The third pulse… never came.
It was as if the world itself was utterly terrified to hear it. A staggering, heavy silence blanketed the entire academy. The students. The instructors. The sky. Even the winds, which had never known a moment of rest, seemed trapped inside a frozen, solitary heartbeat.
But in the abyssal depths… beneath unnumbered layers of stone and primordial seals… something was awakening. Something that had absolutely no right to wake.
Nir walked slowly toward the precipice of the tower, his eyes anchored to the ground beneath his feet. He could not physically see it, yet he could feel it—a colossal presence extending beneath the entirety of the continent. An existence so ancient that time itself felt like a recent invention by comparison.
He spoke in a low, hollow murmur:
"This isn't magic."
The entity stood beside him, nodding with absolute deliberation.
"Magic is merely a vestige."
Silence fell for a fraction of a second, before the entity concluded:
"Like a shadow left behind after its master has vanished."
Something convulsed violently within Nir's soul, because those words felt strangely, hauntingly familiar. It was as though he had known them before. But from where? He could not tell.
At that exact millisecond… the heart pulsed once more.
*Thump.*
The heavens shuddered. This time, it was not the earth that fractured, but space itself.
Colossal geometric arrays materialized above the continent—arrays that were not forged by human hands, nor belonged to any known school of magic. They were grander than cities, older than civilizations.
Unknown words began to glow with blinding intensity within them. Words that not a single soul alive could decipher.
Except for one person. Nir.
He stared up at them. And suddenly… he understood. He did not know how, nor did he know why, but he understood perfectly.
"The Seed..."
The word escaped his lips completely involuntarily.
The entity spun toward him instantly, a look of unadulterated astonishment manifesting across its features for the very first time.
"How do you know that name?"
Nir did not answer, because he truly did not know. The word had not surfaced from his own memories, but from a place far deeper—a domain he had yet to reach.
Deep within the abyss, the bedrock began to split, layer by layer, seal after ancient seal. With every fresh rupture, light began to bleed through.
Yet that light was neither white nor golden, nor did it carry any color that could be defined by human sight. It resembled a sort of raw, primordial matter—something that had yet to be created.
Suddenly, a voice manifested. It did not emerge from the sky, nor did it rise from the earth; it echoed from every conceivable direction at once.
> "Finally."
>
Everyone froze dead in their tracks. Even the entity.
> "Countless eons have marched past..." the voice resonated, "yet one of the sons has finally returned."
>
Nir's eyes dilated. A bizarre, alien sensation swept through his entire body. It was not fear, nor was it comfort, but a feeling closely resembling someone hearing their authentic name spoken aloud for the very first time.
"A son..." Nir whispered, "What does that mean?"
But the voice offered no answer.
Instead, the earth began to part. Slowly. Exceedingly slowly. As though the world itself were pulling back a veil that had remained sealed for thousands of years.
And then… the eye appeared.
A single, solitary eye looking up from the abyssal dark. It was larger than palaces. Larger than mountains. Larger than anything mankind had ever known.
The eye opened with profound deliberation, gazing first at the sky, and then… locking directly onto Nir.
The very instant their gazes collided, an explosion of memories that did not belong to him detonated inside his mind.
Worlds burning to ash. Stars collapsing into nothingness. Entities being forged and systematically erased. An ancient war waged by cosmic forces that the human intellect was entirely incapable of comprehending.
Nir dropped to his knees, clutching his head with all his might as the imagery flooded his consciousness without a shred of mercy. Secrets. Absolute truths. And names. Names that would drive an ordinary human to instant madness if uttered aloud.
And right in the epicenter of that cataclysmic torrent of data, he heard a single sentence. A sentence that turned the very blood in his veins to ice.
> "You are not the mistake."
>
Silence enveloped the cosmos.
> "You are what was always meant to return."
>