The air inside the chamber was thick with incense, a heady blend of crushed moonpetal and ashbark root that clung to the velvet tapestries. Marcus sat across from Professor Aelia Serin, her piercing gaze cutting through the dim light like a blade of polished obsidian. He kept his posture relaxed, hands folded neatly in his lap, a placid canvas of noble composure. Beneath it, his mind was a whirlwind of calculations, already several moves ahead in a game she didn't even know they were playing.
"Your performance this term has been... unexpected," Aelia said, her tone laced with a sharp-edged suspicion rather than praise. "For someone who barely scraped past the entrance trials."
Marcus offered a polite, practiced smile. "I suppose I've found my rhythm, Professor."
Aelia studied him for a long, unnerving moment before sliding a crystal sphere across the polished mahogany between them. It pulsed faintly with a captive silver light—the Resonance Lens, an experimental and deeply intrusive artifact used in high-level magical evaluations. It was supposed to measure a mage's emotional stability and latent psychological patterns.
"This is part of our new curriculum," she explained, her words a sterile veil over the device's true purpose. "A Soul Echo Test. We call it a Mental Resonance Assessment—you and I will link minds for a short duration. Don't worry, it won't harm you. Just a brief glimpse into your inner world."
Marcus knew better. He had seen this device once before, during his first life. The High Council used it to root out dissidents hidden among the aristocracy. It didn't just reflect surface thoughts—it could peel away layers of mental defenses with surgical precision, exposing the raw, deeply buried memories a person fought to forget. But he also knew that the Codex of Shadows, the artifact now fused to his very soul, had evolved since its activation. It whispered in his mind—a soft, dark voice promising him absolute control.
He nodded slowly, a perfect portrait of scholarly obedience. "Of course, Professor."
The ritual began. Aelia placed her fingertips on the lens. Her eyes glowed with a brief, intense luminescence as the resonance field activated. A pulse of ethereal energy shot across the space between them, a tendril of pure thought connecting their minds. The real test had begun.
Marcus let her in. Or rather, he let her see precisely what he wanted her to see.
In the meticulously crafted illusion, he was the boy he once was—before the betrayal, before the cold finality of death. A frail, insecure youth, hunched over forgotten tomes in the cavernous corners of the palace library while his brothers trained with battle-mages and political advisors. His mother's voice, a gentle echo in the background of this false memory, reminded him that his worth lay not in power, but in knowledge.
Aelia's consciousness drifted through the scene. She saw the sting of shame in young Marcus's eyes when the royal tutors dismissed him as a non-talent. She felt the quiet, simmering resentment, the unspoken fear that he would never be enough—not for the throne, not even for his father's approval. Then came the pivotal moment: the arrival of his acceptance letter to the Academy. The day he thought he'd finally escaped the suffocating shadow of his lineage.
She lingered there, in that moment of fragile hope, for a moment longer than necessary, searching for any flicker of deceit. Finding none, she withdrew. Her expression remained unreadable, but Marcus caught the slight, almost imperceptible narrowing of her pupils—she hadn't found anything dangerous. Not yet.
"Interesting," she murmured, pulling her hand back from the now-dormant sphere. "You carry less arrogance than most royal brats. That's... refreshing."
Marcus bowed his head slightly, the very picture of humility. "I was raised to believe that power is only meaningful if it serves a purpose beyond oneself."
She watched him for another heartbeat, her mind clearly weighing his words against the memories she had just witnessed. Finally, she rose. "We'll keep in touch, Prince Valen."
As she left, the heavy oak door closing behind her with a soft thud, Marcus exhaled slowly. The Codex burned with a cold fire against his skin beneath his robes.
He returned to his dormitory under the deep purple cover of dusk. The campus was quiet. No one followed. Even the ever-watchful Simon Hurst, the Council's lapdog, seemed occupied elsewhere.
The moment he locked the door, the Codex Noctis snapped open on his desk, its shadowy pages flipping rapidly as if possessed by an invisible, frantic hand. They stopped abruptly on page eight, which began to fill itself with newly inked symbols and shimmering fragments of memory.
