2025-07-09 18:17:31Kai opened his eyes to darkness.
Not the kind that came with night or shadows. This was weight. This was a silence that pressed against the skull, dense, suffocating. The kind of dark that breathed.
He sat up slowly, his muscles aching. His mouth tasted like ash and metal. No sign of the candlelit chamber. No sign of Seria. Just cold stone beneath him and a strange pulse in the air, steady like a heartbeat.
He wasn’t alone.
“Kai,” came the voice. Smooth. Too smooth. Familiar. Wrong.
He stood. “Who’s there?”
A faint light glowed behind him. He turned and the voice was suddenly behind him again.
“You saved her. Now who will save you?”
He lunged toward the sound but a hand shot out of the black and grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t solid. It felt like fog and ice and bone all at once.
Then
“Enough,” barked a voice. Rough. Grounded. Real.
The darkness peeled away like smoke blown from a flame. Kai blinked as shapes formed. Bookshelves. Braziers. Carved runes.
Riven.
The old man stood before him, a crystal blade in hand, its edge humming with soft violet energy. Behind him, Seria leaned on a wall, her expression pale but steady. Her hair still shimmered faintly with golden-red strands. Her presence lit the chamber in a way Kai couldn’t explain.
He stumbled forward. “What happened? Where ”
“The chamber collapsed after your little stunt,” Riven said gruffly. “We pulled you out.”
“You… you saw that?”
Seria nodded. “I felt the curse snap. And something else wake up. Inside me.”
Kai pressed a hand to his chest. The Voidmark pulsed under his skin, hot and cold at the same time.
“You saved me,” she added, quietly. “You shouldn’t have been able to. Not with what that magic costs.”
Kai’s voice was hoarse. “It wasn’t a choice.”
Silence settled.
Then Riven stepped forward and tossed something at his feet.
The coin.
It looked the same. Old. Ash-colored. Harmless.
But the air around it quivered.
“You were never meant to survive touching that,” Riven said. “And yet you did. Worse you awoke it.”
Kai stared at him. “You know what it is.”
“I do. And now you’re going to learn.”
They returned to Riven’s private sanctum deep beneath the academy. Layers of wards protected it from the Heralds, from the Council, from the gods themselves.
Kai leaned forward as Riven set down a scroll written in symbols that shimmered when light touched them.
“You asked what you are,” Riven said. “But the better question is what your mother became.”
Kai tensed. “She died. When I was seven.”
Riven didn’t blink. “No. She vanished.”
He unrolled the scroll.
“Your mother entered the Veil Realm. A place between life and death. Not heaven. Not hell. A prison. A wound in reality, torn open to trap something we couldn’t destroy.”
Seria stepped closer. “Varnyx.”
Riven nodded. “The god of chaos. The first and final curse. Long ago, he tried to burn the world to remake it in his image. The High Council sealed him in the Veil with thirteen locks. Your mother held the final one. The strongest.”
Kai’s mind reeled. “But why her? She was a swordswoman. Not a mage. Not even ”
“She was the Voidbearer. Born with the rarest affinity in a thousand lifetimes. The only one who could carry the coin the key and not lose her soul.”
He pointed to the mark on Kai’s chest.
“You inherited more than her blood, boy. You inherited the bond.”
The room spun slightly.
“She left the coin for you,” Seria whispered. “She knew this day would come.”
Riven drew a long breath. “The coin can either open the gate or destroy it forever. But the choice cannot be made from this side.”
Kai looked up.
“You’re saying we have to go into the Veil.”
The gate to the Veil was buried in the Black Forest, behind wards even the Council had forgotten. It pulsed like an open wound in the air, invisible unless you looked wrong.
Riven drew a blade through the space.
The world folded inward.
And then they fell.
The Veil was not what Kai expected.
It wasn’t fiery or cold. It was empty.
They landed on a flat plain of cracked white stone stretching endlessly in every direction. Above them, a sky of moving shadows pulsed with no stars.
No wind. No sound.
And no life.
Except for the things watching.
They came as flickers. As shifting silhouettes on the edges of the world. Eyes. Teeth. Shapes that did not belong.
Kai moved forward, coin in hand. The mark on his chest glowed brighter the deeper he went.
Until he saw her.
Kneeling by a pool of black glass, arms limp at her sides, hair cascading over her shoulder like night.
His mother.
Kai’s breath hitched.
He ran.
“Mother!”
She didn’t move.
He dropped to his knees beside her, heart racing. “It’s me. It’s Kai. Your son ”
Her eyes opened.
They were gray. Hollow. Lost.
She looked at him like a stranger.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Do I know you?”
Before Kai can respond, the shadows surge behind him and a massive claw crashes into the glass pool, dragging itself into the light. A voice booms:
“The key returns. And so begins the unsealing.”
