Awakening of the Dead

blood

Elior’s footsteps echoed hollow and heavy as he crossed the academy courtyard, eyes flicking nervously between cloaked students whispering behind a veil of dread. The air was thick with unease, not excitement. The routine celebration long gone, replaced by cold suspicion. Where once gifts had been flaunted, now they were feared—and Elior stood at the heart of that fear, a living scar on the academy’s pride.

No heralded magic display awaited him today; instead, a sharp summons cut through the restless murmur like shattered glass, fracturing hope into something brittle and sharp.

“Elior Graves, report immediately to Containment.”

The words fell with brutal finality. A ripple of gasps chased them through the crowd—voices dropping to whispers soaked in horror. A Containment Drill. The academy’s darkest protocol, triggered only when a student’s magic had twisted beyond control, a mark of calamity and exile. The word carried the weight of judgement and the promise of isolation.

His pulse pounded violently against his ribs, a wild drum heralding doom. He obeyed without hesitation, dread knotting tighter with each step. The great hall doors swung shut behind him, locks clicking—a sound that was less security and more sentence, a slam sealing his fate.

Through endless stone corridors steeped in cold shadow, Elior was escorted by wardens clad in enchanted armor that hummed with warding spells. Each step reverberated through the silent halls lined with iron gates and sigils etched in blood-red—a labyrinth built to imprison and suppress the volatile.

Whispers trailed him like wraiths, sharpening with each turn: “He’s unstable.” “A danger.” “The darkness made manifest.” Eyes glanced away, protective charms were crossed hurriedly in clenched fists, as if mere sight could infect.

Classrooms emptied before him, as students fled like startled birds. Some hid their own sigils beneath armbands, others gripped talismans with desperate fingers, their wide eyes echoing ancient fears.

Teachers who once nodded in passing now wore expressions carved from pure dread, their gazes skimming past Elior as if he were already a ghost.

At last, the Containment Chamber loomed—a cavernous room suffused with a dull hum of restrained power. Elior was forced into the center of a glowing ward. Runes ignited beneath his feet, shimmering chains of shimmering light coiling tightly around his limbs, their pressure draining strength like ice sinking into flesh.

“Stabilize his gift,” the lead warden ordered grimly, voice low and severe. “He’s a threat to the academy, and to himself.”

Flames bounding uncertainly along the walls flickered with unease; shadows writhed and recoiled as if sensing the storm within.

Olivia—usually loud, cruel—stood in the secure viewing gallery. Her narrowed eyes held that familiar sneer, but beneath it lurked a raw, trembling fear. Her fingers curled tightly around the railing, knuckles pale.

“No one blames you for the demons,” a teacher whispered bitterly to a colleague nearby. “The boy’s a conduit… a beacon for darkness that none can deny.”

Elior gritted his teeth as the wards pulsed, draining the tempest from his veins. Each breath felt constricted, every nerve ablaze with hunger and pain. The voice inside stirred, a low, dangerous murmur:

They fear you. They will never accept you. Give me the word. Let me show them why.

Tears scorched his cheeks, but he fought back with every shard of will, voice choking out cold defiance.

I will not be a monster.

The chamber’s light flickered wildly, shadows twisting and flickering erratically. Beneath the shimmering bindings, sparks of dark power writhed—unruly, raw, impossible to cage.

Outside, a council convened—the elders, magistrates, and magisters cloaked in robes heavy with ancient sigils. Their voices rose in heated debate, sharp as blades:

“He cannot remain unbound. His magic threatens all.”

“Expulsion risks awakening forces we do not understand.”

“Containment alone is a death sentence waiting to be fulfilled.”

The weight of their verdict pressed down like stone, brittle decisions cracking beneath the strain, Elior’s fate hanging fragile as glass before the storm.

As the night deepened and shadows lengthened into silhouettes of dread, rumors spread like wildfire—whispers of the boy who summoned shadows, whose very presence bent magic into twisted shapes. Tales of black eyes glimpsed in corridors, shadows alive and watching.

Olivia’s following grew, a tempest of silent respect fused with trembling fear. Even those who had once mocked Elior now parted silently, clutching amulets and crossing lips in prayer, afraid to meet the darkness he carried.

Alone in a cell lined with sigils that trembled with power, Elior knelt, the voice inside a cold caress that slithered through the silence:

You are theirs, and not theirs. You are power, and you are cursed. They will never love you—but you will make them kneel.

Thunder cracked above, splitting the bruised moon’s pale light as shadows writhed hungrily between the stones. Elior pressed his forehead against cold stone, heart hammering relentless in his chest, nerves raw, mind a battlefield.

And beneath that fractured sky, Elior whispered back, voice steady as iron:

Then so be it.