Chapter 9.2

The bells didn't sound like any I'd heard before.

They rang slow and deep—like mountains groaning in their sleep. The air didn't carry the sound. It carried the weight. A pressure behind the eyes, behind the soul.

Three times they rang.

Once for the past.

Once for the present.

And once for what was coming.

I stood on the eastern parapet of Kadven, high above the grounds. From there, you could see the plains stretch into the distant deadlands. But now, where there had once been low hills and frost-laced woods, there was only smoke.

And fire.

A great crack had opened in the land itself, miles wide, like the earth had been peeled back by an invisible claw.

Black light poured from it. Not dark—not absence—but inverted light. Light that made the bones itch. That made thoughts blur.

From its center rose a shape.

Massive. Towering. Undefined.

Not yet whole.

Azraleth.

The name hadn't left my head since the Sorrowed Archives.

I knew now it wasn't just a being.

Azraleth was a memory given form. A creature born from the first wound in the veil. Not a god. Not a demon.

A remainder.

It was what was left after the world made a mistake too big to bury.

And it had chosen now to rise.

Kadven's highest magi gathered in the Tower of Hours. I was summoned without ceremony. The Thirteenth Seat no longer required permission to attend.

The tower was shaped like a spiral—twisting upward in a slow, impossible arc that bent light around it. The higher you climbed, the older the stone became.

At the summit: a single round chamber, rimmed with silver runes that shifted like clock hands.

Thirteen of them stood there.

Not the Circle.

The Council of Bloodglass.

Warriors. Scholars. Survivors.

Even they looked shaken.

One of them, an old man with metal woven into his beard, turned to me.

"The breach is open," he said. "Your seat was supposed to prevent this."

"I wasn't ready," I answered.

"None of us are," another muttered.

A woman in crimson stepped forward. Her eyes were covered by a blindfold that never moved.

"We will seal it," she said. "Even if it costs us the sky."

"No," I said. "You can't seal what remembers."

The room fell silent.

They knew I was right.

Azraleth wasn't just something let through.

It had been waiting. It knew the locks. It knew the weakness.

It knew me.

I proposed something that hadn't been done in five hundred years.

Descent.

A journey through the Gate—not to fight, not to seal, but to speak.

To learn.

To survive long enough to know what Azraleth truly wanted.

Madness, they called it.

But they gave me no other path.

The ritual was held in the Mirror Abyss, a lake of still water beneath the academy that reflected things that didn't exist.

The Circle returned to guide it—those who remained sane.

The chains were bound to my limbs. Old magic—living runes—crawled across my skin like vines. I held no weapon. No charm.

Just the sigil burned into my arm.

Azraleth's mark.

The descent was not falling.

It was unmaking.

I felt time peel from me. I saw versions of myself—young, old, dead, broken—all vanish like smoke in water. My name dissolved. My voice left. Even my body became… uncertain.

Until I stood on a plain of silence.

Not land.

Not sky.

Just memory.

And at the center—

Azraleth.

It had no face.

It had every face.

It moved without shape. Its presence pressed against my chest, my mind, my blood.

Then it spoke.

But not aloud.

It spoke in truths.

That Kadven was never a school. It was a distraction.

That the veil was never sealed. It was fed.

That the Circle was not thirteen.

It was fourteen.

And the last was forgotten by choice.

Me.

Azraleth showed me the memory.

I saw the first Gatebearer tear his own soul in two.

One half became the Circle.

The other became the Lock.

I was not chosen by the seal.

I was the key.

The vision ended.

And Azraleth waited.

Not to destroy.

Not yet.

But to offer something.

Unity.

If I joined, the pain would end. The veil would drop. The forgotten would be remembered. No more hiding. No more lies.

But the world would burn.

I looked down at my hands.

Still shaking.

Still human.

I remembered my siblings—those strange twins who called me brother. I remembered the mirror. The pit. The scream of the Empty Seat.

And I said no.

Azraleth roared.

The sound broke the sky.

I tore the sigil from my arm. Light—pure, burning—poured from it, sealing the Gate behind me as I fled the un-space.

Azraleth fell backward.

Not defeated.

But stalled.

A moment longer.

I awoke in the Mirror Abyss, screaming.

The Circle was gone.

The Council, silent.

Only the cracked runes remained, flickering like dying stars.

Azraleth had risen.

But I had seen it.

And I knew what must come next.