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Chapter 91
The first time Eli noticed the professors choosing sides, it was in a seminar.The room smelled of chalk and damp wool, the kind of heavy air that clung to the old wings of the Crest. Professor Harland, a thin man with sharp spectacles, spoke in clipped tones about the founding of the university. But his eyes weren’t on the lesson. They were on Eli.Every question turned toward him.“What would your family have thought of the First Rite, Mr. Kingston?”“Do you believe bloodlines carry destiny, or defy it?”By the fourth question, the rest of the class wasn’t listening to Harland anymore—they were watching Eli, waiting for him to crack.Eli kept his answers short, cold. “Destiny isn’t blood. It’s choice.”The words earned him a ripple of mutters. A few nods. But Harland’s lips curved like he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.Later that day, in his literature course, the tone was the opposite. Professor Ingram, old and hunched, paused halfway through her lecture, her voice trembling. “We
Chapter 90
The Crest had always thrived on rumor. Whispers were as much its lifeblood as the textbooks and lectures, coursing through its hidden corridors and echoing up through its spires. But in the days following Eli’s defiance of the Council, rumor turned into frenzy.The first shift was subtle. Students began clustering in smaller groups than usual, choosing corners instead of open spaces, their voices hushed even when no one else was around. Then came the looks—longer, sharper. Some avoided his gaze entirely, others sought it out deliberately, as if measuring themselves against him. By the end of the week, the Crest wasn’t one community anymore. It was fractured.Eli could feel it in the cafeteria, in the library, even in the walkways between classes. On one side, whispers of support: He stood against them. He didn’t take the Oath. He’s not like the rest of them. On the other, murmurs edged with fear: He’s marked. The Tolls are his fault. The Eye follows him.One morning, Lena slid a folde
Chapter 89
The air outside the Council chamber clung to Eli like smoke, heavy and suffocating even as he and Lena pushed back into the familiar corridors of the Crest. He wanted to shake it off, to leave that obsidian table and its vultures of cloaked figures buried underground, but their eyes still burned on the back of his neck.He walked fast, Lena at his side, the echo of their footsteps filling the hollow stairwell. For the first time in hours, he let himself breathe, but it wasn’t relief—just anger simmering beneath the surface.“What happened in there?” Lena asked again, sharper this time.Eli didn’t answer right away. He could still feel the Knife of Oaths humming in his skull, the way the Council had leaned toward him like wolves scenting blood. He clenched his fists until his knuckles popped.“They wanted me to bind myself to them,” he said finally, his voice flat. “To swear on their cursed blade.”Lena’s eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t?”“Of course not.”They reached the base of the st
Chapter 88
The chamber felt older than stone itself. Every wall sweated with damp, the ceiling disappearing into darkness high above where faint echoes returned distorted, like voices twisted out of shape. The torches lining the curved wall flickered low, each flame guttering as though it too feared the Council.Eli’s seat was at the end of the long, obsidian table. He hadn’t been asked to sit, he'd been forced into it, with a quiet pressure in the air that bent his legs before his pride could resist. Now he sat with his back straight, heart hammering, eyes fixed forward as a dozen cloaked figures studied him in silence.His father had once sat here. He could feel it in the chair, in the weight of the table. Marcus Holloway had sat here, too. And all of them had either been broken, or buried, or erased.The first voice to break the silence was a woman’s, soft and honeyed. Her hair shone like silver thread in the dim light, her face carved sharp as a blade. “He has his father’s eyes,” she said, l
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
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