“Get in.”Elias stared at the car. Black. Long. Too clean for the cracked parking lot it sat in. The windows were tinted so dark they reflected his own face back at him, pale, uncertain, furious.“I’m not getting into a stranger’s car,” Elias said.Victor didn’t sigh. Didn’t argue. He simply opened the rear door. Inside, the interior light revealed leather seats, a small glass screen embedded between them, and a faint symbol etched into the door, the same one on the card.“You already confronted your girlfriend in public,” Victor said calmly. “Argued with a man who could have broken your jaw. And trusted a hallway full of strangers to witness it.” His eyes flicked to Elias. “But this is where you draw the line?”Elias hesitated. That annoyed him more than Victor’s logic. “You said my life was a lie,” Elias said. “Explain. Here. Now.”Victor tilted his head. “Very well.”He gestured to the open door. “Sit.”Elias clenched his jaw and slid inside. The door closed without a sound.The car

“No.”Victor said it quietly, but the word carried weight. Julian Crest stepped through the smoke like he owned it, hands in his pockets, jacket pristine despite the explosion behind him.Two figures flanked him, both tall, both wrong. Their eyes reflected the light too sharply. Not human. Not entirely. Elias felt it then. Pressure.Like the air itself was leaning in to listen. “You look disappointed,” Julian said, voice light. “That hurts, Victor. I thought we were friends.”Victor moved Elias behind him. “You’re not allowed here.”Julian laughed. “And yet… here I am.”The man at the Ledger desk stood. “State your authority.”Julian snapped his fingers. One of the figures beside him stepped forward and tossed something onto the floor. A ring.Black metal. The same symbol burned into it as the one on Victor’s card, twisted, inverted. Victor went still.Elias felt the shift immediately. The murmurs. The fear. “That symbol,” Elias whispered. “What is it?”Victor didn’t answer. Julian di

“Run.” Elias froze The word didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. It slid straight into his chest like it belonged there. Victor moved instantly. “Lights!” Nothing happened.The chamber remained pitch black, the sigils dead, the air thick and humming like a held breath. “That voice,” Elias whispered. “I know it.”Seraphine’s tone sharpened. “Impossible.”“I heard it every night,” Elias said, heart hammering. “After she died. In my dreams.”A soft laugh answered him. “You always did listen better when you were afraid.”Elias’s knees went weak.“Mom?” he breathed.“Don’t say that name,” Victor snapped. “Whoever you are”Lights flared violently. The chamber exploded into visibility. she stood at the far end of the room. Not a ghost. Not a memory. Alive. Older. Sharper.Her hair streaked with silver, her eyes burning with the same familiar warmth Elias remembered and something else layered beneath it. Calculation. Resolve. His mother “Elias,” she said softly. The world tilted.Victor staggered ba

Elias didn’t scream. Not because he wasn’t afraid but because the fall never became one. Darkness rushed up around him, cold and vast, yet instead of plummeting, the air thickened. Slowed him.Cradled him like reluctant hands. Of course, he thought bitterly. Even gravity wants something from me. He landed on stone. Not hard. Not soft.Final. The sound echoed one sharp crack then silence swallowed it whole. Elias lay still, chest heaving. No pain. No alarms. No Victor shouting his name. Just dark. “Get up.”The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Elias groaned. “If you’re here to kill me take a number.”A low chuckle rippled through the space. “You still think death is the punishment.”Elias pushed himself onto his elbows. The darkness shifted, retreating just enough to reveal a vast chamber carved from black stone.No symbols. No lights. No sigils humming with borrowed power.Just emptiness. And a throne. Old. Cracked. Carved directly from the stone at the far end of the

“Elias ,STOP!” Victor’s shout tore through the chamber. Too late.The door answered Elias’s touch like it had been waiting centuries for permission. Stone didn’t swing open. It unlearned itself.A seam of light split the door from top to bottom not bright, not dark, but wrong. Like reality misremembering its own shape.The chamber groaned. Seraphine shouted, “That’s not energyget back!”Elias couldn’t. His hand was fused to the door, blood-mark blazing, veins lit with the same impossible glow. “I didn’t open it,” Elias gasped. “It opened me.”Council Prime staggered back. “Seal it. NOW.” Julian laughed softly. “You can’t.” Council Prime snapped, “You said this wouldn’t happen.”Julian tilted his head. “I said it might not.” Victor grabbed Elias’s shoulder. “Let go!”Elias cried out as something pulled from inside him not strength, not power memory. The seam widened. A voice poured through. Not Elias’s mother. Something older.“Ah,” the voice murmured. “At last. A child who hears wi