A voice, one Marcus recognized with a jolt of ice in his veins, echoed not in the room, but directly in his mind. "The Starfire Scrolls do not lie, Sovereign," it said. "The Codex does not merely record fate—it shapes it. You are no longer walking the path you once did. You have become something else."
It was a conversation he had never remembered having. Yet here it was—etched into the pages of his own soul-bound system. A dialogue between his former self and the Grand Hierophant of the Moonlit Sanctum. Words about Starfire Anchors and Fate Loops—terms he had never heard in either life, yet understood with a chilling, instinctual clarity. His fingers hovered over the page. Had the Codex always done this? Or was it evolving in response to his use?
Outside, the wind howled through the courtyard, carrying whispers of unseen things. Somewhere beyond the walls of the academy, the empire stirred with unrest. The fractures were widening. And he, whether by design or accident, was at the heart of it all.
Later that night, as Marcus drifted toward sleep, a familiar, predatory chill prickled the back of his neck.
Someone was watching.
He opened his eyes to the darkness of his room. He saw nothing, yet the subtle wards woven around his bed flared for a split second, signaling an attempted mental intrusion.
Lena. She had tried once before. Now, she was back.
But Marcus had anticipated this. Earlier that evening, he had woven a False Dream Array into his sleeping aura. It was not a complex spell—just a delicate, layered illusion designed to project an image of himself failing spectacularly in the upcoming Duelist's Gauntlet, trembling with fear before the faceless crowd.
Lena wouldn't know the difference. As dawn's first light began to break, she slipped out of his room, clutching a small shard of dreamstone etched with the false vision. A triumphant, cruel curl touched her lips.
That morning, Augustus Glem received a message sealed with Lena's personal cipher. By midday, he had begun drafting a formal report to the High Magisterium, confident in the intelligence he had acquired.
Meanwhile, in the solitude of his dorm, Marcus stood before the Codex again. This time, he reached out, not with his hand, but with his will.
Page nine flickered into existence, already half-formed with the shadows of names and places he had yet to fully remember. But one name swam into sharp focus from the blur.
Augustus Glem.
And beside it, a shifting, mercurial bar labeled: Fate Entanglement: 37%.
More was coming. Much more.
The new dawn broke, and with it, Marcus sealed the Codex Noctis and began to lay his traps. His mind raced, connecting the threads—Aelia Serin's suspicious test, her potential ties to separatist factions, and the chilling possibility that she was part of the original conspiracy that led to his death in his first life.
Scene 1: The Web Tightens
The summons came without warning: an "unscheduled faculty review" under Professor Aelia Serin's direct authority. It was a thinly veiled interrogation chamber. This time, there was no Resonance Lens, but something far more dangerous. As Marcus entered, he felt the oppressive shift in the room's magical atmosphere. Aelia was preparing a forbidden spell—the Soulthread Unraveling—a high-level mental intrusion designed to forcibly probe for anomalies in a target's magical signature and memory flow.
"A mere formality, Prince Valen," she said, her voice smooth as silk but her eyes hard as diamonds.
The moment the spell—a web of incandescent, needle-thin threads of light—made contact with his mind, Marcus activated the Codex Noctis. A new page flared to life within his consciousness.
—Page 10 unlocked → "History Echo: The Soulthread Fracture"
He didn't fight the intrusion. Instead, he fed it. He replayed a fragment of the very night of his assassination, a memory so visceral it felt real. But in this version, he allowed the spell to "see" a false but vividly rendered vision: the face of Aelia herself, giving the order that ended his life. The echo was infused with the genuine terror and betrayal he had felt in his final moments.
The result was immediate. Aelia recoiled as if struck, her face paling. The Soulthread web dissolved into sparks. She believed she had uncovered a royal conspirator within her own ranks, a traitor hidden behind a loyalist's mask. Her mission was now corrupted, her focus turned inward, just as Marcus had planned.
Scene 2: The Watcher Watched
Across campus, Simon Hurst, the perpetually lurking spy for the Magic Council, filed his report. He noted the profound anomaly in Marcus's aura during the "review," a spike of power that defied explanation. His coded message winged its way toward his unseen superiors.
