All Chapters of The Academy of The Ascendant - Book 1 Marked by Starlight: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

(Lyra’s POV)By morning, the frost had melted—but the words on the mirror hadn’t.You are not the first.I stared at them until my vision blurred, blinking hard like that would change what I’d seen. But it didn’t. No matter how many times I scrubbed the glass, the letters stayed. Frozen into the surface. Etched by a hand that hadn’t needed to touch the ice at all.When the knock came, I didn’t move.Three short, sharp raps.I opened the door to find Instructor Varran. Again.His voice, as always, was a blade dulled only slightly by years of use. “You’ve been summoned to the field.”“For what?” I rasped.His pale eyes raked over me, unimpressed. “Your first Trial. Ascendants are tested in public. You’ll be evaluated by the Court.”A cold rock settled in my stomach. “Already?”He didn’t answer.Instead, he turned and walked—clearly expecting me to follow.The training field wasn’t a field. It was a coliseum, carved into the side of the mountain like a giant had scooped it out with a cla

(Primary POV: Lyra; Triad segments included)LyraI didn’t ask where we were going.When Aeron extended his hand, I took it.And the world shifted again.Gone was the cold stone tower, the academy, the sky.Instead, we stood in a field of suspended starlight — like reality had folded in on itself and left us floating in the space between.Time didn’t move here.The wind didn’t blow.The void simply watched.“You created this?” I asked, breathless.“No,” he said. “It’s always existed. I just showed it to you.”I turned in a slow circle, feeling the silence sink

(Cassian’s POV)The scent of her was still in the air.I hated that I could tell.Magic always leaves a trace — like smoke in the walls, like a scar across the soul — and hers was thick in the corridors now, threaded with something darker.And beneath it?Him.Riven.I knew what had happened.Didn’t need to hear it.Didn’t need to see the scuffed wall in the neutral wing, or the scorch marks in the stone, or the smirk on Riven’s lips the next morning.I could feel it in my bones — a fraying tension I couldn’t shut out.And worse, the shift in her.Lyra had always walked like she didn’t know where she belonged.Today, she walked like the ground belonged to her.And maybe it did.That was the problem.I found her in the eastern courtyard just before midday. The sun had split through the clouds above, and for a moment she looked like something carved from flame and prophecy, her eyes glinting green-gold in the light, the wind stirring her dark hair like the academy itself was bending aro

(Talon’s POV)The symbol burned into my mind before I ever saw it up close.Four interwoven spirals, each representing one of the primal elements: fire, water, earth, air. But surrounding them — barely visible to the untrained eye — was the fifth arc.The shadow.The absence.Void.The symbol had been outlawed over a century ago. Erased from texts, banned from magical heraldry, its use punishable by exile. Or worse.And now, it sat beneath her skin.Lyra. Or… Lyriana, if the whispers were to be believed.And I was the only one trying to understand it.I should have walked away after her duel with Cassian.He didn’t speak of it, but I saw the shake in his hand afterward, the way he avoided the training grounds, the way fire no longer leapt to his fingers without conscious effort.He’d touched something ancient inside her — and it had rattled even him.Riven, of course, was basking in it.He always leaned toward destruction like a wolf toward blood.But me?I leaned toward knowledge.An

The wall still pulsed behind us.Its glow reached the floor in thin, violent arcs. The shadows it cast were not static — they moved, like the Void wasn’t just responding to us.It was watching.Wanting.Claiming.But I didn’t care.Because Riven’s mouth was on mine again, rough and desperate and almost angry with how much we needed this — needed each other.He forced me against the wall by grabbing my hair with one hand and holding my waist firmly with the other as though he believed I would disappear.I didn’t.I pressed into him. Moaned into his mouth.And that’s when it hit me.Not fear. Not pain.Just need.A need that lived deeper than my bones. A want that felt like it had been growing inside me since the day I fell into this world.Since the first time he looked at me like I was fire and he was the only one willing to burn.His body retreated as he gasped for air while his eyes took on an unprecedented darkness.“Last chance,” he rasped. “Tell me to stop.”I shook my head.“Tel