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Chapter 125
The tower loomed above them like a black tooth gnawing at the clouds. The glow from the cracked bell pulsed across its face, painting the stone in sickly reds and golds. Every flash revealed fractures spidering through the walls, mortar crumbling as though the tower were rotting from the inside out.Eli’s hand ached where the sigil burned. It pulsed in time with the bell now, every strike rattling his bones. He kept moving anyway, boots splashing through puddles as the rain slicked the path to the base.Lena stayed close to his side, her face pale, eyes hollow from sleeplessness but sharper than ever. She carried the journal tight against her chest as though it alone could shield her. Callum trailed a step behind, silent, his jaw tight, his eyes always scanning the shadows.The quad they crossed looked nothing like the one they’d known. Glassy black spirals etched into the ground stretched farther, eating into the lawns. Every few feet a student stood in the center of one, eyes wide a
Chapter 124
The city below the cliffs of Crest slept uneasily that night.Some swore later they had felt the ground quake at midnight, though the seismographs recorded nothing. Others said the river reversed its current for a moment, carrying dead fish up toward the dam. Dogs howled for hours, and church bells in three different parishes rang without being touched.None of them saw the source.But the Crest did.The university’s heart was no longer hidden. The cracked bell glowed like a wound in the night sky, light bleeding across the clouds. From the streets below, it looked like fire trapped in glass, beautiful and wrong.Inside the walls, chaos reigned.Students ran through the quads in terror, some screaming for help, others screaming without sound. The possessed staggered with white eyes, moving in fits and jerks, their voices no longer their own. The Watchers had hollowed them out and poured themselves in, and though their faces were familiar, their movements were puppeted, wrong angles an
Chapter 123
Silence followed the blast.Not the comforting kind, but the kind that made the air feel hollow, as though sound itself had been erased.Eli lay flat on the roof, chest heaving, his vision nothing but white fire. For a long moment, he wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. The cube’s afterimage burned behind his eyelids, spirals folding in on themselves until his brain felt like it was bleeding.A groan pulled him back. Lena, sprawled only feet away, rolled onto her side, clutching her stomach. Her face was pale, her lips streaked with blood. Yet when her eyes found his, she gave the smallest, weakest smile.“You… stubborn bastard,” she whispered.Eli tried to answer, but his throat was raw, torn from screaming. Only a rasp came out.Movement snapped his head around. Callum staggered upright, his sword still clutched in one hand. The blade glowed faintly, humming like it had drunk some of the light from the cube. His face was a mask of disbelief, not triumph.He didn’t look like a man w
Chapter 122
The seventh toll came at midnight.There was no warning. No whisper, no hum, no shiver in the walls to prepare them. Just silence, deep and absolute, as though the whole Crest was holding its breath. Then the sound broke over them like the world itself had been struck.Eli was thrown from his bed. Lena screamed. The air vibrated so violently the glass in the windows exploded inward. Books cascaded from the shelves. Lights blew out one by one, each burst punctuated by a shower of sparks.The sound wasn’t a bell anymore. It was the earth itself, a colossal heartbeat pounding through the stone. The walls swelled and sank with each pulse. Dust and plaster rained down.Eli couldn’t breathe. His spirals burned so brightly they seared through his shirt, glowing white-gold against his skin. The cube beneath his ribs flared like it was alive, pressing against bone, forcing his lungs to stutter.He wasn’t hearing the toll. He was feeling it in his marrow.And beneath the thunder of it, words em
Chapter 121
The sixth toll came at dawn.It didn’t sound like a bell.It sounded like metal screaming underwater, a low groan that tore across the Crest in waves. Every window shuddered. Books slipped from shelves. Lights flickered and died, leaving the campus smothered in half-light.Eli woke to it like a punch to the chest. The spirals along his arms seared as though they had been branded fresh. He bit back a shout, fingers digging into the sheets, but the sound pressed inside his skull, vibrating bone.Across the room, Lena bolted upright. “No.”Callum was already on his feet, sword in hand. “It’s begun.”The sixth toll didn’t fade. It lingered, a resonance that made the air feel wet, heavy. And underneath, Eli heard whispers. Not words this time—just breath, thousands of voices breathing in unison.The cube pulsed against his ribs like it was answering.By the time they stumbled outside, the Crest was chaos.Students flooded into the quad, some clutching their ears, others screaming. Professo
Chapter 120
The library smelled of ash and burned vellum.By morning, word had already spread. The official report, hastily delivered in clipped lines by Crest’s Public Relations Office, called it a “structural accident” caused by faulty wiring. No mention of fire raining from a Dean’s hands. No mention of Eli Kingston standing in the wreckage, glowing like a living brand.But rumors didn’t care for official reports.By noon, they had taken root in every corridor. In the cafeteria, hushed voices spoke of spirals burned into the floor. In the east courtyard, freshmen whispered that they had seen Eli rise unscathed from smoke like a god of ruin. And in the dorm stairwells, someone had already started scrawling chalk sigils that looked eerily like the ones crawling across his skin.Eli felt their eyes wherever he went.Some students shrank back when he passed. Others leaned forward, curious, hungry for spectacle. More than once, he heard the words whispered under breath—vessel, heir, curse. He’d bee
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