They were chanting.
He could feel the rhythm of their voices even though he couldn't hear it in any ordinary sense. Each syllable of the spell vibrated through the veins of the world and through his own body.
The Veil of Crimson.
Carmila's mother had said it would contain him, or at least the thing inside him. But as the sigils closed around him and the air thickened with power, Adrian felt the opposite: the seal wasn't being reinforced — it was opening.
The light behind his eyes grew unbearable. His heartbeat slowed until it matched the pulse of the universe itself. Then came the pull.
Darkness again, but not empty this time.
He was standing on something like glass. Below it lay a sea of stars, above it an identical sea — as though he stood between two infinities. A wind blew, though there was nothing to move.
When he looked down, his reflection stared back, eyes filled with galaxies. But behind that reflection was another face — something ancient, blurred by light and shadow.
At last, the voice said.
It wasn't the same presence as before. The voice of Existence had been vast, impersonal. This one was focused, intimate — like an echo of himself that had learned to speak with the patience of eons.
"Who are you?" Adrian asked.
A better question is: who are you, really?
The reflection smiled. Its outline wavered, growing taller, sharper, the space around it distorting. When it spoke again, the stars themselves dimmed.
I am what they bound inside you before your birth. The pulse they feared would wake. The memory of everything that ever was — and the will that wanted to begin again.
Adrian's stomach twisted. "The Boundless Core."
That is the name they gave me, it said gently. But names are just cages. I was existence before language, before gods, before ranks. The universe learned to measure power because of me.
As it spoke, fragments of memory burst around them: the rise of mortal civilizations, the ascent through G to SSS Rank, the creation of divine orders. Each image cracked and burned away as if scorched by the truth.
They built ladders to reach what they could not understand, the voice murmured. Every rank you know is a reflection of a single heartbeat. Mine.
Adrian felt the pull again, deep in his chest. The same pressure that had shaken continents. "Why me?"
Because your soul didn't fear me. Every other vessel tried to command me, to use me, and they broke. You… accepted the emptiness. You let it be part of you.
He took a step forward; the glass rippled like water. "If you're what they say, you can destroy everything. Why let them seal you at all?"
Because destruction was never the point.Creation cannot exist without forgetting. I allowed them to bind me so that reality could believe it was separate from me.But the veil grows thin. The more you feel, the more I remember.
Adrian looked up. The horizon was fracturing, stars falling into the lower sea like sparks.
Carmila, he whispered.
The vampire princess? The being's tone softened. You cling to her light. That is good. It means the vessel still dreams. As long as you dream, I can sleep.
"Then let me keep you asleep," he said quickly. "Whatever this power is — it's not meant to exist."
The being tilted its head, almost amused. Then stop trying to understand it. Live. Love. Be the small thing you wish to be. I will remain behind the door — until you call me.
The reflection reached out. Its hand passed through the glass, touching his chest. The contact burned and froze all at once. He saw fragments of worlds, galaxies collapsing into thought.
But remember, Adrian Kaelthorn: when you bleed, stars die. When you rage, the heavens will tremble. The ranks you know are dust beneath your feet.
"Then what am I?" he asked.
A question the cosmos will spend eternity answering.
The reflection smiled — his own smile — and stepped backward into the light. The stars folded inward, and the glass broke.
Adrian's eyes flew open.
He was back in the crystal chamber. Carmila was there, her hands pressed to his face, her cheeks wet with tears. Behind her, the Queen and the council stood frozen, their crimson barrier trembling but unbroken.
The sigils on the floor were dim again, their light spent.
"Adrian," Carmila whispered. "Are you… you?"
He managed a weak smile. "For now."
Above them, the fracture in the moon sealed itself with a sound like a sigh.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard a faint echo — his own voice, and another layered within it:
Sleep, until I call you.
And for the first time since the seal had stirred, the world was quiet.