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Chapter 87
The quad didn’t return to silence.It broke.The whispers swelled into shouts, dozens of voices overlapping, his name darting like sparks across the cobblestones. Some students drew back, fear widening their eyes; others stepped closer as though pulled by a gravity that wasn’t his own. Eli stood frozen at the center, his marked hand burning through his sleeve, the cube pulsing like a second heart against his ribs.Lena tugged at his arm. “We need to move—now.”But it was too late to simply disappear.A boy near the fountain pointed at him, face pale but voice steady. “Did you see? It was him—he didn’t fall when it rang!”Another echoed: “The mark—he carries it!”The circle of eyes pressed tighter. For a moment Eli thought they would surge, drag him down into a frenzy of hands. But then something stranger happened. A girl at the front of the crowd—her uniform blazer soaked from the rain—bowed her head. Not in mockery, but in reverence.Others followed. Not many. But enough.The breath
Chapter 86
The campus had gone quiet in a way that wasn’t natural.Eli felt it the moment he stepped outside his dorm the next morning. The usual murmur of voices, footsteps rushing toward classes, the metallic hum of bikes rolling over the cobblestones—all of it had dulled, like sound itself was being swallowed. Students still moved through the quad, but their eyes slid past him as if he were made of smoke.He pulled his hood lower and kept walking. Lena trailed beside him, scanning every face like she expected someone to spring from the shadows. Her tension was infectious. The silence wasn’t empty—it was watchful.They crossed toward the library, where the rain-streaked windows reflected only their shapes. Eli caught himself searching for movement in the glass, for shadows that weren’t his own. His hand brushed against the pocket where the black cube still sat. Its weight was unnatural, heavier than its size, as though the air itself bent toward it.“You feel it too?” Lena asked under her brea
Chapter 85
The Council’s chambers had not been this full in decades.The torches lining the walls hissed with a strange green flame, casting warped shadows that reached like claws across the curved ceiling. The long stone table at the center groaned beneath the weight of relics dragged from the vault—charred masks, rings that hadn’t been worn in generations, a dagger still crusted with dried blood. They had brought out the past because the present had failed.The Archwarden sat at the head of the table, his mask carved from bone and polished until it gleamed. The grooves of age etched into his hands betrayed how long he had clung to power, but his voice still carried the weight of command.“It was broken tonight,” he said. “The Bell. The Rite. The balance.”A ripple passed through the chamber. Dozens of masked faces turned toward him, each reflecting a different faction, a different family, a different hunger.One of the younger Councilors slammed a fist on the stone. His mask was silver, shaped
Chapter 84
The silence after the bell should have been a relief. Instead, it was worse.The Crest had grown used to its tolls, those deep, bone-rattling chimes that carried through every courtyard, corridor, and dormitory whether one wanted them or not. They had become part of the air, part of the rhythm of the university, so constant that even dread had its own cadence.But when the last toll died away and the silence stretched, people noticed.Students emerging from the dining hall into the storm froze mid-step. Professors paused lectures in the middle of their sentences, chalk hanging over half-finished words. Even the lights in the science wing flickered once, as if the circuits themselves held their breath.Rain continued to fall, but it no longer masked anything. In that sudden stillness, the Crest felt awake in a way it hadn’t in years. Windows shivered with the wind. Doors creaked as if from unseen hands. Every shadow seemed sharper.In the south quad, two freshmen looked up at the bell
Chapter 83
The toll reverberated through the chamber, so loud Eli thought his skull would crack open. He pressed his palms to his ears, but it didn’t matter. The sound wasn’t only outside; it lived in him now, rattling through his ribs, searing into his blood.Lena dropped beside him, both hands clutching his arm, her face twisted in pain. Callum staggered against the stairwell’s wall, his blade still raised though his knuckles had gone bone-white.The hollow figure tugged again at the bell chain. Its movements were jerky, like a puppet forced to dance, but the strength in each pull was enough to set the massive iron weight swinging, moaning. The air thrummed with the resonance, a pressure so heavy Eli could barely breathe.The creature’s face tilted toward them. Its hollow sockets burned—not with light, but with absence, pits so deep they seemed to pull the torchlight into themselves. Its mouth, still cracked wide, vibrated with the echo of the bells, a sick parody of laughter.Eli felt the cub
Chapter 82
The world ended in darkness.Not the ordinary kind. Not the dark of night or of shadows falling across a wall. This was thicker, absolute, as though the air itself had been drained of light and breath. Eli’s vision vanished in an instant, and with it came the screaming of hundreds of voices rising into a single, ragged cry.The bells continued tolling above, distorted, each one shaking the marrow of his bones. The quad had become a pit of chaos: footsteps pounding, bodies colliding, curses and pleas tangled in the air. Hands shoved past him in blind panic. Someone fell near his feet with a sickening crack. He couldn’t see who.“Lena!” Eli shouted, his voice swallowed by the blackness. His chest constricted, every instinct screaming at him to run, but he didn’t know where. His father’s journal. The cube. The Watcher’s mask. Everything spun together, frantic, jagged.A hand clamped onto his arm. “Here!” Lena’s voice, hoarse, raw. He nearly collapsed with relief as her other hand found h
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