Obsidian Academy taught you how to win, but it didn't teach you how to live.
Living here was a dance with ghosts. Some in the walls. Some in the halls. And some buried deep in your own veins, whispering lullabies made of old blood and broken promises.
Mine sang louder every day.
—
It started with a hum.
Faint. Like a memory on the verge of waking. It followed me through the corridors, threading itself through candlelight and chill, blooming in the gaps between heartbeat and breath.
At first I thought it was the wind.
Then I heard it answer me.
—
Seravin noticed first.
I was standing before a pillar of runes, reciting the configurations backward—just to see if the glyphs would fight me—when he snapped his fingers once.
"Ael," he said. "What did you hear just now?"
I turned.
He wasn't blinking.
The others in the class—three upper-year students and a second prince disguised as "Lyle"—were still trying to trace the right rune paths. I'd already finished mine five minutes ago, out of boredom.
"I heard… music," I admitted. "Like singing. From the stones."
His mouth thinned. Not quite a frown. More like confirmation.
"Language is the oldest form of power," he said. "But song is older than language."
He tapped his staff once. The runes on the pillar flashed.
—
I didn't sleep that night.
Not because of fear.
Because I couldn't stop humming.
Every breath I took came out in verse. Not structured poetry like before. No rhymes. No rhythm. Just raw sound. It curled through the room like a snake made of air, stirred the ink in my inkwell, rattled the mirror until it cracked.
My voice was a key.
And the world was a locked door.
So I did the stupid thing.
I opened it.
I went to the graveyard beneath the academy.
—
Technically, it wasn't a graveyard. The instructors called it the Ossuary of Remembrance.
But we all knew what it was.
Where they buried the failed experiments.
Where they chained the dead who refused to stay that way.
The place was sealed to students. Wardstones, runes, binding circles. A whole mess of protective spells designed to keep idiots out.
I hummed the ward open.
No spell. Just my voice.
It split like glass.
Like it had been waiting.
The moment I stepped inside, the ground exhaled.
Dust rose like breath from a sleeping beast. Bones shifted beneath the floor. Voices called to me—not loud, not angry. Just… curious.
"Another Fallen?"
"No… different."
"Too warm. Too new."
"But still… one of us."
I walked deeper.
The air was colder here. But my blood wasn't.
It was boiling.
I reached a platform at the center. Black stone, carved with sigils older than the Academy itself. In the center stood a mirror—tall, silver-rimmed, cracked in a perfect spiral.
It didn't show my reflection.
It showed her.
Ravianne.
But not as I knew her.
She stood in battle armor, crimson wings flaring behind her. Her face was smeared with blood, her smile wide as war.
"Ael," she said.
I didn't answer.
Because it wasn't really her.
Just a memory. A prophecy. Maybe both.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"Ready for what?"
Her smile deepened.
"To become something the gods will fear."
—
The mirror shattered.
Not from pressure.
From recognition.
It knew me.
And it couldn't bear the truth.
My voice spilled out of me then. Not a whisper. Not a hum. A chant.
Not in any language I knew.
But my body remembered it.
I spoke the Song of the Unmade.
The air bled light.
Bones rose from the ground—twisting, folding, kneeling. Shadows bent backward. The ceiling split, and stars stared down through the cracks in the mountain.
I was not a boy in that moment.
I was every mistake the heavens ever tried to bury.
And the world sang with me.
—
When I woke, I was back in my tower.
How? No idea.
My hands were shaking.
Not from exhaustion.
From clarity.
There was no question now.
The power inside me wasn't a gift.
It was an inheritance.
Not from Ravianne.
Not from this world.
From something deeper.
Older.
Something that saw Earth as a distraction, and this place as a test.
And I was passing.
Barely.
—
I didn't tell Seravin what I'd done.
I didn't tell Ravianne either.
Instead, I walked into breakfast the next morning like I hadn't sung the bones of the dead into a lullaby the night before.
People stared.
Because now, when I walked, the shadows flinched.
Because now, when I breathed, windows trembled.
And because now, there were wings behind me.
Only visible in mirrors.
Only real when I wasn't looking.
Feathers of gold and black.
Fallen.
And rising.