Chapter 9: Echoes Beneath Valenforge
(Part 1 — The Tremor in the Flow)
The morning air shimmered faintly above the spires of Valenforge Academy, as if the world itself hadn't quite decided whether to exist yet. Beneath those towering halls, thousands of students filed across the marble walkways, their robes catching light from the hovering sigils etched into the stone. The air hummed with Flow — raw, restless, eager.
Kael sat alone at the edge of the courtyard's fountain, watching the water ripple. It didn't look right. Each ripple seemed to move against the wind, bending toward him rather than away. He frowned, but didn't move. He'd seen stranger things since that night in the dungeon — shadows that breathed, mirrors that smiled, reflections that blinked a second too late.
He'd told no one.
A bell tolled in the distance — deep, metallic, resonant with Flow. Classes were beginning.
"Still brooding?" a voice teased behind him.
Kael didn't turn immediately; he already knew that voice — soft but laced with confidence. Seren Valen. Golden hair tied loosely behind her neck, a blade strapped across her back that pulsed with pale amber light. She was the daughter of the Academy's Headmaster, and one of the few students who treated him like more than a curiosity.
"Just thinking," Kael murmured.
"About your Flow alignment again?" she asked, walking beside him. "You've been avoiding the training fields since the Synchronization Trials."
Kael gave a half-smile. "Hard to train with something that eats other people's spells."
Seren tilted her head. "Then maybe stop fighting so defensively. You're not cursed, Kael. You're just… unrefined."
Before he could answer, another voice cut through the crowd — clear, deliberate, and sharp.
"Or maybe he's just scared."
Lira Nox — black hair falling in a sheet over her shoulder, her eyes sharp enough to cut glass. She was the opposite of Seren in every way — quiet where Seren was bold, cold where Seren was warm. And yet both of them had something in common: they looked at Kael as if he were something unfinished they desperately wanted to understand.
Lira stepped closer, her own Flow flaring faintly — a storm-blue shimmer around her boots. "You keep saying you don't want attention, yet you're the only Initiate who's survived a Hollow Dungeon unmarked. Doesn't that make you special?"
Kael's jaw tightened. "I didn't survive it unmarked."
She paused at that. The faintest flicker of guilt crossed her expression before she masked it again.
Seren folded her arms. "Enough. He doesn't need another interrogation. We have our trials today."
Lira ignored her. "Trials or not, if he's going to be on our team, he needs control."
The bell tolled again, louder this time — and the ground trembled beneath their feet.
A collective murmur swept through the courtyard. Flow rippled in every direction, distorting the air. Students turned toward the fountain as its water rose unnaturally high, forming a perfect sphere before collapsing inward with a thunderous hiss.
The sigils across the courtyard flickered.
Kael felt it immediately — that familiar tug deep in his chest. The Hollow was stirring again.
A voice, low and distant, murmured inside his mind.
"You opened the door once… and the reflection remembers."
Kael gritted his teeth. "Not now."
Seren glanced at him. "What?"
Before he could answer, a crack split through the marble beneath the fountain — black light pouring through like veins of night. The professors shouted for order, but it was too late. Flow twisted in the air, forming a vortex — a tear opening between the Mortal Veil and something far older.
Students screamed as the vortex expanded.
Kael's Hollow mark burned beneath his wrist, the same place where his weapon first appeared.
Lira stepped in front of him, drawing her blade. "Whatever that is, it's not supposed to be here."
Seren's eyes blazed. "Then we stop it."
But Kael didn't move. He felt something behind the tear — something that wasn't just looking through it, but at him.
"You shouldn't have survived, Hollow-bearer."
The voice didn't echo through the air — it echoed through reality itself.
The tear pulsed once. Twice.
Then a hand reached through — pale, half-formed, dripping with liquid darkness.
Seren lunged forward, blade first. "Kael, move!"
He didn't. His body moved on its own — the Hollow's instinct kicking in. His hand flared with a deep, inverted glow, and his weapon materialized: a jagged blade of shadow-light.
When he swung, it wasn't an attack — it was an erasure.
The vortex shattered like glass.
And for a moment, silence fell.
Every eye turned toward Kael — the boy with no Flow, standing in a courtyard filled with flickering sigils and black cracks pulsing beneath his feet.
Seren stared, wide-eyed. "Kael… what was that?"
Kael looked down at his trembling hand. The Hollow mark pulsed once more — and then vanished beneath his skin.
He didn't answer. Because deep down, he already knew: the reflection was no longer content to stay behind the mirror.