Beyond the mortal kingdoms and beneath the veil of ordinary stars, there stood a tower — vast and white, forged of marble that pulsed with veins of starlight. It spiraled up from a forgotten mountain peak and touched the sky in defiance of time. This was Vel Arcanis, the Tower of Knowing.
No roads led to its gates. No names were spoken aloud within.
It was not a place for kings. It was not a place for gods.
It was a place for watchers.
---
Within Vel Arcanis lived a society known only as the Order of the Silent Quill. They were mages who had long since shed their need for fame, conflict, or kingdom. Their eyes glowed with residual starlight, not because they sought power, but because they had gone so long without blinking.
Each mage bore a sigil over their heart — a closed eye surrounded by runes.
They were not blind. They were simply done looking with their own sight.
They looked through the World Mirror now — a pool of omniscient magic suspended in the heart of the tower.
But such clarity did not come freely.
The Order had spent eleven years, their thirty highest-tier clairvoyants chanting in synchrony, feeding starlight and memory into the World Mirror.
The Mirror did not simply take energy. It took memory. Each mage who peered too long into its depths forgot something — a face, a name, a love, a spell — never knowing what had been lost. This was the cost of knowing.
And so they recorded everything in scrolls. Not for the world. But for themselves, so the void left behind would have shape.
Only now, after over a decade of collective focus, were the scrolls ready to reveal what had been hidden.
They did not interfere.
They only recorded.
---
Tonight, in the high chamber, eleven figures in slate-gray robes stood in a circle of shifting glyphs. Above them, the Mirror shimmered.
A single voice broke the silence — flat, but laced with reverence.
"Begin the scribing. Subject: Codename [Him]."
One of the mages extended their hand. The glyphs responded, and a scroll unfurled from nothing. Starlight spilled across its parchment.
---
✧ Archive Scroll: Codename Dawnborn
Subject shows early divergence from mortal magical pathways. Core is irregular — soul-derived, connected to web of forgotten consciousness. Estimated soul resonance: 1800+ fragments. Magical output: Variable. Emotional imprint: Dense. Behavior: Notable empathy, high memory retention of dream-states. Origin: Celestial-dropped entity. Suspected Lineage: Angelic. Traits include non-human aura and elven physical attributes.
Imprints tracked: Whispering Spiral, Thren the Moon-Eater, Drosu, Kaenri, Ozoz.
Predicted Path: Soulweaver Ascendant. High interference potential.
---
Another scroll hovered beside it, glowing with a gentler hue.
✧ Archive Scroll: Subject Victoria Valessai
Subject exhibits Becoming-based magic. Mirror Core identified. Capable of synchronizing with multiversal self-lattices. Emotional echo sensitivity at advanced levels. Skill in prediction-based combat. Inherits ruling lineage of Kael-Terun. Dual-link pattern detected — harmonic connection with Subject [Him].
Imprints tracked: Vemathi, Eia, Ozoz, Nahliv, Kaenri.
Predicted Path: Mirror Queen. Anchor point of change.
---
A third scroll appeared — dark, humming with unstable mana.
✧ Archive Scroll: Subject Abbadon
Hybrid of demonic and angelic origin. Demonic Core confirmed — Cycle of Agony model. Growth through reflected suffering. Subject displays extreme emotional duality. Aura described as holy-aberrant. Unnatural harmony of contradiction. Risk factor: Critical. Predicted Event Horizon: Collapse or Ascension.
Lineage: Vorthag (Demonic King), Lucifer (Fallen Archangel). Combat effectiveness: Lethal. Control: Unknown.
---
As the scrolls floated before them, one of the mages finally spoke.
"They are converging."
Another nodded. "The Codices will fracture when the Triad touches."
"They are only children," murmured a younger voice.
"Even so," the leader whispered. "Children become the truths we forget to prepare for."
The tower pulsed. The stars shifted.
As the final scroll dimmed and rolled into itself, silence fell over the chamber once more.
But not all silence is peaceful.
One of the elder mages, his voice brittle with reverence, spoke quietly, "This is heaven-touched knowledge. It always comes with a price."
And then, it began.
The youngest among them — a boy barely past his Trial — began to shiver. His eyes glazed, and he turned in slow, disoriented circles.
"Who am I...? Who am I...? Who am I...?"
Another, the second weakest, dropped their quill and clutched their chest.
"What's my name? How old am I? Why can't I remember how I got here?"
A third mage — one of the middle-circle clairvoyants — stared down at her hand. She held it up to the light, trembling.
"Why am I wearing this ring...? I've never been in love... Have I...?"
Whispers broke out. Quills clattered to the floor. The air grew heavier.
Even the tower dimmed.
The strongest of them all, the Arch-Mnemonic, sat still amid the storm. He closed his eyes, took a long breath, and whispered to no one in particular:
"Five years... All I lost was five years of my academy training. That was the price for me."
He looked around at the unraveling.
"But for them..."
And he did not finish the sentence.
Because the watchers do not speak what they cannot remember.
And the watchers kept writing.