide. "The Crest… burned through the stone?"
Nocth stepped back, hand still smoking, as whispers filled the crowd.
"Was that even a Crest?"
"It... broke the ritual?"
"That's not possible…"
Calem scowled, jaw tight. Shae chuckled softly.
---
Later That Night – Private Chambers of the Elders
Lord Enmer, recently summoned from Selun'Thael, stood with the Academy's High Master.
"The boy's Crest burned through a foundational relic," the High Master said. "That's not mere prodigy. It's... unsorted Law."
Lord Enmer's thoughts turned to the unnatural phenomena of distorted sky yesterday day ago.
"We must taken in that boy to join our side. The moment we try to cage what we don't understand," he whispered, "we risk waking things older than us."
---
Meanwhile – In the Garden Courtyard
Luu clumsily scribbled notes on a floating page while peeking around a marble statue.
"Subject… stared at clouds for five minutes. Likely hiding strategic depth."
Then she tripped on her own hem and fell face-first into a water basin.
Nocth, sitting nearby, raised an eyebrow. "Are you spying again?"
She sputtered. "I'm… not! I just like clouds too!"
Shae appeared beside him, lounging lazily. "Told you. Dragon blood, rabbit brain."
Nocth almost smiled.
---
Then—
Darkness.
A slow collapse, like a play ending mid-line.
---
He Woke.
Breath ragged, eyes wide. His palms trembled against the threadbare sheets of the dormitory cot.
The faint light of dawn hovered at the edge of the circular window, but his heart beat like a drum in a storm. Sweat glazed his skin. He sat up, clutching his ribs as though the dream had cracked something inside him.
"A dream?" he whispered.
But the word felt like a lie.
It hadn't been a dream. Not really. He remembered every detail—Luu's fall, the glint of the sigilstone, the way the flame didn't burn but removed things. The ashen spiral. The shattering light.
And most of all… himself.
Nocth's hands curled slowly into fists.
Whoever that was in the dream—it had looked like him, moved like him—but it wasn't him. That version had no veins glowing beneath his skin. No Dreaming veins slumbering inside. There was no talk of bloodline veins or celestial classes. Only Crests—rituals etched in fire, strange names of laws, sigils that hovered like ancient brands.
"What kind of power system was that?" he murmured.
A part of him—buried somewhere beneath waking thought—missed it already. As though the version of himself who lived in that place was still watching, from some mirror world, confused by his own waking.
Was that a future that never happened? Or a world where I never was… me?
Nocth touched the center of his chest, where in the dream the Crest had seared through air and memory alike.
The spot still felt warm.
And the fear… remained.
Not fear of something attacking—but fear that reality itself might be thinner than anyone believed. That somehow, in sleep, he had glimpsed a version of himself that was real.
Just not here.
And not… him.