The tower room hummed with restrained power. The floating Astrarium cast sharp silver light across the stone walls, highlighting the tension between Master Orion and the Councilor who now stood in the doorway.
Nox felt Lira shift subtly closer, as if preparing to pull him back if anything went wrong.
The Councilor's gaze slid past Orion like a blade through silk and fixed on Nox again.
"Apprentice," they repeated, "you will come with us. Now."
Their tone held polite firmness, the kind that disguised a command as a request.The kind that left no room for refusal.
Orion stepped forward, half a pace, blocking Nox from view.
"You feel a 'disturbance' at this hour?" Orion said calmly. "How curious. The Astrarium has lain dormant for a decade."
The Councilor's lips curved in a thin smile.
"And we felt nothing for those ten years. But tonight, the Observatory itself shuddered."
Their eyes flickered to the floating hourglass, gleaming with upward-falling sand.
"A temporal fluctuation of this magnitude cannot be ignored."
Lira inhaled sharply."Fluctuation" was a mild word for what had just happened.
The Councilor took a step forward, sweeping their robe aside.
"Let me rephrase, Orion. This is not a request. Apprentice Nox must be questioned."Their tone sharpened."The Council demands compliance."
Orion stiffened."So the Council now interrogates apprentices without cause?"
"Without cause?" The Councilor laughed quietly. "The Astrarium awakened for the first time in years. And an unregistered pulse of Verge energy rippled through our wards."
Nox froze.His hand burned under his sleeve.
Verge energy.They could sense it.
Before the Councilor could continue, Orion spoke again, voice low and dangerous.
"You will not touch the boy."
"Orion," the Councilor said gently, "you know the Council's policy on the Verge Cycle. If there is even a chance of contamination—"
"Contamination?" Orion hissed. "He is a child, not a plague."
The Councilor's smile vanished.
"A child capable of ending a city."
The room went silent.Nox's blood ran cold.
They knew.Not about the mark specifically but they knew the danger of a Verge-Bearer.
Lira stepped in front of Nox, small but fiercely defiant.
"He didn't do anything! I was here the entire time!"
The Councilor ignored her.
"Apprentice Nox," they said again, "step forward."
Nox felt pressure against his mind, like invisible hands pushing him.Not magic authority.Years of being taught to obey the Council trained into every apprentice.
But something else stirred inside him.A whisper beneath consciousness.
Walk carefully.Every moment is a threshold.
Then the Astrarium flared.
A bright column of silver light shot upward, brushing the ceiling.The Councilor whirled toward it, startled.
"What?"
The hourglass spun slowly, cracks glowing like molten starlight.Silver sand drifted toward Nox again, forming faint spirals around his feet.
The Councilor's eyes widened in horror.
"Orion… he's resonating with it?"
Orion exhaled sharply, fury and fear tangled in his voice.
"Yes. And this is exactly why he cannot go with you."
The Councilor lifted their hand.Symbols formed in the air glyphs of authority, of binding, of temporal seal.
"Nox Altheon," they declared, "by order of the Scholars' Council."
The Astrarium screamed.
A sound like shattering glass and a thousand clocks stopping at once.The force knocked Lira to the ground. Orion staggered. The Councilor stumbled back, face twisting in shock.
And Nox
Nox did not fall.
The rune on his hand blazed to life, bright enough to sear.
Time twisted.Sound warped.The room blurred.
The hourglass's silver sand swirled around him like a storm.
The Councilor shouted something, but the words stretched into unrecognizable echoes.
The last thing Nox saw was Orion reaching out for him, mouth forming a warning
Then the world snapped.
Everything inverted.
And Nox vanished from the tower.