The wheels began to move with the finality of a sealed tomb.
Julius sat inside a black-carved carriage lined with velvet and silence. The doors had shut with the weight of a ritual. No one had spoken since the butler loaded in his case and bowed out without eye contact.
Opposite him, Adra Vernhart sat perfectly still. The veil was gone now. Her face was clean, unpainted, untouched by age—and yet it bore a timeless coldness that said youth was not the same as vitality.
Her eyes were silver. Unblinking. Watching him.
Neither spoke until the mansion gates—tall iron forged in the shape of ouroboros coils—groaned open to let the carriage pass.
Only then did she say, "You will wear the ring."
She held out a small black box.
Julius took it. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a narrow golden band with a sharp rectangular seal. A glyph ran across it like a scar. The crest: crown, serpent, broken wheel.
"Signet?" he asked.
"Key," she replied. "Proof. You will not survive Dominion without it."
He slid it on his finger. It pulsed once—warm.
She didn't flinch.
"You will not speak of the voice."
"I wasn't planning to."
"You will not open the ledger in the Academy."
Julius looked at her.
"Unless I must," he said.
She allowed it. "Unless you must."
Outside the carriage windows, the world unrolled in strange shapes. Not cobbled villages and candlelight—but tall glass monoliths, arcane-infused towers, roads slick with shifting energy currents. Sky-lanterns hummed overhead, powered by some fusion of ether-tech and alchemy. Soldiers in black arc-uniforms patrolled stone bridges connected by floating sigil-beacons.
This world was not Earth.
Or, if it was—Earth had forgotten him.
He glanced at Adra. "You said this place used to be a monastery."
"It still is," she said. "But the prayers have changed."
The carriage turned toward a forested incline, and in the distance—rising from cliff-side granite like a crown chiseled from night—stood Dominion Academy.
Spired towers etched with ancient runes. Walls that bled light from inside. Bridges suspended by unspoken forces. At its heart, a domed black citadel with a single vertical slit glowing like a pupil watching the sky.
Adra spoke softly, as the wheels slowed.
"Julius... in this world, the strong rule from behind curtains, not thrones. Dominion is the curtain."
The carriage stopped.
"You will listen. You will endure. You will not trust."
She leaned forward, her voice sharpened.
"And above all else... you will never look into the glass."
Julius narrowed his eyes.
"What glass?"
She smiled, faint and bitter. "You'll know it when it finds you."
Then the door opened.
The butler stood outside, hand folded neatly behind his back.
Julius stepped down.
The gates of Dominion creaked open.
And something inside the great structure whispered—not into his mind, but beneath it.
A pressure. A hum.
Like a choir holding its breath.
Dominion Academy was not a school.
It was a fortress dressed as an inheritance.
Julius stepped past the outer gate and into a courtyard where stone met ritual. The ground beneath his feet was laid in slabs of obsidian streaked with pale sigils—lines that pulsed faintly under certain names and boots but remained dead under others. The effect was clear: not everyone here belonged.
Rows of students stood in formation across the courtyard. Hundreds. All in shades of black, silver, or deep navy. Each bore a unique family crest stitched into their lapel like a military seal. Some were familiar from the portraits back at the estate—others, symbols lost to forgotten histories: thorns wrapped around eyes, stars eating moons, serpents pierced by feathers.
At the far end stood a raised stone platform carved into the shape of an ancient lectern. There, a woman in crimson robes waited, flanked by armored figures in arcane-plated suits. Floating just above her shoulder was a thin strip of hovering parchment, updating itself line by line.
She raised her hand.
"Silence."
And the silence obeyed.
Her voice rang across the stones, not loud, but shaped with power.
"This is the beginning of the 728th Dominion Term. You are not students. You are inheritors. Some of blood, some of will, some of accident. All of you were chosen."
Julius didn't move.
The woman turned to the hovering scroll. Names began to glow one by one. With each name, a student stepped forward and bowed.
"Calven of House Grivelle. Blood Rank 12."
"Aisha Vey Talore. Blood Rank 11."
"Romelo Asterlight. Blood Rank 10."
