Eli came back like he was being dragged through fire.His body arched against the stones, lungs seizing on the first breath, every nerve raw. The scream that tore from his throat was hoarse, broken, but alive.Lena dropped to her knees, hands locking around his shoulders. “Eli! Eli, can you hear me?”His eyes snapped open.They weren’t the same.For a heartbeat, gold bled through his irises, shimmering like molten metal before fading back to their storm-gray.He blinked, dazed. His voice was barely a rasp. “It saw me.”“Who?” Lena asked.“The Eye.The mob screamed.Dozens of students, their faces hollow with reflection, surged toward the fountain where the three of them stood. The storm’s wind lashed harder, as if the tower itself were exhaling.Callum yanked Eli to his feet, nearly dragging him. “Then we move! Now!”Eli staggered, still clutching his bloodied palm. His body felt heavy, like he carried the weight of something vast and ancient inside his chest.The bell tolled again. A

The air inside the tower was suffocating, heavy with dust and heat that pressed against their lungs like a weight. The stone walls curved upward into blackness, the ceiling lost in shadow, and the whispers they had heard from outside seemed louder here, curling around them with no clear source. Each word was half-formed, slipping from one language into another, impossible to hold onto but impossible to ignore.Eli gripped the cube so tightly his knuckles blanched. The spirals across its surface shifted again, forming patterns that rippled like water, alive under his touch. Every step he took seemed to echo, but the echoes weren’t his alone. There were others, matching his pace just slightly behind, just slightly ahead, as if invisible feet walked with them.Lena moved close, her pipe raised though her hands shook with exhaustion. Her eyes darted to every corner of the vast chamber. “This doesn’t feel like a tower. It feels like… like we’re inside something alive.”Callum coughed again

The chapel doors groaned under their own weight as though the Watchers’ voices had followed them inside. Lena shoved a wooden bar across the handles, but even she knew it was nothing more than a gesture. If they wanted in, no piece of wood was going to hold them out.Eli pressed his palms against the cool stone wall, trying to steady his breathing. His lungs felt raw, his heart still beating with the rhythm of the tolls. He swore he could hear them echoing in his skull, far past the point when the bells themselves had gone silent.Callum paced across the aisle, his boots striking sparks of dust from the stone. “You shouldn’t have shown them the Seal. They’ll double their numbers now. Triple. You just told them you can wield it.”“I didn’t have a choice.” Eli’s voice came out hoarse. “It was either that or get carved up in the courtyard.”“You always have a choice,” Callum snapped. His eyes flashed in the candlelight, sharp and gray as storm steel. “Your father knew that. Marcus knew t

The faculty meeting did not end; it fractured.The Dean’s words had settled like a blade across the oak table, cutting alliances in two. Professors who had taught together for decades now avoided each other’s eyes. The storm rattled the windows, thunder shaking the floorboards, as though the Crest itself listened to their silence.Finally, Professor Harrington, the oldest among them, a gaunt man with parchment skin and a voice like gravel leaned forward. “We swore,” he said, his finger trembling on the table’s edge. “We swore never to let it open again.”“And yet here we are,” murmured the man with the gloves. His eyes glittered. “Your oaths are ashes, Harrington. The moment Kingston’s boy set foot in the chapel, the path was unlocked. It was written long before he was born.”The Dean’s jaw clenched. “Do not speak prophecy in this hall. This is a university, not a pulpit.”But the words rang hollow. Everyone knew the Crest had never been just a school.Another voice broke in, a woman

The rain stopped all at once.Not a drizzle fading, not a storm passing. One moment it battered down on the roof and quad in sheets, and the next it was gone. The silence left behind was worse than thunder.Below, the courtyard steamed, smoke rising from the fissures where Eli had hurled the cube. The blackened veins etched across the stones like something alive, pulsing faintly with dying light.The Watchers knelt around it. Every single one. Dozens of cloaked figures, lanterns pressed against the ground, heads bowed low.Students who had braved the storm stood frozen at the edges of the quad, too stunned to move. Some still held up their phones, red recording lights blinking as if technology could protect them. Others clung to one another, whispering prayers that felt too small for what they were witnessing.Eli stood on the roof, every nerve still vibrating from the Eye’s presence. The phantom toll of the Seventh rang inside his bones.Lena pressed a hand to his back. “They’re knee