A voice

The next morning dawned gray, clouds veiling the sun as though the sky itself mirrored Lucien’s restless mind. He had barely slept, his thoughts circling endlessly around the letter from home. Alive. Northern borderlands. Traces. Each word replayed like an echo refusing to fade.

When he reached the lecture hall, the room was already abuzz with chatter. Scrolls and ink pots clattered, students comparing notes before the instructors arrived. Yet Lucien noticed the way their voices dipped when he passed, how eyes flicked toward him with curiosity and unease.

Something was spreading—rumors.

“Did you hear?” a girl whispered as he sat down. “Lord Aldric’s son received a hawk yesterday. Urgent.”

“Something about the borderlands,” another murmured.

Lucien’s jaw tightened. He forced his attention to the parchment before him, quill hovering uselessly. Across the hall, Arian’s absence pressed against him like a hollow in the room.

Professor Veyra paced slowly before the class, her robes whispering across the stone floor. Chalk tapped against the blackboard as she sketched a jagged rift, lines radiating outward like cracks in glass.

“Boundary fractures,” she said, voice clipped and precise. “Rare, unstable phenomena where mana flows collapse. They are not portals, nor natural storms, but places where reality itself thins. Most collapse quickly. A few, however…” Her chalk hesitated on the board. “…endure. And those are the most dangerous of all.”

"If one appears unsealed, what happens?”

A murmur rippled through the hall. Students leaned forward, half in dread, half in fascination.

“Collapse,” a boy answered. “Creatures from beyond slip through.”

Lucien’s pulse quickened. Boundary fractures. The way she described them—thin places, dangerous doors, crossings that devoured—every word struck him with the weight of recognition.

She never spoke the forbidden name. None of them did. But Lucien knew.

This was—Threshold.

“Not just creatures,” Veyra corrected. “Echoes of ourselves. Shadows. Reflections. The Threshold feeds on memory and fear. It offers pieces of truth—distorted, dangerous.” Her gaze swept the hall. “If you think you see yourself on the other side, run.”

A shiver crawled over Lucien’s skin. He remembered the window. The reflection that wasn’t his. Was it also threshold?

His quill snapped between his fingers.

---

Later, when the lecture finally released them, Toren caught up with him in the corridor.

“You’re pale as death,” Toren said, nudging him lightly. “Don’t tell me Veyra’s lecture scared you.”

Lucien forced a laugh. “I’ve faced scarier things than books.”

But Toren’s grin faded as he studied him closer. “Arian ?”

Lucien hesitated. The truth pressed at his throat, but he swallowed it down. “Maybe. I just… need answers. The letter said he was alive. But if my doubts that something's involved…”

Toren frowned. “Then it’s possible it's not just a missing-person mystery. It could be something bigger. Something more dangerous ?”

Lucien’s golden eyes darkened. “Which is why I can’t sit here waiting.”

“Your father said—”

“I know what he said.” Lucien’s voice sharpened, echoing too loudly down the hall. He lowered it quickly, glancing around. “But if Arian crossed a some… then waiting might mean losing him forever—”

Toren sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’ll get yourself killed charging off alone. At least let me come with you when the time comes.”

Lucien’s lips curved faintly. “You’d really risk suspension for me?”

“Suspension? More like expulsion,” Toren muttered. Then he smirked. “But someone has to keep you from throwing yourself into a shadow’s mouth.”

For the first time that day, Lucien let out a genuine laugh.

---

That night, the halls of the dormitory were hushed. Lucien sat at his desk, the candle burning low, shadows bending with the flame. The letter from his father lay beside his notes, its words worn from rereading.

His gaze drifted to the fragment—the crescent mark, faintly glowing, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

He reached out, fingertips hovering over the strange markings. For a heartbeat, nothing stirred. Then—

A tremor ran beneath his skin, like the parchment itself was breathing. The faint shimmer of the crescent sigil seemed to pulse, once… twice… in rhythm with a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.

And then, a voice—thin as a thread, strained as if dragged across worlds—slipped into his mind.

“…Lucien…”

His chest clenched. The sound was cracked, distorted, yet he knew it as surely as his own name. Arian.

“…don’t… follow…” The whisper broke apart, a stutter of static and silence. “…not ready…”

Lucien’s throat tightened. He pressed closer, desperate, as if proximity could bridge the gap. “Arian? Where are you?”

The air in the room grew colder, shadows stirring like smoke pulled toward a hidden flame. The voice bled through again, ragged and low, each word scraping raw against his bones.

“…they’re watching…” A pause. A shudder of static. Then softer, almost pleading: “…find the Threshold… before it finds you.”

The candle sputtered violently, plunging half the room into darkness.

“Arian!” Lucien hissed, clutching the parchment tighter. But the connection was gone. Only silence pressed in now, heavy and suffocating.

He staggered back, chest heaving, the whisper still echoing in his skull. Not imagined. Not a dream. Arian was reaching out—trapped somewhere Lucien could not see.

---

As the last flame guttered out, Lucien whispered into the dark, voice unsteady but fierce:

“I heard you, Arian. And I swear—I’ll reach you. No matter what stands in my way.”

The shadows coiled against the walls, restless, curling like smoke. And though the room fell silent, Lucien could not shake the sense that his words had been heard—by Arian… and by something else.

•••