They lined up near the center, where the paving stones pulsed gold beneath them.
Then, after a pause, the woman blinked at a new name.
She read it slowly.
"Julius Kaine Vernhart... Blood Rank—"
She hesitated.
The scroll glitched for a breath. Then reformed.
"Blood Rank: Null—Pending Seal."
The entire courtyard stilled.
A few murmurs. A shift of heads.
Then, the woman added something she wasn't reading. Something she already knew.
"Returning Heir of the Broken Ledger."
That did it.
The whisper spread like wildfire.
Julius stepped forward.
He felt every eye drag over him. Curious. Calculating. Some amused. Some afraid. All recognizing something wrong. Something remembered.
He walked with calm steps, measured. The sigils beneath his boots didn't light.
When he reached the formation, he stood where there was no marker—an unlit spot on the stone. His presence didn't awaken the academy's systems. But the ring on his finger glowed faintly.
Just once.
That was enough.
Somewhere deep within the Academy walls, a slow, hollow chime rang.
The platform woman did not speak again.
The gates behind them slammed shut.
Orientation began with silence.
Not announcements. Not a welcome. Just a subtle reorganization of space.
After the ceremony, Julius and several other new initiates were separated into groups, each escorted by robed figures whose faces were hidden behind smooth, porcelain masks. The masks bore only one feature: a thin, ink-black vertical line down the center.
Julius's escort didn't speak until they were well beyond the courtyard, moving into the main halls of Dominion.
"The Academy was built over the ruins of three failed kingdoms," the masked figure said as they passed through a narrow cloister arched in obsidian ribs. "Each kingdom tried to rule eternity. Each fell within a generation."
Julius said nothing.
"The founders understood the flaw. Power is never born. It is inherited. And only those who can carry memory without drowning in it deserve dominion."
They passed a high window. Outside, the cliff dropped straight down into a sea of black fog.
"What do you think you are?" the masked figure asked him suddenly.
Julius raised an eyebrow. "A student."
"No. You are a vessel. And the Academy will spend its term attempting to break you, fill you, or empty you. Your survival depends on which outcome you prefer."
"I'll keep that in mind," Julius said.
The masked figure tilted his head, amused. "I believe you already have."
They turned a corner, and for the first time, the hallway widened into a common foyer lit by floating glass braziers. Other groups passed through from alternate wings—dozens of students threading together like pieces in a larger game.
That's when Julius saw him.
Tall, lean, dark-coat open just enough to flaunt disregard. His hair was raven-black, slightly tousled. His gait: slow, fluid, confident. Like a fighter used to reading people by the way their eyes flinched before a strike.
Dominic Kael Rykar.
Their eyes met.
And Dominic stopped walking.
Julius stopped too, as if on cue.
The crowd moved around them like flowing water. Neither looked away.
Dominic's expression didn't change. But something behind his eyes flickered.
Recognition.
Not just awareness. Not assessment.
Memory.
Then—barely—Dominic smiled. Not wide. Not friendly. A slow curl at one corner of the mouth, like a page turning in a book only he had read.
He tapped the side of his head.
Then he walked on.
The masked guide did not comment. But his posture shifted. A fraction more alert.
Julius exhaled through his nose. The chill in the air sharpened.
He kept walking.
The Academy was awake.
And so were its ghosts.
The dormitory tower loomed like a speartip piercing the clouds.
It wasn't dorms in the traditional sense. No rows of bunks. No buzzing halls. Dominion's "residence wings" were more like sanctified cells assigned according to Blood Tier, Allegiance, and something called Lineal Echo, which no one explained but everyone accepted.
Julius's guide led him down a long, dark corridor carved into angular segments. The walls pulsed faintly under his ring.
They stopped at a black-iron door with a single word etched into its surface:
VELT-22
"This is your cell," said the masked guide.
"Sounds friendly."
"Each chamber houses two," the guide continued. "You were not assigned. You were matched."
Julius gave him a sidelong glance. "With who?"
The guide turned the key.