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010
Kai opened his eyes to darkness.Not the kind that came with night or shadows. This was weight. This was a silence that pressed against the skull, dense, suffocating. The kind of dark that breathed.He sat up slowly, his muscles aching. His mouth tasted like ash and metal. No sign of the candlelit chamber. No sign of Seria. Just cold stone beneath him and a strange pulse in the air, steady like a heartbeat.He wasn’t alone.“Kai,” came the voice. Smooth. Too smooth. Familiar. Wrong.He stood. “Who’s there?”A faint light glowed behind him. He turned and the voice was suddenly behind him again.“You saved her. Now who will save you?”He lunged toward the sound but a hand shot out of the black and grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t solid. It felt like fog and ice and bone all at once.Then “Enough,” barked a voice. Rough. Grounded. Real.The darkness peeled away like smoke blown from a flame. Kai blinked as shapes formed. Bookshelves. Braziers. Carved runes.Riven.The old man stood before h
009
Kai burst into Seria’s room, chest heaving, fingers curled tight around the warning note.Empty.No sign of a struggle. No blood. No overturned furniture.Just stillness.And a glowing glyph on the floor , soft, silver, pulsing like a held breath.“Seria?” he whispered.No answer.He crouched slowly, fingers hovering over the strange rune. It thrummed, a faint buzz rising into his bones. The second his skin touched it,FLASH.The room disappeared.He blinked.Now standing inside a circular chamber lit by floating candles, he spun around. Shelves lined with old books and glass vials stretched toward the domed ceiling. Shadows curled along the edges, curling like smoke.And then,Footsteps.She stepped out from behind a bookshelf.Seria.Alive.But her face was wrong. Pale. Ashen. Her lips trembled, and her eyes,red, wet, hollow.“Kai…” Her voice cracked. “You came.”His breath caught. “You’re safe…”Relief hit him,sharp, fast,but it didn’t last.She wasn’t looking at him.Not directly.
008
The tunnel collapsed behind them in a roar of stone and fire.Kai and Seria were flung into the forest clearing, landing hard as a shockwave rippled through the trees. Leaves scattered into the air like birds taking flight, and dirt rained from the sky.Kai choked, coughing violently as the air turned to ash in his lungs. “Seria… you okay?”Seria nodded, shaky and pale. “That… that wasn’t just magic. That thing… it wore your face, Kai.”He didn’t answer.His eyes stayed fixed on his trembling hands,fingers curled, knuckles white, veins faintly pulsing.Not from fear.From something deeper. Rage. Shame. Power.He’d felt the pull again. Deep in the ruins,when the shadow whispered, when the air turned black. It had called to him. Tempted him.And he’d run.Just like his mother had all those years ago.“I could’ve stopped it,” he muttered.“No,” Seria said gently. “You chose not to lose yourself.”He turned away.But the worst part wasn’t the shadow.It was what it meant: Jin knew. Faen k
007
Another student was missing.Kai sat on the academy rooftop, legs dangling over the edge as dusk swallowed the horizon. His eyes weren’t on the sky though they were fixed on the darkened window of Dorm 5C. Malric’s window. The curtains hadn’t moved in two days.“Transferred,” the headmaster said this morning.Same word. Same lie.“Transferred to Obsidian Campus for advanced elemental studies,” they said with those fake smiles, like they’d rehearsed it. Like anyone ever came back from Obsidian.Kai chewed the inside of his cheek.That made four students now.Four gone without goodbyes, without luggage, without even a pulse in the rumor mill.And no one was talking about it.Except Seria.“Did you find anything?” she asked softly behind him. She was always soft-spoken, but lately, her voice sounded thinner stretched, like a thread pulled too tight.Kai shook his head. “No bags. No packed uniforms. Just a bloodstain near Malric’s sparring locker. It was half-scrubbed, like someone tried
006
The silence in the Council chamber was so sharp it could’ve carved through bone.Kai stood at the center of the obsidian circle, the weight of every stare pinning him down like iron chains. Twelve crimson-robed mystics loomed above him, each seated on thrones sculpted from jagged black stone. Some wore literal masks,iron, bone, glass. Others wore expressions far worse.No warmth.No welcome.Just scrutiny.The air felt thin. Too thin. His lungs fought for breath.“Explain,” Councilor Dareth growled. His voice scraped like gravel in a blade sharpener. “You shattered a Class-Five training chamber. No enchantments. No runes. No focus seals. What, precisely, did you invoke?”Kai’s throat worked, but the words tangled.“I didn’t…” he started, then stopped.What was the point of lying?He forced himself to meet their eyes. “I don’t know.”Councilor Mireya leaned forward, emerald irises glowing like cold flame. “You don’t know? Are we to believe you stumbled into a destabilization wave capab
005
Kai hadn’t slept.Not after the shadow. Not after the voice.He lay awake for hours, hand pressed to his chest where the mark still pulsed like a second heartbeat,steady, quiet, ominous. By the time the first rays of dawn kissed the eastern spires of Blacksteel, he was already out of bed, boots crunching against gravel as he stormed across the Academy grounds.This time, he didn’t knock.He shoved open the wooden doors of the sealed wing.“Riven!” His voice echoed through the stone corridor like a crack of thunder. “You said the lock is cracking? Then tell me what’s inside it!”The blind man didn’t flinch. He was already sitting cross-legged, as if he’d been waiting all night.“It has begun,” Riven said calmly.Kai’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t give me riddles. A shadow came into my room last night. It spoke. It knew my name. You said I’m a vessel,for what, exactly?!”Riven turned his head slowly. Though his eyes were milk-white, they locked onto Kai like they could see straight t
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