2025-05-19 12:55:57
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Season 2-Chp 23
The box sat on the motel table like a question that already knew its answer. Jerome hadn’t touched it since Calder left it there hours ago. He’d just stared at it, watching it sit in the thin line of sunlight slipping between the blinds. Selene stood by the window, arms crossed, tension in her shoulders so taut it looked like it might snap her in two. Margareth had taken up a spot on the end of the bed, silent but alert, like she was bracing herself for something she couldn’t see coming.The fabric wrapping the box was black — not dyed, not woven, but grown, like something once alive had been reshaped into silence. Jerome reached for it slowly. The moment his fingers brushed the surface, the chain beneath his shirt hummed. Not urgently. Not in fear. But in recognition. Like a door creaking open after centuries sealed.He peeled away the cloth.Inside was something folded — not parchment, not leather, but a thin, yellowed sheet, translucent around the edges and strangely cold to the to
Season 2-Chp 22
The silence after the Rite didn’t feel like peace.It felt like breath being held, like time waiting on the edge of its seat. The sky above Elden Reach had softened into ash-gray, but no wind stirred the trees. Jerome sat at the edge of the field where the Watchers had once stood in perfect formation. Now they were gone — not vanished, not retreated, just… finished. Whatever they had come to do, it was done. And Jerome was still alive. Still himself. But that word — himself — felt unstable, like glass that hadn’t finished setting.He hadn’t spoken in over an hour.Margareth sat on a fallen log nearby, arms wrapped around her knees, glancing at him every so often with the kind of look people gave after a car crash — searching his eyes not for pain, but for absence. Because the Jerome she knew had always looked a little lost, a little messy, a little cracked around the edges. The Jerome sitting across from her now didn’t look lost at all.He looked like he knew everything, and that terr
Season 2-Chp 21
There was no sky in the Rite of Silence.No ground, either. No wind. No light. No sound. Just weightless blackness, infinite and thick, pressing in from all sides like a cocoon woven from time and memory. Jerome didn’t remember falling, but now he was floating, or maybe suspended, like something waiting to hatch. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs, but he could feel himself — his thoughts, his heartbeat, the way his name still echoed faintly in the deepest parts of him. Arvail. Jerome. Hashford. Crownless. Every name he had carried, every life he had touched, whispered around him like ghosts.Then the silence broke.Not with sound — but with presence.A shape stepped forward from the dark, carved from the same blackness that filled the space, but brighter somehow. Human-shaped. Familiar.It wore his face.But older. Sharper. Worn down by battle and regret. The eyes were sunken, shadowed. The jaw tighter. The voice, when it came, sounded like his own recorded and played back in reverse.
Season 2-Chp 20
Jerome had stopped dreaming. That was the first sign. Not the absence of sleep, but the absence of story. For days, his nights had been filled with visions—of crowns, fire, past lives whispering through mirrors. But after the cave… there was only blackness. The second sign came when he woke up on the floor beside the motel bathroom, the water still running, his hands soaked and wrinkled. He didn’t remember getting up. He didn’t remember turning the faucet on. When he looked into the mirror, for a split second, his eyes didn’t match.And then the symbols started appearing.Not carved. Not written. Just... there. Reflected in windows, carved in condensation, flickering across motel walls in sunlight for the barest second. Always the same spiral line, bleeding into a forked crown. Each time he saw it, the chain around his neck would pulse — and each time, a sliver of thought would vanish, like memory being bartered for silence.“Are you okay?” Margareth asked one afternoon, stepping into
Season 2-Chp 19
