In the highest room of the highest spire of Lumina Academy, Headmaster Archiron Valewing sat behind a desk carved from the heartwood of a single, colossal tree. The office was circular, its walls made not of stone but of enchanted glass that offered a panoramic, god's-eye view of the entire Academy, the city of Luminara below, and the endless sky beyond. The air was still and smelled of old books and ozone. For three thousand years, this had been his perch, his sanctuary, and his prison.
Archiron was ancient, even by the long-lived standards of Aethelgard. He was a Primarch-Human hybrid from the first generation after the War of Sundering, a relic from a time of heroes and monsters. His face was a testament to his age, a landscape of deep lines and weathered wisdom, but his eyes, a startling shade of violet, still held the spark of cosmic power. His Creation affinity, the legacy of his Primarch father, was said to be second only to that of the Imperial Family itself, but he used it sparingly now. Creating things required energy, and after three millennia of holding this institution together, his energy was a finite resource. He was, in a word, tired. A deep, soul-crushing weariness that had settled into his very bones.
He was reviewing the list of the incoming first-year class, the names and faces scrolling across a floating projection of light above his desk. It was a ritual he performed every year, a way to take the measure of the new generation that would soon be leading the empire, or tearing it apart. His gaze, heavy with the weight of centuries, lingered on certain names.
*Seraphina and Valerius Solarius.* The Imperial children. He let out a soft, weary sigh. Trouble. Valerius was too much like his ancestor, Valerius the Conqueror—brilliant, ambitious, and utterly ruthless. He saw the empire as a broken tool he needed to reforge, and he wouldn't hesitate to use the Academy as his forge and its students as his raw materials. Seraphina was subtler, her manipulations hidden behind a mask of charm and grace, which, in Archiron's experience, made her the more dangerous of the two. Having them both here, at the same time, was a recipe for political disaster.
*Isabella Pyralis.* More trouble. He remembered her father as a student—a hot-headed brawler who set fire to half of Emberhold in a fit of pique. The daughter, by all accounts, was even more volatile. She was a walking diplomatic incident, a spark of Pyralis ambition that could easily ignite the carefully maintained peace between the Great Houses. He would have to assign Master Ashvale to watch her personally. Only an old, scarred Pyralis warmaster could hope to control a young, fiery one.
His eyes scanned down the list, passing over the expected names—the Glaciem prodigy, the Terranova stalwart, the Noctis shadow—until he came to one that gave him pause.
*Damon Mournblade.* The second son. The spare. Archiron remembered the boy's father, a grim, silent man. He remembered the boy's grandfather, an even grimmer, more silent man. The Mournblades were a known quantity: loyal, morbid, and politically irrelevant. But as he looked at the boy's admission portrait, Archiron felt a flicker of unease. It was the same feeling Valerius had experienced, a sense of something… off. The boy's stillness was absolute. His grey eyes seemed to hold no light, no reflection. It was like looking at a portrait of a statue, not a living person. It was probably nothing. The Mournblades were always a strange lot. Still, he made a mental note.
A soft chime announced the arrival of his vice-headmaster. The door to the office slid open, and Lady Mira Frostweaver entered, carrying a tray with a steaming pot of tea and two cups. She was a vision of pleasant efficiency, a handsome woman in her middle years with warm eyes and a smile that could soothe the most anxious parent or intimidate the most rebellious student. She had been his vice-headmaster for two centuries, and she ran the day-to-day operations of the Academy with a flawless, seemingly effortless competence.
"Good morning, Archiron," she said, her voice calm and pleasant. "I brought your morning tea. White blossom with a hint of ginger. Good for the circulation."
"Thank you, Mira," he rumbled, accepting the cup she offered. The warmth seeped into his old hands, a small, welcome comfort. "You are a treasure. I would have been buried under a mountain of paperwork centuries ago without you."
She smiled. "It is my pleasure to serve the Academy. I also have the final report on the renovations to the lower levels. The Vex'Arak contractors have completed their work, ahead of schedule and under budget, as usual. The final invoices have been paid. Everything is in order."
Archiron nodded, taking a sip of his tea. The Vex'Arak. The name resonated with the unease he had been feeling. "Their work was satisfactory?"
"Perfectly so," Mira replied smoothly. "Their spatial reinforcement of the undercroft is a marvel of engineering. They even repaired that persistent energy leak near the old foundation stones. They are truly masters of their craft."
"Indeed," Archiron murmured, but his eyes were distant, looking out through the glass walls at the foundations of the Academy, the massive, ancient rocks on which everything was built.
For months now, he had felt it. A whisper. A subtle wrongness at the edge of his cosmic senses. It was like a flaw in a diamond, a discordant note in a symphony that only a master musician could hear. It was a feeling that the bones of his Academy, the very rock and reality upon which it floated, were… sick. He had tried to pinpoint it, to use his immense Creation affinity to scan the foundations, but it was like trying to catch smoke in a net. The feeling was pervasive, yet ephemeral. It was everywhere and nowhere.
He had mentioned it to Mira once. She had listened patiently, then had gently suggested it might be a symptom of his own weariness, the strain of three thousand years of responsibility taking its toll on his senses. She had commissioned a team of Glaciem analysts to run a full diagnostic on the Academy's energy systems. They had found nothing. He had let the matter drop, half-convinced she was right.
But the feeling persisted. It was stronger now, with the influx of new students, with the thrum of a thousand young, powerful souls filling the halls. It felt like something was feeding on that energy. Something was waking up.
"Is something wrong, Headmaster?" Mira asked, her voice laced with concern.
Archiron shook his head, forcing a weary smile. "No, my dear. Just the ramblings of an old man. Thank you for the report. And the tea."
She bowed her head. "Of course, Archiron." She collected the tray and walked to the door. But as she was leaving, she paused. "Try not to worry so much. The Academy is strong. It has stood for millennia. It will stand for many more."
She left, the door sliding shut behind her, leaving him alone once more in his silent tower. He stared at the wall, at the spot where she had just been standing. Her words were meant to be comforting, but they had the opposite effect.
The wrongness. The whisper in the stones. He could not name it. He could not find it. And that, more than any open threat, more than any political maneuvering or student rebellion he had faced in his long life, disturbed him to the very core of his ancient soul. Something was coming for his Academy. And he, its guardian, was blind to it.