Unknown to Hurst, fragments of this report were being intercepted. Valk Taron, a quiet, observant student and the disgraced son of a fallen northern house, stood in the shadows of the communications tower. Using techniques taught to him by his family before their fall, he decrypted just enough to understand the Council's interest in Marcus. He saw not a target, but an opportunity.
That night, under a sliver of moon, Valk approached Marcus. The meeting was tense, held in the veiled twilight of the Academy's ancient arboretum.
"The Council is watching you," Valk stated, his voice a low whisper. "So is the Professor. They see an anomaly. I see a chance to reclaim what was taken from my family." He offered a pact. "I can provide you with intel, tell you who is watching and when. In exchange, when you rise, you don't forget those who aided you in the shadows."
Marcus, wary but intrigued by the strategic advantage, accepted. A new, fragile alliance was forged.
Scene 3: The Blade Beneath the Mask
Fueled by Lena's false dream-intel, Augustus Glem intensified his investigation. He pieced together inconsistencies in Marcus's past records, searching for the source of his newfound prowess. He enlisted Lena Sering's considerable skill in huànshù—illusion magic—to recreate a memory scene based on witness accounts of Marcus's dueling practice. The illusion showed Marcus flawlessly executing an advanced elemental weave, something far beyond the capabilities of a first-year student.
Armed with what he believed to be undeniable proof, Augustus prepared to confront Marcus. But Marcus, ever vigilant, sensed the shift in his enemy's intent through the Codex's passive tracking. As Augustus rounded a corner in the grand library, intending to trap Marcus, he found himself face-to-face with a scene already in progress.
Using a breathtakingly clever manipulation of shared illusions, Marcus fed Augustus a different vision. In this one, another student, a known rival of Lena's, appeared to be practicing the advanced weave while Lena watched from the shadows, a smirk on her face as if she were stealing the technique. Marcus himself appeared to stumble upon the scene, looking just as confused as Augustus. The illusion was flawless, redirecting all suspicion toward Lena as a manipulative magical thief.
The fallout was immediate. Augustus's trust in his key intelligence source shattered, sowing discord among his inner circle and buying Marcus critical time.
Scene 4: Threads of Destiny
Alone once more in the sanctuary of the library archives, Marcus pored over recovered notes he had painstakingly acquired. Hidden beneath layers of arcane cipher texts were references to the Starborn Concord, a mythical pact between the imperial branches made before the devastating Element Wars.
One name, scratched out in most texts but faintly visible under magical light, repeated itself: Erythra Vey. A figure systematically erased from the history books, a ghost in the annals of the Empire. The evidence suggested this person was not just a footnote, but possibly the true architect behind the fall of his dynasty.
As he traced the name with his finger, the Codex Noctis on the table beside him glowed with a faint, blood-red light. It displayed a new objective, the text burning itself onto a fresh page.
🩸 Objective Updated:
Identify Erythra Vey – Locate traces of their influence within the Academy.
Final Scene: The Veil Falls
Marcus standing atop the Academy's highest spire, the wind whipping his cloak as he watched the horizon darken into a bruised purple.
Below, the pieces he had set in motion were playing their parts. Aelia retreated into her chambers, shaken and paranoid, now hunting for traitors within her own faction. Augustus, his confidence fractured, began questioning his closest allies, his gaze now falling on a bewildered Lena who was beginning to suspect she had been framed. The web of intrigue was tightening, but it was a web of his own design.
Marcus whispered into the wind, the words a vow to the coming night.
"They seek shadows, not knowing I have become the darkness itself."
—Marcus Valen, Codex Entry 12.7
The empire stirred with unrest. Aelia Serin, driven by the false memory, initiated a covert and brutal operation against suspected separatists, unwittingly playing directly into Marcus's grander strategy. Far beneath the Academy, Marcus's research led him to a hidden vault, a place that predated even the Starfire Scrolls. And deep in the frozen north, the name of Valk Taron's family resurfaced in the translation of an ancient, long-forgotten prophecy. The game was escalating.