Darkness swallowed the dome.
Not the absence of light, but something worse—a presence of void. Kael had felt fear before. She'd faced cursed beasts in the Whispering Pines, endured the Trial of Glass Flame, even stood at the edge of the Rift. But this? This was older. Colder.
She stepped fully into Spandrex's dome, but it wasn't a study anymore. The furniture, the shelves, the ceiling—all were shadows of themselves. The dome had changed, warped into something ancient and sealed, like a shrine left to rot in silence.
"Vashen?" she called out.
No answer.
Only the echo of her own voice, stretched thin like it was being strangled by the dark.
She didn't lower her blade.
Her glyphs pulsed faintly under her skin, the lines on her forearms stinging. Kael whispered a rune of illumination—not a grand incantation, just a spark—but nothing ignited. Her magic obeyed, but the space denied it.
The dome was dead magic now.
"He read it aloud," a voice echoed, circling her like smoke.
"Where is he?" she demanded, turning toward the sound.
A shape moved ahead.
Kael tensed—then froze.
It wasn't Spandrex.
It was... something wearing his memory.
A boy-shaped shadow with empty eyes and limbs slightly too long, head tilting too far with each step. Its feet didn't touch the ground. Its edges bled ink into the air.
"You're not him," Kael hissed.
It smiled—Spandrex's smile—but twisted. Mocking.
"I am what was summoned. I am what was forgotten. He called me with his breath. Fed me with his fear. Now... I am inside."
"You possessed him."
The figure didn't nod. It simply shivered, like a flame flickering in oil.
"He is the page. The Book wrote him the moment he spoke its words."
Kael's hand clenched tighter around her blade. "Then I'll tear that page out."
Before she could strike, something caught her wrist.
A hand—Vashen's.
He had crawled toward her from behind a fallen chair, face pale, shaking, eyes wide with terror.
"Behind us," he mouthed.
Kael turned.
The walls were bleeding shadows.
From every shadowed surface—arms shot out. Grasping limbs of darkness crawled along the walls and floors, taking forms. Twisted silhouettes—mockeries of the bullies who once tormented Spandrex—took shape. Not their bodies, but what remained of them. Shadows wearing familiar faces. Mouths moving without sound, eyes hollow, empty of soul.
Kael's stomach turned. "No…"
"They were unworthy," the voice said. "Now they serve in silence."
The phantoms reached out, not for her, but for the walls—melting back into them like ink fading into parchment.
And then, behind her—movement.
Vashen.
He staggered back, eyes locked on the dissolving forms, then turned and bolted—stumbling over dropped books and upturned chairs, slipping through the door Kael had come through.
"Go!" she shouted. "Find Master Adrix or Councilor Ven—tell them Spandrex is—"
The shadow cut her off.
"You won't make it."
But Vashen had already run.
Kael turned back to the possessed figure as it drifted closer. The Book—the same one Spandrex had hidden and read from—now hovered near the shadow's feet. It flipped open on its own, the pages turning rapidly until they stopped on a sigil too complex for Kael to read.
The glyph glowed.
Black. And red.
The language of Vehrash.
The shadow raised a hand—and Kael felt her glyphs try to tear away from her skin. Her runes rebelled, drawn to the Book like metal to a magnet.
Pain laced her arms.
"Stop—!"
The glyphs on the walls flared. The dome's stones cracked. The entire space trembled as if something beneath was waking up.
Kael did the only thing she could.
She stabbed her blade into the floor and spoke a Severance Rune—one she swore never to use without clearance. It burned the stone, cut through the glyphs, and tore the dome's ambient spell-field in two.
The Book snapped shut.
The shadow screamed.
Darkness exploded—like smoke being pulled through a keyhole. The possessed figure writhed as it was sucked into the Book, its form distorting, resisting, before it vanished entirely into the sealed cover.
Kael fell to her knees.
The silence afterward was terrifying.
Only her breath. Only the sound of blood in her ears.
She stared at the Book, now still. Closed.
The runes on her arms had dimmed. Burned out. She'd never get them back without re-carving.
Vashen didn't return.
She had no idea if he even made it out.
Kael stood, reached for the Book—then stopped.
It was warm.
And beating.
Like a heart
Outside, storm bells began to toll across the academy.
And far beneath the library—beneath stone, soil, and spell-layered seals—a second heartbeat began to echo.
Something else had woken up.
And it remembered her name.