<b>Chapter </b><b>183 </b>


    “Nathaniel‘


    69%


    20)


    There are things you can unsee, and then there are things that bury themselves behind your eyes and stay there. The image of the dying rogue hadn’t faded, not even hourster. His voice, thin and torn, still echoed in my skull: The Hollow are listening. They heard the child stir.


    It was thatst word–stir–that followed me like a second shadow. I kept reying the way his fingers gripped that bone relic like it was thest anchor to something sacred or damning. He hadn’t even looked afraid. Just… awestruck. Like he’d seen something greater than death waiting for him on the other side.


    Now, the relicy wrapped in thick ck cloth, pulsing faintly with a dull, bone–deep hum. It didn’t glow. Not visibly. But I could feel it every time’1 shifted my grip, a heatless vibration pressing against my skin through theyers. Bastain had agreed to meet me in the observatory chamber, away from the others, behind stone walls lined with old sigils that hadn’t fully broken during the siege. It felt fitting–thest untouched ce for thest untouched questions.


    When I entered, he was already lighting thenterns.


    “You brought it,” he said without turning.


    “I had to.”


    He motioned to the central table. I unwrapped the cloth slowly, revealing the smooth white surface beneath. The relic was about the length of my forearm, curved slightly, carved with runes so faint they almost looked worn off by time. But as soon as the cloth was removed, the temperature of the room dropped.


    Bastain approached cautiously. “Do you feel that?”


    “Like the air’s folding in on itself.”


    He nodded. “It predates the Gate.”


    I looked at him. “How can you be sure?”


    “Because I’ve seen one before. Once. In a dream Serina shared with me when I first joined the Council. She called them Keys. There are only three. One was sealed into the foundation of the Gate. One was lost to the Hollow. And thest… was never found.”


    “Until now.”


    He reached into his robe and pulled out an old scroll, the edges crumbling with age. Heid it beside the relic and rolled it open. There–etched in the faded ink–was the exact same curve. The runes weren’t identical, but they mirrored enough to send a cold sweat down my spine.


    “She said the Keys weren’t meant to open anything,” Bastain murmured. “They were meant to remember.”


    “Remember what?”


    He looked at me, eyes heavy. “What we tried to bury.“/


    I stared at the relic. I should have waited. Asked for gloves. Built wards. But the longer I looked, the more I felt like it was pulling me toward it–or maybel was being called.


    I reached out and touched it.


    The pain was instant.


    A white–hot line shot up my arm, blooming across my shoulder and into my chest. My lungs seized, and my knees buckled. I heard Bastain yell my name, but it was already toote.


    12:51 Sat, 12 JUL ? GUI


    The room vanished.


    €69%


    I stood in a ce that wasn’t a ce.


    mes danced across á ground made of ash and bone. The sky above was not sky, but void–endless and rippling, like heat off a forge. A throne burned at the center of it all, ck and gold and bleeding light. Not a seat of honor. A seat of reckoning.


    Jiselle knelt before it.


    Her hair was wild, tangled with soot and streaks of light. Her eyes glowed with the same silver fire I’d seen when she’d drawn the rune. She didn’t look afraid. She looked hollow. Empty. Not broken–open.


    Behind her stood the child.


    It wasn’t a child. Not really. It was a shape made of shifting light and smoke. Humanoid, but faceless. It radiated something ancient, something I didn’t recognize but instinctively bowed to. It ced one small hand on Jiselle’s shoulder.


    Around them, wolves knelt.


    Some wept. Others howled in pain. A few screamed until their throats tore open, their bodies consumed by fire that leaked from their eyes. I saw familiar faces among them. Council members. Instructors. Pack leaders. People I once thought unshakable.


    One by one, they crumbled into ash.


    The child looked at me.


    It had no eyes. But I knew.


    It saw me.


    And it knew me.


    I couldn’t breathe.


    The mes surged forward–not to consume, but to wrap around my limbs, to anchor me. They hissed as they whispered something I couldn’t understand, but felt in my bones.


    You were the first to kneel.


    I fell backward, or maybe I was pulled: The vision tore away like scorched parchment in the wind.


    I woke to hands on my chest and someone yelling.


    My body jolted upward, and I gasped, sucking in breath like I’d been drowning. Eva knelt beside me, one hand pressed firmly against my sternum, her expression tight with fear.


    “Nate! Breathe–you’re okay. You’re back. You’re okay.”


    Bastain stood over us, pale and rattled. He muttered a spell under his breath, something to stabilize my nerves.


    I coughed, trembling. My chest burned.


    “What happened?” Eva asked.”


    “I saw it,” I rasped. “All of it. The throne. Jiselle. The child. The wolves–they were kneeling or dying.”


    1201


    “You touched it, didn’t you?” Bastain snapped, “Idiot. I should’ve warned you that it wasn’t inert.”


    1 barely heard him.


    I looked down at my right hand.


    The rune was burned into my palm.


    Not drawn. Not glowing. Branded.


    Eva leaned closer, her eyes widening. “That’s the same symbol Jiselle drew. It’s the one the dying rogue carried.”


    I clenched my hand into a fist. It ached. Like fire wanted out.


    “You said Serina called them Keys,” I said. “Keys remember. What does this mean?”


    Bastain looked grim. “It means something remembers you.”


    We returned to the infirmary wing just before nightfall. Jiselle was asleep, curled beneathyers of nkets, her hair fanned out across the pillow like fire frozen mid–motion. Her breathing was soft. Peaceful.


    But the room was hot.


    Too hot.


    Eva paused at the threshold. “Is it just me, or is the air… pulsing?”


    I walked to the side of the bed. My palm still throbbed.


    Jiselle shifted slightly. Then again.


    A wave of heat rolled off her body–invisible but unmistakable. It shimmered through the room, brushing the walls, making the sigils drawn into the


    infirmary stones hum faintly.


    Then another pulse.


    Stronger.


    I looked down at her, and for the briefest second, I swore the glow beneath her skin flickered in time with the vibrations beneath my feet.


    The leyline.


    It was syncing with her.


    Or with what she carried.


    Eva met my eyes.


    Neither of us spoke.


    Because there was nothing left to say.


    Something had awakened beneath the mes.


    And now, it was listening.


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