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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
Chapter 119
The library had become a battlefield.Light and shadow warred across the vaulted ceiling, tearing through the stained-glass windows, raining fractured colors onto splintered wood and scattered books. Professors huddled behind upturned tables, some whispering prayers, others frozen in terror. Pages spun through the air like broken wings, caught in a wind that came from nowhere.At the center of it all stood Dean Ashcroft, his hands burning with gold fire, and Professor Greaves, her staff rooted in the floor like an anchor against the storm.And then Eli stepped forward.The spirals on his skin blazed through his shirt, crawling across his chest, his throat, his arms like molten brands. The cube’s pulse surged with his heartbeat, each thrum sending vibrations through the stone floor, rattling shelves. The whispers that had haunted him for weeks grew louder, no longer confined to his skull. Everyone heard them now. The words coiled in the air, a chorus of many voices speaking through one
Chapter 118
By morning, the Crest was no longer itself.The fog had settled across the lawns like a living thing, clinging to stone paths, sliding in through windows, curling beneath doors. Students whispered that they could hear voices in it—snatches of Latin, prayers half-remembered, or their own names called in tones so familiar they almost obeyed.In the dining hall, food turned to ash in their mouths. In the library, books bled ink across the pages, as if the words themselves were fleeing. Lamps guttered even when the air was still, shadows moving independently of their casters.No one spoke of the chapel. No one admitted remembering the ritual. But those who had been there were marked. Their eyes caught the light strangely, their reflections wavered, and some twitched at invisible strings when the wind shifted.The Crest was breaking. And everyone felt it.Eli, Lena, and Callum sat in silence at the far corner of the library’s upper floor, the cube hidden under Eli’s jacket. Sleep had been
Chapter 117
The silence was heavier than the chanting had been.Bodies lay scattered across the chapel floor, students sprawled in twisted heaps, their uniforms torn, their lips still trembling faintly as if mouthing words in their sleep. The candles guttered one by one, thin lines of smoke curling into the rafters. Only the sigil carved into the dais still glowed faintly, pulsing in time with a heart that didn’t belong to anyone in the room.Eli stood among them, breath ragged, the cube still hot in his palm. Lena crouched beside a girl whose eyelids fluttered like she was trapped in a nightmare. Callum paced the aisle, blade still bared, every step sharp and restless.“They’ll wake,” Callum muttered, his voice carrying in the echoing chamber. “But not the same.”Lena shot him a look. “Meaning what?”“Meaning they’re marked now,” he said, not stopping his pacing. “You don’t survive that kind of channeling untouched. They’ll carry it. In their bones, in their blood. The Watcher doesn’t waste its
Chapter 116
The chanting swelled again, louder than before, shaking dust from the rafters. The glow from the pit writhed upward like a living thing, twisting into shapes that dissolved before Eli could fully register them. Eyes blinked in the light, mouths opened soundlessly, limbs extended and melted back into the column.The Watcher on the dais spread its arms wider. The broken mask glared with unnatural light, and the chant shifted from Eli’s name to a single phrase repeated over and over, syllables warped with power:“Lux cadit. Lux cadit.”The light falls.The words reverberated in Eli’s chest, syncing with the burn of the spirals beneath his skin. He couldn’t move away. Every time Lena tugged at his arm, his body resisted, drawn forward instead. He took one step toward the pit, then another, as if pulled by invisible chains.Lena yanked harder. “Eli, fight it!”But the glow deepened, and the column of gold and shadow bent toward him, lowering like a serpent ready to strike. A tendril of lig
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