Page 15 of Lucent Academy: Trinity Awakens
The summoning continued, and more gold-rank beings appeared than the principal had predicted, enough that he began to look genuinely excited, his usual stoic expression giving way to something almost like hope. Then Amber's name was called.
She looked at me, her face pale but determined, and I squeezed her hand before letting go.
"Just be yourself," I said. "That's all you can do."
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one about to bare your soul to a bunch of magical strangers."
"My turn will come soon enough."
She laughed, short and nervous, and walked toward the circle. I watched her pick up the dagger, watched her cut her palm with only a slight wince, watched the blood fall onto the stone and the symbols flare with light. She stood there for a moment,gathering herself, and when she spoke her voice was clear and steady and utterly sincere.
"I want a mate who'll understand me," she said simply. "Who'll be passionate about smithing, who'll love the heat of the flame and share my passion for creation. That's all. That's everything."
The circle blazed brighter than it had for anyone else so far, the symbols burning with a light that seemed to reach up toward the sky itself. The air above the altar didn't just shimmer—it caught fire, flames spiraling up into a column that made several nearby students cry out in alarm. I shielded my eyes against the glare, heart pounding, and when the light finally faded and I lowered my hand, I saw what had answered Amber's call.
A phoenix. Not a frost phoenix like Crystalline, but a fire phoenix, massive and magnificent, its feathers blazing with colors that ranged from deep red to brilliant gold. It was easily twenty feet tall, its wings spread wide enough to cast shadows over half the courtyard, and when it opened its beak and screamed the sound was like a forge-fire roaring to life, like metal singing under the hammer, like everything Amber had ever loved given voice and form.
The crowd went absolutely silent. I saw the principal's eyes widen, saw Crystalline clap her hands together with delight, saw students who had been watching with bored indifference suddenly come to full attention. Amber had summoned a phoenix—not just any phoenix, but one that blazed with the fire of creation rather than destruction, whose flames seemed to promise warmth and craft rather than violence and ruin.
Somewhere nearby, I heard a sound that might have been a sob. I didn't have to look to know it was one of Seraphina's friends.
The great bird looked down at Amber, who stood frozen in place with an expression of total shock, and then it began to change. The flames dimmed, the form contracted, and between one heartbeat and the next where the phoenix had stood there was now a man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with hair the color of molten bronze and eyes that flickered with inner fire. His skin was dark, weathered by heat and time, and his hands—his hands were the hands of a craftsman, scarred and calloused and strong.
"I am Pyrrhus," he said, and his voice was like the rumble of a forge, deep and warm and resonant. "Called the Grand Blacksmith of the Phoenix Clans. I have waited three hundred years for someone who would understand me. Someone who would see beauty in fire, art in metal, purpose in creation." He looked at Amber, really looked at her, taking in her rough hands and her simple clothes and her completely overwhelmed expression. "I heard your call, blacksmith's daughter. And I found it... worthy."
He crossed the distance between them and took her hand, raising it to examine her calluses, her burn scars, the evidence of a lifetime spent working with fire and steel. His smile when it came was like sunrise over a mountain range, slow and inevitable and impossibly warm.
"We have much work to do together," he said. "I will teach you things about fire and metal that humans have forgotten. And perhaps you will teach me things in return. Your people are creative in ways that phoenixes sometimes forget to be."
Amber still hadn't spoken. She was staring at Pyrrhus with an expression that suggested her brain had stopped working entirely, overloaded by the impossible reality of what was happening. I couldn't blame her. She had asked for someonewho would stand beside her at the anvil, and she had received one of the greatest smiths in all the Pacted Realms. The bond formed with a flash of light that was almost painful to look at, and Amber finally seemed to remember how to breathe. Pyrrhus offered her his arm with old-fashioned courtesy, and they moved to the edge of the circle together, finding a spot where they could watch the remaining summonings. Amber looked back at me as she went, her expression a mixture of joy and terror, and I gave her a thumbs up that I hoped was reassuring.
