Aether didn't sleep that night.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it—
that skeletal ink-black hand emerging from the rift, dragging letters that screamed without sound.
By dawn, he had reorganized Maribel's scattered notes, polished his dagger, rechecked the strange sigil under his glove, and paced the length of the room at least fifty times.
He needed answers.
Not abstract warnings, not cryptic system-text.
Real answers.
And only one place in the Academy could possibly provide them.
The Archive of Inverted Records.
A forbidden wing under the main library—
a place where documents that defied normal chronology were stored. Pages that rewrote themselves. Books with contradictory dates. History that changed every time someone blinked.
Students weren't allowed inside.
That was precisely why Aether had to go.
---
• The Library Atrium
The morning crowd scattered through the grand atrium. Towering shelves spiraled upward like wooden pillars, candle-chandeliers floating without chains. Scholars floated tomes with telekinetic ribbons. Runes hummed softly between aisles.
Aether slipped silently down the back corridor, hood low.
He found the sealed door: metal, circular, etched with three concentric hourglasses. A sign above it read:
ARCHIVE OF INVERTED RECORDS —
Access restricted by decree of the Arbiters.
Good.
Restricted meant it would contain what he needed.
He placed a hand on the cold metal—
—and the sigil under his glove burned.
A flash of gold surged across the door like liquid sunlight. The seal dissolved.
Aether jerked back. "That wasn't me," he muttered.
No.
It was the Fragment.
It wanted him inside.
He pushed the door open.
---
• The Hall of Temporal Echoes
The interior was vast. Much larger than the door should allow.
Rows of suspended parchment hung midair, rotating slowly. Books rearranged themselves like flocks of birds. Ink crawled across pages, rewriting lines that faded and reappeared.
And in the center of the hall, at the base of a spiral stair, floated a single sheet of glowing vellum.
Aether felt something pull at him—
not physical, not magical.
Something deeper.
He stepped forward.
The moment his fingers grazed the vellum—
the Archive went silent.
Everything froze midair.
And the vellum unfolded itself, revealing a title written in divine script:
THE FIRST ECHO:
Record of the Fallen Hypostasis
Aether's pulse pounded.
This was it.
He began to read.
---
• THE FIRST ECHO (Translated Fragment)
"Before the era of mortals, before the weaving of threads, there existed Seven Hypostases.
Beings of Absolute Law.
Keepers of Narrative, Fate, Time, Memory, Origin, Void, and Revelation."
Aether's vision wavered.
Pain lanced through his skull like the words were rewriting something inside him.
He forced himself to continue.
"But the Hypostasis of Narrative—the One Who Watches—
fractured."
A shudder tore through Aether's body.
The text shifted, lines rearranging themselves:
"From the shattering, a Fragment fled.
Unbound.
Unwritten.
Impossible."
A sinking feeling twisted in his gut.
He didn't want to read the next line.
He already knew—
"The Fragment hid inside a mortal shell."
His breath stilled.
No.
No, that couldn't—
"Name of host: AETHER CAELUM NOCTIS."
The Archive trembled.
Ink bled from the other pages, letters peeling like ash in a storm. The air vibrated with a low, unbearable hum.
Aether staggered back—
But the vellum wasn't done.
It rearranged one final line, glowing blood-red:
"And with each timeline reset,
the Fragment spawns an Echo in the Abyss."
His pulse froze.
The Shadow.
The one waking in the Nocturne Abyss.
He whispered, almost afraid to hear it:
"…How many resets have I lived through?"
The vellum answered.
Not in text.
In a whisper behind him.
"Sixteen."
Aether spun—
And there, standing between floating books, was a figure with his face.
Same eyes.
Same posture.
Same voice.
But darker.
Hollow.
Wrong.
Aether's own Shadow smiled at him.
A smile Aether would never make.
"I've been waiting for you, Aether."
"This time… I wake first."