2025-08-18 17:10:53
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Chapter 66
The chapel doors groaned under their own weight as though the Watchers’ voices had followed them inside. Lena shoved a wooden bar across the handles, but even she knew it was nothing more than a gesture. If they wanted in, no piece of wood was going to hold them out.Eli pressed his palms against the cool stone wall, trying to steady his breathing. His lungs felt raw, his heart still beating with the rhythm of the tolls. He swore he could hear them echoing in his skull, far past the point when the bells themselves had gone silent.Callum paced across the aisle, his boots striking sparks of dust from the stone. “You shouldn’t have shown them the Seal. They’ll double their numbers now. Triple. You just told them you can wield it.”“I didn’t have a choice.” Eli’s voice came out hoarse. “It was either that or get carved up in the courtyard.”“You always have a choice,” Callum snapped. His eyes flashed in the candlelight, sharp and gray as storm steel. “Your father knew that. Marcus knew t
Chapter 65
The Dome’s collapse had not only been heard—it had been felt. The sound rolled across the Crest like a landslide, a note too deep for the ear alone. Windows rattled. The lamps flickered and dimmed. For a moment, the whole university seemed to bend under some invisible pressure, as though the old stone spires and towers had bowed their heads toward the ruin.When the dust cleared and the echoes died, Eli saw the courtyard outside the Dome swarming with shadows. They were not students, not faculty. They were too still, too deliberate. Robes swallowed their bodies, hoods concealing their faces. And every single one of them wore the ring.The Watchers had come.Eli felt Lena stiffen at his side. Callum, on his other, stood taut as a wire, his storm-gray eyes narrowing as the figures began to circle. They moved with the patience of predators, as though there was nowhere Eli could run, no wall high enough to shield him.One of them stepped forward. Tall, broad-shouldered, his voice carried
Chapter 64: The Tower
The air inside the tower was suffocating, heavy with dust and heat that pressed against their lungs like a weight. The stone walls curved upward into blackness, the ceiling lost in shadow, and the whispers they had heard from outside seemed louder here, curling around them with no clear source. Each word was half-formed, slipping from one language into another, impossible to hold onto but impossible to ignore.Eli gripped the cube so tightly his knuckles blanched. The spirals across its surface shifted again, forming patterns that rippled like water, alive under his touch. Every step he took seemed to echo, but the echoes weren’t his alone. There were others, matching his pace just slightly behind, just slightly ahead, as if invisible feet walked with them.Lena moved close, her pipe raised though her hands shook with exhaustion. Her eyes darted to every corner of the vast chamber. “This doesn’t feel like a tower. It feels like… like we’re inside something alive.”Callum coughed again
Chapter 63: The Broken Mask
The rain came harder, a relentless curtain turning the quad into a battlefield of shadows and mud. The mob froze for only a breath before erupting forward in unison, dozens of bodies lunging at once, their movements jagged and unnatural, driven by something beyond their control.Lena’s scream cut through the storm. “Run!”Eli didn’t move. His gaze locked on the figure standing at the base of the tower steps. The Watcher’s porcelain mask was shattered down the middle, fragments hanging loose like brittle teeth, rain streaking through the cracks to reveal nothing but golden light beneath. Each socket burned faintly, pulsing brighter as its head tilted toward him.“He called you the Key,” Lena had whispered hours ago in the tunnel. Now the truth of it bore down on him like a blade.The Watcher raised one broken hand. Its voice wasn’t sound but a force that rippled through the storm, rattling Eli’s bones, pressing down on his skull.“The Key must turn.”Eli raised his bleeding hand, the s
Chapter 62: Ash and Awakening
Eli came back like he was being dragged through fire.His body arched against the stones, lungs seizing on the first breath, every nerve raw. The scream that tore from his throat was hoarse, broken, but alive.Lena dropped to her knees, hands locking around his shoulders. “Eli! Eli, can you hear me?”His eyes snapped open.They weren’t the same.For a heartbeat, gold bled through his irises, shimmering like molten metal before fading back to their storm-gray.He blinked, dazed. His voice was barely a rasp. “It saw me.”“Who?” Lena asked.“The Eye.The mob screamed.Dozens of students, their faces hollow with reflection, surged toward the fountain where the three of them stood. The storm’s wind lashed harder, as if the tower itself were exhaling.Callum yanked Eli to his feet, nearly dragging him. “Then we move! Now!”Eli staggered, still clutching his bloodied palm. His body felt heavy, like he carried the weight of something vast and ancient inside his chest.The bell tolled again. A
Chapter 61: Into the Eye
Eli’s first thought was that he’d drowned.The world around him was weightless, suspended. No air in his lungs, no ground beneath his feet. He floated in an endless ocean of gold light, every ripple shaped like the iris of an eye.When he tried to breathe, the light entered him, burning cold, settling deep.“Elias…”The voice was everywhere and nowhere, male and female, ancient and childlike. It rattled his bones without sound.Eli spun, searching for a source, but there was nothing. Just infinite gold.And then shadows.Shapes bled through the light, forming silhouettes that towered above him. They weren’t Watchers, not exactly, but elongated, faceless things with too many arms, their spines bent into curves that mimicked the serpent’s circle.They leaned down together.> “You are marked.”Eli’s instinct was defiance. “I didn’t ask for this.”The figures’ heads tilted in eerie unison.> “The blood chooses. Not you.”He held up his palm, where the sigil blazed white-hot. “Then un-choo
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