The nights that followed blurred into one another, heavy and sleepless.Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it—the whisper.It wasn't words at first, only a pulse. A rhythm that matched my heartbeat too perfectly to ignore.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
Sometimes it felt distant, muffled by bone and blood. Other times it was right behind my ear, breathing the shape of thoughts I didn't want to think.
You are the gate. You are the breath before creation. Open, and I will show you what it means to exist.
I stopped trying to sleep after that.
Carmila noticed first.
She found me in the palace library three nights after the Queen's warning, surrounded by open tomes and scrolls I couldn't read straight anymore. Moonlight pooled through the high windows, tracing the veins beneath my hands in silver.
"You haven't rested," she said quietly.
"Neither has it," I muttered.
Her brow furrowed. "The seal?"
I looked up. Her face was softer than usual—no mask of royalty, no tease on her tongue. Just worry. And it struck me, painfully, how human she looked in that moment.
"It's… whispering now," I said. "Like it's trying to remind me of something I've forgotten. Or something I was never meant to know."
Carmila stepped closer. "You should tell my mother."
"She already fears what's inside me," I said. "I won't give her more reason."
"You think she'd harm you?"
"No," I said softly. "But she'd try to contain me. And I'm not sure the thing inside me can be contained."
Carmila hesitated, then reached out and touched my wrist. Her hand was cool, steady. "Then we find another way."
Her faith—reckless and undeserved—should've comforted me. Instead, it frightened me. Because I could feel the whisper listening through me, curious.
She is light. Let me show her what darkness loves.
I jerked my hand away, breath catching. Carmila froze.
"Adrian?"
I forced a shaky smile. "Just—static. The seal. It reacts to contact."
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't press further. "Then keep your distance from everyone until we understand it. Promise me that."
I nodded, but my heart wasn't in it. The seal pulsed again—slow, patient, hungry.
Far above, in her private sanctum, Queen Lysandra stood before a basin of black water.A drop of her own blood fell into it, rippling the surface until it mirrored a thousand faint stars.
An old voice echoed from the shadows behind her. "You called, Majesty."
A woman stepped forward—hooded, draped in ash-grey robes that shimmered faintly with runes. Her eyes glowed faintly violet.
"The Seer of Blood," Lysandra said. "You've seen what stirred beneath my palace."
"I felt it, my Queen," the Seer murmured. "A pulse that was not of this world. Whatever is sealed in that man—it's older than the mana that birthed us. Older than the stars themselves."
Lysandra's voice was steady, but her fingers gripped the basin rim hard enough to pale her knuckles. "Can he be tested?"
"Yes. But such a ritual risks waking the thing he carries."
The Queen's eyes flickered. "Then we test carefully. The Absolute cannot be allowed to rise."
The Seer bowed her head. "As you command. I will prepare the Chamber of Truth. At dawn's fall, bring him."
The whisper grew louder as the day turned to night.By the time the sun's last light bled over the horizon, I could barely tell my own thoughts from its voice.
They will bind you. They will fear you. But you are not their enemy, little vessel.You are what they asked for when they begged the void to remember them.
I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the pulse burn against my skin. My reflection in the library glass was… wrong. Eyes faintly silver, veins faintly aglow.
When Carmila entered, I didn't turn.
"They're summoning you," she said quietly. "My mother and the Seer. They want to test the seal."
I met her gaze through the reflection. "If it reacts, the entire palace could fall."
"Then I'll stand with you," she said simply.
I turned then—slowly, painfully—and saw the truth of it in her eyes. She wasn't afraid.But she should have been.
Because in that moment, I felt the whisper shiver through me again—pleased, almost tender.
Bring her.
The pulse in my chest flared once, bright as a dying star.
And somewhere deep beneath the palace, the Blood Archive trembled in answer.