The fifth tower pulsed like a heartbeat.
Calyra had spoken three fragments. Each one cracked a mirror. Each one bent a hallway. Each one made the koi pond ripple like breath.
Lyra felt it in her bones.
Nova Quinn whispered, "She's waking something."
Zephyr Vale nodded. "Or someone."
Maris clutched the book. "It's responding."
Cassian Thorn tossed his coin.
It hovered.
The Descent
They gathered at midnight.
Lyra. Maris. Nova. Zephyr. Cassian. Juno. Corvin.
The stitched ones.
They stood before the sealed door beneath the fifth tower — a door that hadn't opened in decades. A door stitched shut with silence.
Calyra arrived last.
She didn't speak.
She touched the door.
It opened.
The Chamber
It wasn't a room.
It was a memory.
The walls pulsed with emotion. The air shimmered with fragments. The floor was stitched from velvet and grief. Mirrors floated like stars. Books hovered like breath.
In the center was a pedestal.
On it: a mirror.
Cracked.
Alive.
The Recording
Lyra stepped forward.
The mirror pulsed.
Calyra spoke.
> "I built this place to hold emotion. They buried it to hold control."
Nova whispered, "She's remembering the founding."
Zephyr murmured, "Then we must record."
Maris opened the book.
It began to write.
The Fragments
Calyra walked the chamber, touching mirrors.
Each one whispered a line:
- "Emotion is the oldest magic."
- "Memory is a spell cast backward."
- "Grief is architecture."
- "I did not vanish. I was overwritten."
- "The stitched ones are not accidents. They are keys."
The book wrote each one.
Cassian whispered, "She's fading."
Lyra nodded. "Then we must finish before she's gone."
The Collapse
The chamber trembled.
The mirrors cracked.
The pedestal pulsed.
Calyra stood in the center.
She whispered:
> "I am not a person. I am a message. And I have been delivered."
Then she vanished.
The Book Again
Back in the dorm, the book pulsed violently.
New ink appeared:
> "The message has been received. Now the school must decide: remember or erase."
Maris whispered, "She's gone."
Lyra nodded. "But we heard her."