The forest near Elden Reach had gone strangely silent. No birds. No wind. No rustle of leaves or snapping twigs underfoot — only the faint sound of Jerome’s boots sinking into wet soil and Margareth’s breath hitching behind him. Selene walked ahead with practiced steps, cutting through brush like she had memorized the way a long time ago, though her jaw was clenched tighter than usual, and she hadn’t spoken in nearly an hour. The further they walked, the more the trees seemed to bend inward, not maliciously, but almost reverently, like they, too, remembered what had been buried beneath this ground.Jerome kept his hand near the chain tucked inside his shirt, though he didn’t need to touch it to feel it pulsing. It hadn’t dimmed since the ritual. It hadn’t whispered, not exactly — but it was alive, like a second heartbeat vibrating along his spine. Each step toward the cave tightened his chest. It wasn’t fear, not anymore. It was familiarity. Like walking toward a house he once called
Season 2-Chp 18
Jerome woke before sunrise, drenched in sweat, heart hammering in his chest like it was trying to knock itself loose. The word echoed through his skull like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing — not just a sound, but a memory trying to force its way out. “Arvail.” It wasn’t his name. Not the one his mother gave him. Not the one on his ID. But it felt right in a way that terrified him. Like slipping into someone else’s skin and finding it already fit. He sat up slowly, the motel room still half-cast in dawn’s early shadow. Margareth was curled up on the second bed, deep in sleep. Selene was nowhere to be seen.The stone Cassiel had left sat on the table. The chain beside it had dimmed, but not faded. Jerome stared at them both, breath shallow. He hadn’t told them what the Crown said. Not the voice. Not the name. Because it didn’t feel like something he could share without unraveling completely.He dressed in silence, then pulled out the old journal. He hadn’t opened it in hours. Now he f
Season 2-Chp 17
Jerome sat on the floor, breath ragged, his body slick with sweat from the ritual’s aftershock. The chain still pulsed in the center of the circle, glowing with slow, furious light. Margareth crouched beside him, one hand steadying his back. Selene hadn’t moved. She stood a few feet from the door, her eyes locked on the wood as though it might split open on its own.Another knock.Then a voice. Male. Calm. Perfectly measured.“You’ve opened it too far. You can’t close it now.”Jerome stiffened. He looked to Selene, whose expression had gone strangely flat.“Do you know who that is?” he asked.She nodded slowly. “Yes.”“Who?”Her voice was dry. “A Herald.”Margareth narrowed her eyes. “Of what?”Selene glanced at Jerome. “Of the Crown.”No one spoke.Another knock.This time, it was followed by a phrase that slid under the door like smoke:“Let me in, Jerome. We’ve waited long enough.”Jerome stood, unsure how his legs were moving. His mind was still reeling from what he’d seen during
Season 2-Chp 16
He sat upon a blackened throne carved from iron and stone, its edges jagged like broken teeth, its base wrapped in twisted roots that pulsed with red light. Around him, towers crumbled into dust, cities sank beneath rivers of flame, and an army of shadows stood kneeling before him. Their faces were hidden, their mouths sewn shut, but still they whispered his name. The sound came not from their throats, but from the world itself — the wind, the ground, the sky. His name echoed through everything.“Heir.”The Crown was not metal. It was alive.It moved as it rested on his head, shifting like a serpent coiled around his skull, whispering promises not through language, but through sensation — images, impulses, clarity. There was no fear here. No hunger. No weakness. Every wound Jerome had carried — his loneliness, his anger, his resentment toward the world that had forgotten him — it all melted under the weight of that presence. He could see the timeline stretch before him, not in hours o
Season 2-Chp 15
The motel room was dark except for the crack of orange light leaking beneath the curtains. Outside, the wind howled low and steady, brushing leaves against the windows like fingers tapping for permission. The room itself felt smaller than it had yesterday, the air thicker, as if it carried weight that hadn’t been there before. Jerome lay still on the bed, his hands pressed against his chest, the chain resting on bare skin, the mark glowing faintly underneath it. He hadn’t moved for over an hour. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t fully awake either. Something hovered just outside his thoughts, too quiet to be language, too loud to ignore. A pressure behind his eyes, a tug just beneath his ribs, a voice forming in the dark corners of his awareness. Then, without ceremony or sound, it spoke.“You are the silence after the storm.”Jerome blinked.“You are the heir they feared would wake.”The words were smooth, unhurried, spoken not aloud but within
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