Ghosts Beneath the Black Spire
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The Watchtower loomed like a spear driven into the earth's wound.
It was tall—still impossibly so—but broken. Its upper levels had caved inward, crumbling like a corpse finally yielding to time. What remained cast a jagged shadow across the plain beneath it. The land here was different from Valenhold. Wilder. Colder. The grass refused to grow near the foundation, and birds circled it wide.
Lyra had only seen it once before.
The night everything burned.
And even now, even standing on steady ground, her knees tensed like they might buckle.
---
"I remember this place," Riven said.
Kael kicked at a piece of shattered stone, lips thin. "You should. It's where you almost died."
"Where the first Seal broke," Lyra added quietly.
Riven stared up at the tower's bent silhouette. "Where Seris tried to sever my soul."
---
They moved carefully, entering through the shattered northern side where half the outer wall had collapsed. Wind rushed through the open ribs of the structure, howling with a low, bone-deep moan.
Liora paused at the edge of the threshold.
"There's residue magic here. Still active. Very old."
Elen crouched, fingertips brushing the floor. "Not just Eclipse. Something else."
Riven turned slowly. "Something left behind."
---
The deeper they descended, the colder it grew.
Not temperature, exactly. Memory cold. The kind that pulled at the back of your neck and whispered, you don't belong here anymore.
They passed abandoned weapons. Melted glyph stones. Broken armor.
And then…
A sound.
Barely audible.
A whimper.
Riven froze. His hand instinctively went to his blade—but Lyra caught his wrist.
"You heard that too?" she whispered.
He nodded.
They followed it.
Down a narrow stairwell, half-caved. Into a chamber lit only by pale moss and the distant echo of dripping water.
And there, curled against the far wall—
A boy.
---
He couldn't have been older than ten.
Dirty. Thin. Covered in bruises and dried blood.
He didn't look up when they entered. Didn't speak.
Just rocked gently, arms wrapped around his knees, humming something tuneless under his breath.
Lyra's voice cracked. "Gods…"
Riven stepped forward slowly.
The boy flinched but didn't run.
"Hey," Riven said, soft. "You're safe. We're not here to hurt you."
The boy didn't respond.
Not with words.
But he looked up.
And Riven saw his own eyes staring back.
---
"His mana signature—" Liora whispered, kneeling beside him. "It's identical to yours."
Riven's breath hitched. "How is that possible?"
Kael backed away. "Is that a… clone?"
"No," Lyra said, her voice shaking. "It's a tether."
---
They pieced it together slowly.
The child wasn't a duplicate. Nor an illusion.
He was a fragment—a broken-off shard of Riven's soul, carved out during the Seal ritual at this very place.
Left behind.
Abandoned.
For over eight years.
---
Liora examined the glyphs scrawled in dried blood across the walls. "Seris cut part of your essence here—anchored it. Probably to weaken your soul's resistance to the spirit binding."
Kael's jaw tightened. "And just left it here? Like… like trash?"
"No," Riven said quietly. "She hid it. As a failsafe."
---
The boy finally spoke.
His voice was small. Hollow.
"Is it… safe now?"
Riven knelt beside him.
"Yes," he said. "You're safe now."
The boy blinked slowly. "It was dark for so long."
"I know."
"I forgot my name."
"You didn't," Riven said. "You are my name."
---
Reintegrating the fragment wasn't easy.
Liora had to guide the process—etching sigils in flame, spirit-light, and silence.
The child stood quietly, unmoving, as Riven placed a hand on his chest.
The moment their skin touched, the air bent inward.
And Riven remembered.
Everything.
---
His eighth birthday.
The swing of his first real sword.
The feeling of his mother's hands braiding his hair before the coronation feast.
Her smile.
Her last scream.
---
He gasped as the memories rushed in, nearly collapsing.
Lyra caught him.
He buried his face in her shoulder and didn't speak for a long time.
---
When he finally rose, the boy was gone.
Not vanished.
Returned.
His soul, once fractured, now whole again.
His eyes shone brighter.
His stance firmer.
His voice, when it came, was deeper. Heavier.
"I know what she did."
Kael nodded slowly. "What now?"
Riven looked to the spire's upper chamber.
"There's one last thing she left here. Something she didn't want me to find."
---
They climbed.
The upper sanctum of the tower was half-destroyed, wind-scarred and skeletal. But the center altar remained untouched.
And on it:
A book.
Bound in black metal.
Unmarked.
Riven touched it.
The moment he did, the pages opened on their own.
No blood wards.
No traps.
As if waiting.
---
Inside were pages and pages of rituals. Diagrams. Instructions. Eclipse markings.
And at the center: a spell.
A ritual to invert a soul-bound pact.
Liora's eyes widened. "This… this is a counter-seal."
"Exactly," Riven said. "She knew I'd come back. Eventually. So she left a way to unbind myself."
Lyra narrowed her eyes. "Then why leave it at all?"
Riven ran his fingers along the page.
"Because she didn't expect me to be ready."
He turned to them.
"I am."
---