After that, two more platinum ranks emerged in quick succession: a boy with a lamia princess whose serpentine lower half coiled gracefully as she regarded her new mate with ancient, knowing eyes, and a girl with a werewolf alpha, massive and powerful, who looked at her with an intensity that made me blush despite not being involved. The crowd was buzzing now, electric with excitement, and I heard the principal murmur something to Crystalline about "unprecedented" and "historical significance."
But I barely registered any of it, because my attention was fixed on the violet-haired figure who had finally stepped away from her solitary position and was moving toward the circle. Only two of us remained now: the crown princess and me.
"I've saved the two most interesting for last," Crystalline giggled, and I felt my stomach drop.
Cleopatra Invicto picked up the dagger without hesitation, cut her palm without flinching, and let her blood fall onto the stone with the casual ease of someone who had done this a thousand times in her mind. The symbols didn't just flare—they blazed, burning with a light so intense that I had to look away, and when she began to speak her voice carried not just through thecourtyard but through the air itself, as though the very world was leaning in to listen.
"My empire has been razed by creatures foul and merciless for a thousand years," she said, and there was something in her tone that went beyond mere words, a resonance that made my bones vibrate in sympathy. "Billions have died. Billions more live in fear, knowing that the Void could swallow their homes, their families, their very existence at any moment. And for a thousand years, we have fought back, and for a thousand years, we have barely held the line." Her voice rose, filled with conviction and grief and terrible purpose. "This is not enough. This will never be enough. I need the power to end this war. To crush the enemy so completely that they will never threaten my people again. Whatever it takes—my body, my soul, my very existence—I will give you everything. You will have all of me, my mate. In return, I ask only this: help me avenge my father. Help me save billions of lives. Help me become the blade that ends this nightmare once and for all." She raised her bloodied hand toward the sky, her eyes blazing with the same light as the symbols beneath her feet. "We have to become one."
The silence that followed was absolute, the kind of silence that exists in the space between lightning and thunder. The circle was blazing so brightly now that it hurt to look at, the symbols writhing and twisting like living things, and I felt the hair on my arms stand up as power gathered in the air around us.
Then the circle trembled.
It was a small movement, barely perceptible, but I saw it—the stone itself shaking beneath the princess's feet, as though something vast and terrible was pressing against the barrier between worlds. The light intensified, became almostunbearable, and then with a sound like reality tearing itself apart, a figure emerged.
Wings. That was the first thing I saw—vast white wings, luminous and terrible, spreading out behind a figure that seemed to be made of light itself. As my eyes adjusted, details emerged: armor of silver and gold, a sword that burned with holy fire, a face of such perfect beauty that it hurt to look at. An angel. Not just any angel, but an archangel—a being of pure divine wrath, the warrior elite of the celestial realms.
Even Crystalline looked surprised, her perpetual smile fading into something more serious. The principal's hand had gone to his chest, and I saw his lips move in what might have been a prayer or a curse.
"I heard your plea, young princess," the archangel said, and his voice was like trumpets and thunder combined, beautiful and terrible and utterly inhuman. "Heaven has long waited for someone like you. Someone whose conviction burns bright enough to pierce the veil between our realms. Someone whose cause is just enough to be worth our attention." He descended slowly, his feet touching the stone without a sound, and knelt before Cleopatra with a grace that seemed impossible for a being in full armor. "My sword is yours, milady. My wings, my fire, my eternal devotion. I am yours, and I will follow you into whatever hell awaits."
The crowd erupted into whispers, gasps, exclamations of disbelief. A diamond-rank archangel—the first to answer a summoning in nearly nine hundred years. It was the stuff of legends, the kind of bond that would be written about in history books and sung about in ballads. Cleopatra Invicto had just proven herself to be everything she claimed to be.
But I saw her face as the bond formed, as the light connected her to her new mate and then faded into the permanent, invisible link that would bind them forever. And what I saw there was not triumph. It was disappointment. It was resignation. It was the expression of someone who had reached for the impossible and grasped something merely extraordinary instead.
"I see," she said quietly, too quietly for anyone but those closest to hear. "So I'm not the fated one after all. Or perhaps you were right, Lucius. Perhaps the Trinity is just a fairy tale."
