The Thirteenth Seat no longer felt cold.
It pulsed beneath me. Alive. As though it had waited years—centuries—for someone like me. Not a noble. Not a chosen one. Just… me.
The others faded one by one, vanishing into their pillars like mist. Only the Circle's voice lingered, echoing like a warning etched into stone:
"Watch the sky."
I was left alone in the Black Courtyard.
The thirteen pillars stood silent.
The red glow of the Veilfire at the center dimmed… then flickered… then died.
The night had begun.
When I stepped out of the courtyard, the world had changed.
Clouds swallowed the sun.
The wind carried whispers—too faint to understand, too sharp to forget.
The students didn't see it. Not yet.
But I did.
Even the castle noticed.
Kadven's towers groaned louder than usual. Walls breathed like lungs under pressure. Windows reflected things that weren't there.
Something had cracked.
Back in the dormitories, I avoided the upper floors. I didn't belong there anymore.
Instead, I took a quiet room near the archives, where the stone was older and the air colder. Where spells didn't fully work, and light sometimes flickered for no reason.
I slept little that night.
Dreams came—but they weren't mine.
I stood in a battlefield where no war had ever been fought.
I walked among towers made of bone and glass.
I heard a voice—distant but growing louder:
"The gate has loosened."
I woke to screams.
Real ones.
The academy was under alert.
No bells. No formal warning. Just fear.
Students were rushed into safe halls. Instructors ran, armed with relics and staffs glowing too bright. Even the sentries—those cloaked ones that watched the walls in silence—moved with purpose.
Something had breached the Veil.
I followed the pull.
Down through the spiral steps beneath the north wing. Past the enchanted gargoyles. Past the great sealed door with the seven rings.
At the bottom: a broken seal.
And a pool of black mist, seeping from a crack in the stone like blood.
A figure stood beside it.
Tall. Robed. Face hidden beneath a hood of pale fabric.
Not faculty.
Not human.
It turned toward me.
And smiled.
"You are late, Gatebearer."
The air around it warped.
I raised my hand, ready to summon the seal's power—but it didn't move. Didn't attack.
It simply… watched.
"You opened the door," I said. "Didn't you?"
The smile deepened.
"No. You did."
I stepped closer.
"Who are you?"
It tilted its head.
"I am what the Thirteenth was made to contain."
The floor cracked beneath it. Reality shook.
I drew a blade—not steel, but forged from the trial's shadow. My last gift from the Veilfire.
The figure stepped back into the mist.
And vanished.
Then the wall behind me burst.
A beast—twisted and starved—crawled through the stone. Its body was made of memory and metal. No eyes. No face. Just hunger.
The seal on my chest burned.
Time slowed.
I leapt forward.
The battle was short—but wrong.
Every strike I made, it adapted. Every wound it took, it forgot it had.
It fed on fear.
So I gave it none.
I remembered the mirror.
The pit.
The pain.
I whispered the word again.
The world bent.
And I became something not quite human.
Darkness laced my hands. My voice echoed with another's.
I struck—not its body, but its mind.
The beast screamed once and shattered like glass.
The corridor fell silent.
Except for one sound.
Clapping.
The robed figure stood again in the mist.
"The Coming Night begins," it said. "And you will have to choose."
"Choose what?" I asked.
It turned.
"Whether to guard the gate… or open it wider."
Then it vanished completely.
And I was left alone again.
But not really.
Because the crack in the veil had grown.
And something far worse than shadows was watching me now.