Inside, the room was divided with intentional asymmetry. One side lined with darker stone, the other with pale marble. Twin beds, both impeccably made. A massive arched window overlooked the abyss below the cliffs. Between the beds stood a single, ominously empty shelf—meant, Julius guessed, for one shared book.
Someone was already inside.
She stood near the window, arms crossed, long coat half-open, her silver-blonde hair tied in a braided knot behind her head. One boot rested casually against the sill. She didn't turn when he entered.
"Great," she said. "They've given me a mute aristocrat."
Julius closed the door behind him. "And I've been given someone with voice but no etiquette."
She turned now, slowly, like a knife being drawn from velvet.
Kaela Seraphyne Everwyn.
Her eyes were pale violet—bright enough to register as unnatural, but not glowing. Her expression was crafted: nonchalance, layered over sharp study. She sized him up quickly and efficiently.
"You're the ledger boy," she said.
"And you're the girl with a last name two syllables longer than your relevance."
That drew a smile. Brief. Impressed.
She moved to her bed—dark-stone side—and dropped a folded coat onto the sheets. "They said my match would be a cousin of dust and legacy. You don't look like a Julius."
"I don't feel like one."
Another flick of her eyes. "You're not surprised."
"I have excellent emotional control."
She laughed—light, once, and real. Then it vanished.
"Did you bring it?" she asked.
Julius blinked. "Bring what?"
She stepped closer. Not threatening—just narrowing the perimeter between theater and truth.
"The book," she said. "The one that sings."
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Her expression hardened. Then softened, as if reconsidering.
"No matter," she said. "If you had, you'd be screaming already."
"I don't scream."
"You will."
There was no threat in it. Just confidence.
She turned back to the window, lifting her eyes toward the great citadel dome in the distance—visible from their angle now.
"They say that's where the names are burned in," she murmured.
"Which names?"
"All of them."
The room settled into a quiet rhythm after nightfall. Quiet, but not peace.
Kaela had retreated behind the thin drape partition hung between their sides—more symbolic than practical. She'd made no effort to talk further. Julius didn't push.
He'd already learned more than she meant to reveal.
He stood at the central shelf for a long time, hands in his pockets, eyes on the great glass dome outside the window. The Academy glowed like a sanctified prison—light from its core shining up into the sky, as if trying to signal something that had no business answering.
He reached for the drawer on his side of the shelf.
It opened on its own.
Inside, nestled neatly against the velvet lining, was the black ledger.
Exactly where he'd not left it.
He stared at it for several seconds. No chain. No seal. Just the worn leather cover, pulsing faintly like it had a heartbeat.
He didn't touch it immediately.
Instead, he closed the drawer. Waited. Opened it again.
Still there.
So it can follow me.
He took it out and laid it flat on the shelf. The instant his hand left it, the cover flinched—like an animal sensing its name.
The book opened.
No resistance.
No sound.
Just one glowing page.
The name at the top wasn't his.
It was fresh.
Etched in shining gold, lines still shifting slightly as if solidifying.
DOMINIC KAEL RYKAR
—Confirmed Vessel—
STATUS: Awake
Alignment: Divergent
Mark Stability: High
Behavioral Deviation: Minimal
Potential Hostility: 87%
Julius inhaled slowly.
So. Dominic remembered. Completely.
And the book already knows he's an enemy.
Below the entry, a symbol was beginning to form—too slow for the eye to catch in real time, like a flower blooming across hours. A sharp-edged spiral formed at the base, then an eye, then something deeper—a mirror shape?
He didn't wait to see it finish.
He shut the book.
There was a faint hiss as the final inch closed.
Kaela's voice drifted across the room.
"Did you read something you liked?"
He didn't answer right away.
She continued, "You have the posture of someone realizing the floor beneath them is older than the ceiling above."
He smiled faintly in the dark.
"And you," he said, "have the voice of someone who's seen it collapse before."
Another pause.
Then her voice, quiet, from the other side.
"Good. You might last longer than the last one."
The lights flickered once.
Outside, the dome glowed brighter—for just a breath.
And far beneath the school, deep where no living foot had tread in centuries, something stirred at the echo of two names aligned in gold.