The vault’s chill pressed in, and the crown’s shadow seemed to stretch out across the chamber, touching everything with an ancient promise. Kaelen’s eyes flicked from shelf to shelf, tracing the rows of relics—crescent-bladed polearms with glassy-black handles, a cloak shimmering with trapped starlight, vials marked with sigils so old they might predate the war itself. His hands were clenched tight, but his voice was steady.
“So these are the legends,” he murmured. “My mother never told me half the truth.”
There was bitterness in him—old wounds, not all of my making. The rest of the class shuffled in behind him, some awestruck, some barely able to look at the weapons that had shaped their nightmares. Andrine, smallest of the lot and sharp as cut wire, glanced between me and the crown. “You said we had until dawn. What do we do now?”
The Administrator’s voice crackled through the comm at my belt. “Head count is steady. No breaches detected. Inner gates sealed. Are you sure about this, Headmaster?”
I forced down my own trembling. The last time I’d stood in this chamber, I’d been a different person—someone’s frightened child, clutching the obsidian key while soldiers crashed through the halls above. Now, the whole fate of this new generation shivered on these stone floors.
“We prepare,” I said. “Everything in this room was made for one purpose. If there’s hope, it lies here—and in your hands.”
Kaelen snorted. “Our hands? Some of us have never fought outside a practice ring.” His eyes caught mine then, the old enmity surging. “Some of us remember what your family did to ours.”
A hot silence fell. Andrine moved closer to the relics, fingers hovering a breath’s width from a scabbard carved from petrified bone. The others looked to me, waiting for an answer that could remake or break them.
I let my gaze drift to the crown. Power radiated from it in slow, pulsing waves. No one who had worn it had ever returned unchanged. I could put it on—bend these relics to my will, force obedience, and perhaps survive the siege. Or I could choose the harder path, teach them to wield power together, let them shape their own fate.
A sudden crash split the stillness. The iron vault door shuddered, dust sifting from the ceiling. Someone—or something—was pounding from the other side. The noise rounded the chamber, echoing like war drums. The Administrator’s panicked voice flared in my ear: “There’s movement on the eastern wing. Not ours.”
The class recoiled. Weapons rattled on the shelves. Kaelen instinctively stepped ahead of the others, teeth bared in defiance.
I poised between the crown and the vault’s threshold, heart thundering. The choice—to seize power or risk trust—loomed larger than ever. Another thunderous blow battered the iron door. The runes flickered, dimming. Whatever had come for us would arrive in seconds.
I reached for—