The walk back to Caelan's chambers passed in silence. But it was not the silence of before—this one buzzed. Every echo of his footsteps on the stone felt different, as if the castle itself was listening. Noctisfall, for all its stillness, no longer felt asleep.
Something had shifted.
The pendant at Caelan's chest—a dull weight for days—was warm again. Not burning, not frantic. Just… awake.
Seraphyne left him at the threshold to his suite without a word. Her gaze lingered a heartbeat longer than usual before she turned and disappeared into the shadowed hall. He considered calling after her—asking what she really knew about Blackspire, about Malvuron, about the visions—but the weight in his chest told him the answers weren't hers to give.
Back in his room, the lamps were already lit.
The fire crackled.
But something was wrong.
The air hummed.
Then—
A soft thump.
He turned.
A folded piece of parchment had been placed on the center table. No door had opened. No step had been heard.
Caelan approached it carefully.
The seal was wax, stamped with the emblem of the Supreme Court—the twin crowns of Noctisfall and Hollowfen interlinked with the sign of the Veil between.
But scrawled across it in thin, slanted handwriting were the words:
"You are watched. You are wanted. Come when the sky bleeds blue."
—W
He stared.
It wasn't the message that unsettled him.
It was the seal.
Because in the moment before he broke it, it shifted.
The wax shimmered like ink spilled in water. For a heartbeat, the twin crowns separated. The Veil split. And an unfamiliar third symbol emerged.
A spiral.
Sharp-edged.
Sleeping.
It was the mark burned into his chest in the dream.
The sigil from the pendant.
The Duskwither mark.
And then—it vanished, returned to the original seal, perfectly intact.
His breath caught. "What the hell is happening to me?"
---
The hours blurred.
Sleep came in fits. Dreams clawed at the edge of memory but dissolved before they could speak.
When he woke next, it was to find the pendant glowing again.
But not red.
Blue.
Like the sky had changed.
---
The corridors of Noctisfall had changed.
Not physically—but spiritually. Candles flickered as he passed. Walls vibrated. Portraits of ancient lords and vampiric monarchs turned their faces away. As if the castle sensed the thing walking within it no longer belonged entirely to the waking world.
When he stepped onto the highest open bridge that connected the royal wing to the Hall of Crowns, he looked up.
And gasped.
The sky above was bleeding blue.
Where the eternal crimson clouds once loomed, a single tear of deep indigo light split the heavens. Like a wound, or a gateway.
He could feel it pulsing with the same rhythm as his heartbeat.
And the pendant at his neck hummed in agreement.
Behind him, a voice murmured, "You came."
Caelan turned.
Whisperbound.
The seer from the Midnight chambers.
Her face was pale, almost luminescent in the false starlight. Her eyes—glass-like and impossibly deep—gleamed with shadow and ice. She wore robes of black and amethyst, and her bare feet made no sound.
"I received your note," he said.
She tilted her head, amused. "Did you? I didn't write one."
"…Then who—?"
Whisperbound moved past him, placing one hand on the stone ledge. "There are many within Noctisfall who wish to remain unseen. And one who walks beside the Veil has stirred them."
She turned, expression unreadable.
"You are a tether now, Caelan Duskwither. Not yet truth, but no longer illusion. The Veil remembers you. That is why the sigil woke."
He swallowed. "What is the sigil?"
She closed her eyes. "A promise made in forgotten blood. A gate that once sealed something older than kings."
Then she opened her eyes—and something ancient stirred in them.
"Tell me what you saw in the Record."
He hesitated.
"The throne of ash. The twin moons. A tree on fire. And… myself. In shadow. Screaming."
Whisperbound nodded. "Then it has begun."
He stepped closer. "What has?"
She looked up at the blue wound in the sky. "The first unraveling."
---
They walked together—down past the halls where the Count Clans resided, deeper than Caelan had ever gone.
Whisperbound said little. Only when they reached a chamber veiled by shadow and carved entirely from a black crystal that drank the light did she stop.
From her sleeve, she withdrew a small box.
Inside was a ring.
It was ancient. Rusted and dark. Etched with the same spiral he had seen in the seal and pendant.
"The last heir once wore this," she said. "Before the line was lost. It bears the sigil of the Duskwither Oath."
He reached for it, hesitated.
"Will it bind me?" he asked.
She tilted her head. "No. But it will awaken what watches."
He slipped the ring on.
And the chamber shuddered.
Light flared from the walls—not gold, not red, but the same deep indigo as the sky. His pendant pulsed in rhythm. And in his mind, he heard—not words—but breath.
Something breathing.
Whisperbound took a step back.
"When the sky bleeds blue, the Sleeper stirs," she whispered. "We are out of time."
Caelan swayed. "The Sleeper?"
She nodded. "Beneath the throne. Beneath the stone. Beneath the blood. It wakes."
---
When he emerged again into the crimson halls of the palace, the blue tear in the sky was gone.
But the ring on his finger was warm.
And he knew—without understanding how—that something beneath Noctisfall had begun to move.
Not against him.
But for him.
And that might be worse.
---