Chapter 22 – The Fall of the Scales' Throne
The sky had yet to find its peace. Two black eyes, open amidst the clots of blood in the heavens, still stared downward—bearing witness to the failure that had just unfolded. One more eye—the third—remained shut. But the world seemed to know: if the third were ever to open, nothing would remain the same.
The five Council members stood frozen before, one by one, stepping back. The astral chains coiled around Dorvas's hands had grown brittle, their glow extinguished. Noveras's fire died before it could touch the ground. Elhara's illusions dissolved like morning mist. Kavdrin's scales of justice lost their balance, and Ysera's mercy could no longer calm the sky.
They returned to their hall, leaving behind the trace of defeat and the weight of fear.
In the sacred chamber of the Hellseer Council—a place with endless pillars and a ceiling that turned like a fractured ancient clock—five majestic figures now sat, their bodies weary. Not merely weary in flesh, but in essence—as though their very existence had been shaken.
"What was that?" whispered Ysera. Her voice was no longer the voice of a guardian of mercy, but of a human who had lost her way.
"That power… it did not come from this world," replied Kavdrin, his tone heavy. His hands trembled as they reached for the sigil on his forehead—now cracked.
Noveras rose to his feet. "It was not merely forbidden energy. It was a mirror of both curse and judgment in one form. We have no defense against it."
Dorvas gripped his seat. "Since when did Enver possess something like that? When had he hidden it from us?"
Elhara lowered her gaze. "The question is not 'since when,' but who gave it to him. This is not magic of the Hellseer, not from the underworld, and not from mankind."
Silence. A suffocating quiet—not because no one wished to speak, but because none knew what to say.
"Our power… it isn't returning," Ysera murmured. Her gentle hands no longer shone with light. "It's as if… Enver took it."
Kavdrin stood, striking the stone table at the center of the hall. "He didn't take it! It was something that came with him! Those eyes!"
Elhara nodded slowly. "Three eyes in the sky. Two open. One closed. Each time one opens, we lose something."
Dorvas's voice was barely a whisper. "We are no longer a Council. We are only humans now."
The colors of the spirit world's sky began to fade. The blood of Enver, draping the heavens, slowly evaporated—yet it brought no peace. What remained was a dense silence no prayer or incantation could pierce.
Elsewhere, amidst the ruins of the battlefield where the confrontation had taken place, Enver still stood unmoving. His body was surrounded by the remnants of spirit dust and the glow of the Ten of Clubs—now petrified. He looked upward, toward the heavens where two black eyes lingered.
He did not chase the Council. He did not call out or strike again. He simply looked—as though waiting.
The eyes were not part of him. They did not cling to his body, nor were they born of his soul. But they existed because of his blood.
That blood—spilled not merely from a wound, but from a choice. Blood that had summoned something from beyond the world. Something older than judgment, colder than death.
Enver knew, from the moment the card was turned, that he was no longer just Enver. He was the door.
The sky did not wholly return to blue. In the distance, a faint sound emerged—not human, not spirit, not any being that bore a name.
Whispers from an uncharted dimension.
This chapter does not end in war.
It ends in not knowing.
And that… is far more terrifying.