The flames in the hearth crackled softly, casting flickers of light across the stone walls of the House Mennefer common room. The tower windows were drawn shut. Outside, the sounds of the academy wound down—students returning from training, wind brushing through ivy, the last calls of winged familiars settling into roost.
Inside, the room was silent.
Azlin stood near the fire, arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the orange glow. He hadn't spoken since the healers released them. Not during the long walk back. Not when Rania quietly dismissed the curious underclassmen lingering near the stairs. Not even when Nagara locked the door behind them, sealing the three in their shared chamber.
Now, the stillness held something… expectant.
Finally, Azlin broke it.
"I owe you the truth," he said, voice steady.
Rania looked up from the edge of the couch where she sat. Nagara, leaning near the desk, tensed.
Azlin turned. "You don't have to believe me," he said. "I won't ask you to. But you saw it. You saw him. So I won't pretend anymore."
His eyes—those gentle, familiar green eyes—now held an ancient weight.
"That man you saw… Saerus Magdalene… he's not just powerful," Azlin said. "He is the strongest being to ever walk this world. Not just Aroken. Not just this age. Ever."
The firelight dimmed slightly as he spoke, as if the name itself drew shadows toward it.
"He wasn't born like us. He doesn't die like us. His existence is singular—his purpose absolute. He exists to destroy. To burn the world back to ash, and then wait for it to rebuild, only to end it again."
Nagara swallowed, but said nothing.
Rania's eyes narrowed slightly. "Then what was that vision? The one we saw—"
"My memory," Azlin answered. "Or maybe… a fragment of it. It was real. It happened. Just not in this age."
A beat of silence passed.
Then Azlin said it:
"I'm not from now. I was born a thousand years ago. Maybe more. I stopped counting."
The room felt suddenly smaller. The crackle of the fire was distant now, buried under the weight of his words.
"This body?" he glanced down at himself. "It's borrowed. Like the others before it. I've lived lifetime after lifetime, shifting vessels when the time came—always chasing the same goal. To find a way to stop him. To destroy Saerus before he destroys everything."
He looked up, meeting both of their stunned stares.
"I've failed every time."
Nagara stepped forward, unable to contain himself anymore. "You mean… you've fought him before?"
Azlin nodded once, solemn. "And lost. Every time. I've watched empires fall, watched the sky split open, watched friends—people I loved—burn in the fires he brings. I've died trying to stop him. And when I returned… I had to start all over again."
Rania was quiet, but her gaze was sharp. "And now?"
Azlin exhaled. "He's coming. Again. I don't know how soon. I only know that the seal has begun to weaken. I felt it during the trial. That's why I lost control. He… reached through."
His fingers curled into his sleeves, almost trembling.
"I never meant to endanger you. But now that you've seen him, you're part of this, whether you like it or not."
He turned away, shoulders tense, voice softer now:
"You can walk away if you want. Pretend it was all a vision. Or madness. I wouldn't blame you. But if you stay… know this—"
He looked over his shoulder.
"We don't have time. We have to prepare. Because when he comes this time... he won't wait. And there won't be another chance."
Silence followed. The kind that doesn't beg for a response—but waits, heavy and infinite, for a decision.
Nagara clenched his fists, eyes burning with a storm of questions he couldn't form yet.
Rania stood slowly, the firelight dancing across her golden eyes, unreadable.
They didn't answer.
Not yet.
But in that silence, something old stirred. A beginning. A pact not yet spoken.
...
Rania sat alone on the cold stone windowsill of their tower room, the sky outside dimming into a curtain of stars. The warmth of the fire couldn't reach her here, not really. She wasn't looking out at the academy grounds. Her gaze was turned inward.
Saerus Magdalene.
The name rolled through her mind like an ancient bell tolling across centuries—soft and slow, but deafening.
She remembered the first time she'd heard it.
Whispers. Cloaked in shadow and silk, spoken behind heavy doors when she was just a girl. Her grandfather had been entertaining visiting elders, men whose eyes had seen too much and spoken too little. She was never meant to hear it, curled quietly under the dining table, hiding from a punishment she'd earned by burning her tutor's notes out of boredom.
