The air in the Crystal Sanctum felt heavier after the light faded.Mana still hissed faintly in the cracks of the marble floor, but the barrier held. The Veil of Crimson had worked—or at least, had pretended to.
Carmila still knelt beside Adrian, her fingers lightly brushing the skin beneath his jaw, tracing the faint pattern that glimmered there whenever he breathed. Each glow was a reminder that he was not just human. And that terrified her.
Behind her, the council began to move again, voices low and uneasy.
"The pressure has subsided…""But it wasn't containment. The Veil… it was acceptance.""No spell should be able to hold that."
The Queen raised a hand and the murmurs died.
"Leave us."
The vampires bowed and vanished into mist one by one, leaving only the mother and daughter and the boy who had just shaken the world.
When the last echo faded, Carmila stood. "You knew the Veil wouldn't hold him."
Her mother didn't answer at once. She turned her gaze to the broken sigils, tracing their burnt edges with one graceful hand.
"I suspected," the Queen said finally. "Containment is a lie we tell ourselves. The ritual wasn't to seal him—it was to see him."
Carmila's heart clenched. "Then you used him."
"I had to know," said the Queen. "If the Boundless Core was truly stirring, then every god, every creature above SSS rank will look for him. We needed to understand what we were protecting… or condemning."
Carmila looked back at Adrian. His breathing had steadied, the terrible light dimmed. For now he seemed only human again—too human, fragile beneath the bandages of her cloak.
"Then what did you see?" she asked.
Her mother hesitated, which frightened her more than any prophecy.When the Queen of Noctharyn hesitated, it meant the truth itself was dangerous to speak.
"Something older than divinity," she said softly. "Older than the idea of power. When the mana came to our world, we thought it was the beginning of magic. But it was just the echo of him—a single heartbeat leaking through the seal."
Carmila's throat tightened. "You're saying our entire race—our powers—"
"Are the shadow of what he carries," the Queen finished. "And now the shadow has started to remember its source."
For a while neither of them spoke. The only sound was the slow drip of condensed mana from the cracked ceiling.
Finally Carmila said, "If the gods find out—if the Overlord realizes he's here—"
"They'll come for him," her mother said simply. "And for us, for harboring him. The gods will try to erase him before he wakes again, and the Demon Lords will try to claim him."
Carmila clenched her fists. "Then we hide him."
The Queen studied her daughter's face for a long time, then nodded slowly. "We hide him. We claim the awakening was a false surge of mana. I will see to the council. You—" She glanced at Adrian, still unconscious. "You keep him alive. Whatever happens, he must not be taken."
Carmila exhaled, a slow, shaking breath. "I will."
Her mother stepped closer, placing a hand against her cheek. "You care for him."
"I love him," Carmila whispered.
The Queen's eyes softened with something like sorrow. "Then pray he never has to love you the same way. Because if that seal breaks completely, love will be the first thing it consumes."
She turned and walked toward the door, her silhouette fading into a shimmer of crimson light.
Carmila looked back down at Adrian. He stirred faintly, mumbling something she couldn't catch. For the first time, she noticed that the sigil on his chest—what remained of the Boundless Core's seal—was faintly shaped like a heart.
She pressed her palm over it, feeling the steady, mortal rhythm beneath.
"Sleep," she whispered. "The world isn't ready for you."
Above the palace, the night sky was calm again. The moon was whole, its earlier fracture no more than a faint scar. To anyone looking up, it was as if nothing had happened.
But far beyond the clouds, in the endless dark between stars, something was watching—a presence vast enough to make even gods tremble, waiting for the day the seal would open not with destruction, but with recognition.