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Chapter 148
The Sixth Toll hit like a hammer blow.It wasn’t just heard—it was felt. The sound rolled through the air and into the stone beneath their feet, deeper than any bell could possibly ring. It traveled through marrow, resonated against nerves, and pressed at the backs of their skulls as if it could pry them open. Eli swore he felt his ribs vibrate, every breath rattling as though the sound itself had lodged inside him.The fissures running across the quad widened with sharp cracks. Jagged lines glowed with molten fire, branching across the ancient flagstones like veins feeding into a heart that had just begun to beat after centuries of silence. The ground lurched, the Crest shifting on foundations no longer steady. Whole slabs tilted, then dropped into the black below. Screams rose as some students disappeared, swallowed whole.Above, the crimson sky bled brighter. The auroras writhed like serpents, twisting into forms that hovered between imagination and nightmare. One moment they looke
Chapter 147
The sky above the Crest did not look like a sky anymore.It was torn open, bleeding red light that twisted and shimmered like a living aurora. Each ripple of that crimson glow pulsed in time with the tolling bells that would not stop, their long, heavy notes rolling across the stone campus. The sound was wrong—slowed, stretched, like something ancient pushing through waterlogged lungs.Every time the bells tolled, the ground shook. The gothic towers leaned, the gargoyles atop them seeming to shiver, and cracks laced through the cobblestones like veins glowing with fire from below.Students fled the dormitories and lecture halls in panicked clusters, some screaming, some silent as statues. Others were not fleeing at all. They were walking—stiff, mechanical, entranced—straight toward the chapel. Their faces were blank, their steps synchronized with the tolls, as if strings pulled them forward.The Watchers were everywhere. Dozens of them, masks gleaming in the unnatural light, blades dr
Chapter 146
The campus looked like a battlefield at dawn.The night had fractured into a chaos of screams, firelight, and the ringing toll of the chapel bell that refused to stop even though no one had touched its rope. Students poured into the quad in their pajamas and coats, their faces ghost-white as they watched fissures split through the cobblestones and then seal again, like the ground itself was breathing. Lights flickered in the dormitories, sparks spraying from shattered lamps. The air smelled of ash and iron.Eli stood at the edge of it all, swaying as Lena braced him with an arm around his waist. His body still burned from whatever had passed through him in the chamber below. His hands shook violently, skin blistered where the cube had left its mark. The cracked thing lay in the dirt near his boots, pulsing faintly like a dying heart. He couldn’t look at it without wanting to vomit.Everywhere he turned, eyes followed him. Some terrified, some furious, some reverent. Whispers rushed th
Chapter 145
Eli had never heard silence like this.The chamber breathed around them, stone pulsing with a rhythm that wasn’t natural, like the walls themselves were veins carrying something alive. The spiral etched into the floor shimmered faintly, each groove glowing as if blood had been poured into them. Lena clung to the railing above the pit, her face pale in the dim glow, while Callum stood with his shoulders squared, gaze locked on Eli.The cube was in Eli’s hand again, vibrating with a heat that seared bone-deep. He could feel the spiral answering it, lines brightening in time with his heartbeat. Something ancient was waking, and it wanted him.“You can’t hold it back,” Callum said, voice steady, though his eyes betrayed the strain. “It’s too far gone. Once the spiral is fed, it doesn’t stop. You think you have a choice, but you don’t. None of us ever did.”Eli’s laugh was harsh, more defiance than humor. “Choice is all I’ve got left.”He closed his fist tighter around the cube. The carvin
Chapter 144
The stairwell narrowed as they went down, each step swallowed by a silence that pressed harder the deeper they descended. The walls sweated with moisture, slick under the faint glow of the lantern Callum carried, and the air grew dense with the scent of stone and something faintly metallic — like blood aged and left to rust.Eli trailed his fingers along the wall, not for guidance but because he couldn’t stop himself. The surface was too warm. It wasn’t stone at all, not entirely. It throbbed faintly, as though he were brushing against the underside of something alive. His stomach turned, but he kept his expression hard.Lena’s voice carried softly in the dark. “It feels like… breathing.”Her words echoed his own unspoken thought. Eli clenched his jaw, refusing to answer. To agree would make it real, and right now, he couldn’t afford reality.Callum’s voice was steadier, though beneath it ran the strain of someone carrying knowledge too long hidden. “These passages aren’t part of the
Chapter 143
The air reeked of smoke and iron.Eli shoved his shoulder against the half-collapsed archway until the stones gave way, spilling them into a deserted hall. Dust billowed thick, coating their throats, choking every breath. Behind them, the courtyard roared with chaos — boots hammering, students screaming, Watchers chanting in their broken monotone as they advanced like a tide.Lena staggered against the wall, coughing hard. “They’re everywhere. Every corridor, every stairwell — it’s like they’ve been waiting for this.”“They were,” Callum growled. His uniform was torn, blood seeping from a cut along his temple, but his eyes burned. “The council’s been preparing for the Rite’s collapse. We just gave them the excuse to unleash everything they’ve been hiding.”Eli’s jaw tightened. His ears still rang with Veyron’s accusation, his name spat across the ruins like poison. The students’ eyes flashing toward him — some filled with hatred, others with fear — haunted him worse than the collapsin