"Saerus Magdalene…"
"…a name forbidden to write…"
"…the Wound of the World…"
"…he who walks when the stars turn red…"
At the time, she thought it was a children's tale. A grim one, perhaps, told to keep noble brats in line. A threat no different from "Don't go into the woods at night" or "Speak out of turn and the Nightbringer will take your tongue."
But now she had seen him.
She had felt the pressure in the air, the way the world itself bent under his presence. That kind of force didn't belong to a myth.
It belonged to truth.
Rania exhaled slowly, fingers trailing the frost-gathered glass of the window.
Aroken…
This world, this empire of crowns and cruelty and order built on bone—it deserved to fall, didn't it?
She never loved it. Not truly.
Not the hierarchy. Not the way power decided truth. Not the way students like her and Azlin were treated as tools or ornaments. Even Nagara, with all his defiance, was still forced to play by their rules.
So when Azlin said Saerus Magdalene was returning to end it all…
She should have felt terror. But what she felt was stillness.
Like a wheel that had turned too long finally breaking its spoke.
And yet—
She didn't want to see it all burn. Not with them still here. Not with Azlin—kind, gentle Azlin—burdened with memories no one should bear. And not with Nagara, whose eyes were too wide, too filled with questions no one would answer.
Rania closed her eyes.
"I believe him," she whispered to the dark. "Of course I do."
She always knew when someone was lying. It wasn't in their words. It was in the breath between syllables, the way the soul flinched when it bent the truth.
Azlin hadn't flinched. Not once.
She leaned her head against the cold stone. Her voice barely audible, even to herself.
"It's not like I had a future here anyway."
She didn't say it with sadness. Just fact.
Her path had always been foggy. Her power hidden. Her ambition quiet. She'd never fit in the way her family wanted, never bent to the games of the higher houses.
Now, maybe for the first time, she had a purpose.
Not because she believed in this world.
But because she believed in them.
In the silence, she turned her gaze out at the starlit sky. Somewhere out there, a storm was waking. A name once spoken in whispers had stirred from myth into motion.
Saerus Magdalene was coming.
...
The door to the outer room shut softly behind him. Nagara stood there for a moment in the dim candlelight, unmoving, as if unsure whether he had stepped back into safety—or into the mouth of something worse.
The common room was quiet now. Rania had gone off to her alcove by the window. Azlin had disappeared into his side chamber, his footsteps strangely calm, too calm for someone who had just confessed he wasn't even born in this era.
Nagara moved to the edge of his bed and sat down slowly.
He clenched and unclenched his hands, staring down at them like they weren't his. They had burned today—touched flame, ice, void—and none of it had left a mark. But his mind… his soul felt seared.
What had they seen?
That city crumbling in fire. That tower cracking. That man—no, that thing—whose very voice made the world shudder.
Saerus Magdalene.
Nagara whispered the name under his breath, and the air felt colder for it.
He remembered the way the ground split when that man raised his sword. The way light bent away from him, like even nature feared to touch him.
How was that real?
How was any of this real?
He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. None of this made sense. Not the memory. Not Azlin. Not the feeling that some invisible hand had just moved a piece across the board and doomed them all.
"He's coming," Azlin had said.
"I've lived lifetimes trying to stop him."
Nagara bit the inside of his cheek, staring at the crack in the stone wall opposite him.
And what was he supposed to do?
He wasn't a warrior. Not really. He had his Djinn, sure, and the powers awakening slowly inside him. But he was still fumbling with control. Still unsure of who he even was in this broken academy. In this broken world.
They weren't even meant to be heroes.
They were rejects. Lowborns. Zero Class. Trained to fail. Made to be stepped over.
And now?
Now the end of the world was waking beneath their feet, and it was their friend—Azlin—who carried the warning of it. Carried the weight of thousands of years.
Nagara exhaled sharply, pressing his palms to his eyes.
It was too much.
And yet… somewhere deep, deep in the marrow of his bones… there was something else stirring.
Not just fear.
But fire.
Rage.
A part of him that refused to be powerless again. That refused to let the world fall without a fight. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it was suicidal.
But he had looked into that pale-eyed monster's face. He had felt what true despair felt like.
He would not feel it again.
Nagara stood slowly and walked to the window. The same stars hung overhead. The same moon.
But the world no longer felt like his.
He didn't know what tomorrow would bring.