The ancient gate remained silent, but silence, Aether was beginning to learn, could be its own kind of sound.
His palm was still pressed against the central handprint, the stone cool and strangely alive beneath his skin, like something breathing just beneath the surface. The silver pulse that had spread outward from his touch had not faded. If anything, it had grown bolder, racing away from the gate and burrowing deeper into the academy's bones — through corridors no student had walked in centuries, through walls that remembered footsteps long since turned to dust.
One chamber lit up.
Then another.
Then another, and another, until the entire lower academy seemed to hum with a light that had no business existing.
Ancient formations that had slept for thousands of years stirred awake one after another, their glyphs kindling like embers being coaxed back to life after a long, cold winter.
