The hum wasn’t just in the air anymore, it was inside Eli’s bones, vibrating in his teeth, his skull, the space behind his eyes.The thing rising from the serpent’s eye no longer even pretended to resemble something human. It was all shifting edges and spirals now, teeth turning to eyes, eyes turning to hands, skin bending in on itself. Looking at it too long made the chamber tilt like a sinking ship.Lena’s scream jolted him back. The tendril around her ankle was dragging her faster, leaving streaks of frost across the altar’s surface.“Let go!” she shouted at him, kicking hard.“I’m not—” Eli gritted his teeth, bracing his boots against the floor, “—letting you go!”The tendril tightened, and Lena’s face twisted in pain.“Eli!” Callum’s voice cracked across the chamber. “You know what it wants!”“I’m not giving it anything!” Eli snapped.The cube on the altar pulsed again, each flash of light in perfect time with the creature’s spirals. Blood for oath. Oath for blood. The words were

The air in the service corridor felt wrong.It wasn’t just the damp chill creeping up from the stone, it was the way sound seemed dulled, like the corridor had been lined with heavy cloth. Their footsteps landed softly, unnaturally.Lena kept glancing over her shoulder, even though the Watcher’s door was long gone.“You hear that?” she whispered.Eli stopped.At first, he heard nothing, then a faint, wet scraping, like something dragging across the floor somewhere far behind them.“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s move.”---The corridor ended in a narrow stairwell that rose steeply to a plain wooden hatch. When Eli pushed it open, warm light flooded down.They emerged in an unused classroom on the far side of Crest Hall. Dust coated the desks, and the blackboard was still marked with faint chalk equations.Lena closed the hatch and leaned against it, catching her breath. “We’re back.”Eli didn’t answer.The silence of the corridor below was replaced by a different silence—one that felt almost…

The cube was still warm under Callum’s hand.He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just stared at the shifting serpent’s eye until the air around them seemed to thicken.Then the black Ledger on the table shivered.It wasn’t a trick of the light, its spine actually flexed, the leather rippling like something alive beneath it. The cover tilted, and the pages began to turn on their own, faster than any wind could manage, fluttering in a blur until they slammed open near the very front.The smell hit first like iron and salt, sharp and fresh.Blood.Letters began to scrawl across the yellowed parchment. They weren’t written in ink, but in a deep red that glistened wetly. Each letter formed with deliberate precision, the strokes sinking into the page as though the book was drinking from some invisible vein.Eli’s name appeared first: Eli Kingston.He felt it before he saw it—a pull low in his gut, a faint throb in his fingertips like the Ledger had reached out and pinched a nerve.Lena stepped

The air above Crest University had gone still, as if the entire world was holding its breath.Then, at the stroke of midnight, the seventh toll rolled out from the clock tower.It didn’t sound like a bell anymore. It was lower, deeper, like stone splitting apart. The sound pressed against the ribs of every living thing on campus. Windows rattled. Books tumbled from shelves. A flock of crows burst from the chapel spire, scattering into the black sky as if fleeing something only they could see.And then—silence.Eli braced himself against the tunnel wall, heart hammering. Lena was crouched beside him, one hand pressed over her ear, the other gripping his arm.“Tell me,” she whispered, “that was the last one.”Caelan shook his head slowly. “No. That was the one that opens the door.”The words sank into Eli like a stone.The cube in his hand was blazing hot now, so hot he almost dropped it. The spirals along its sides weren’t just shifting anymore, they were spinning, faster and faster, l

The ninth toll rolled over Crest University like thunder cracking the sky in half.It wasn’t a sound so much as a rupture—a wave of force that made the stone arches groan and the stained glass in the chapel explode outward in a hail of jeweled shards. The night itself seemed to ripple, shadows bending and trembling under its weight.Eli’s lungs seized. His knees buckled against the library’s polished stone floor, and still the sound pressed down, heavier and heavier, until he thought his ribs would snap.Lena’s scream barely cut through the noise. She was hunched by the window, arms wrapped around her head, eyes wide with terror. Caelan stood rigid, bracing himself like a soldier under fire.And outside, the quad writhed with chaos.The Collector loomed taller than before, its spiral face blazing molten gold. But now it wasn’t alone.All across the campus sky, more spirals ignited—dozens, maybe hundreds, hanging like alien suns, each glowing with a different hue. They pulsed in rhythm