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Chapter 8 - When Magic Found Me

Chapter Eight: The Entity in the Dark

The world around them shuddered.

The air in the Veil split with a noise like glass fracturing, shards of unseen reality tearing open. Elena staggered, clutching her mark as the whispers turned into a howl. It was no longer just inside her mind—it was everywhere. A voice that bent the world around it.

> "At last… found you."

The words were low, melodic, chilling. They didn't echo so much as exist, vibrating in bone and breath. Kael's hand shot out, gripping her wrist tightly. His shadows wrapped around them both, but even his control trembled under the weight of the presence.

"Elena, look at me," he demanded, his voice sharp, urgent.

But her eyes were locked on the air ahead, where something was forming.

A shape bled out of the cracks—smoke first, then light threaded with darkness, limbs without form. It was like watching memory and nightmare stitch themselves together into a body that refused to settle on one shape.

Kael cursed under his breath, pulling her back. "It's not supposed to be able to reach here. We need to move, now."

The ground shifted, the terrain of the Veil rearranging like a nightmare trying to trap them. Towers melted into trees, shadows into walls. It wanted to close them in.

Elena's heart hammered, but something inside her steadied—the mark. Instead of shrinking from the presence, it responded. The pulse of warmth she felt in earlier battles now surged hot, alive, answering the thing in the dark.

Her breath caught. "It's… calling me."

Kael's face hardened. "That's not a call—it's a chain."

He yanked her forward, and they ran. The Veil bent against their escape, corridors twisting, paths unraveling. Elena stumbled more than once, but Kael never let her fall, his shadows clearing their way just enough to keep them ahead of the pursuing entity.

At last, they crashed through into the remnants of a fortress—walls cracked, banners long turned to ash, an air of battles fought centuries ago. It was silent, but silence that listened.

Kael shoved the heavy door closed behind them, shadows reinforcing the stone. For a moment, the voice dimmed, pushed back beyond the walls. Elena leaned against the ruin, gasping.

"Where are we?" she whispered.

Kael's eyes roved the room, cautious, haunted. "A sanctuary. Or what's left of it. Once, this was a bastion of those who stood against the voice you just heard."

Elena straightened, her pulse still racing. "You knew about it."

His jaw clenched. He didn't answer.

She stepped closer, anger mixing with fear. "All this time—you've been hiding this. That thing isn't just some whisper. It knows me. It's been waiting for me."

"Elena—"

"No," she snapped, louder than she meant to. Her voice echoed in the broken hall, sharp against the ruin's stillness. "You keep treating me like I can't handle the truth, like I'm some fragile thing you have to protect or lie to. But I'm the one with the mark, Kael. It's inside me. If you don't start telling me everything, then I can't trust you."

Her words struck something raw in him. His shoulders stiffened, and for a long moment, he said nothing. Then, slowly, Kael lowered his gaze.

"The last Marked thought they could control it," he said, his tone heavy, each word like a stone laid down. "They thought the voice was only power, waiting to be claimed. They were wrong. It used them. Devoured them. Until there was nothing left."

Her breath hitched. "And you…"

His eyes lifted to hers, shadows curling faintly around him. "I watched it happen. I swore it would never happen again."

The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. Elena's chest tightened—not just from fear of what he said, but from the pain in his eyes. For the first time, she saw not just the protector, the shadowed warrior, but the man beneath. A man who had lost everything once.

But before she could speak, the whispers returned. Louder. Stronger.

This time, they weren't just inside her mind. They filled the fortress, sliding along the stone, brushing against her skin like cold fingers.

> "Elena…"

She froze.

It had never used her name before.

Her mark flared with heat, a light bleeding through her sleeve. She pressed her hand against it, but the light only grew, spreading across her skin in pulsing veins of silver.

"Elena, fight it!" Kael barked, shadows rushing to smother the glow. But his shadows burned away like mist against sunlight.

The voice laughed softly—terrifyingly human, yet vast and wrong.

> "I have waited through centuries… through silence. At last, a heart strong enough to bear me."

Elena staggered, clutching her head as images tore through her mind—visions of vast fields of fire, of towers crumbling under endless night, of a world kneeling before a shape that could never quite be seen.

She screamed, the sound raw, breaking. The light surged, spilling from her in a wave that cracked stone and shattered what remained of the fortress's walls.

Kael was at her side instantly, arms around her, grounding her as the storm of power shook the ruin. "Stay with me! Elena, look at me!"

Her eyes flew open—and for the briefest moment, they weren't her eyes. They glowed with silver flame, reflecting something other, something ancient.

And then it spoke again—through her lips.

> "We are not alone anymore."

Kael's blood ran cold. Because for the first time, he wasn't just hearing the whispers in the Veil. He was hearing the entity speak out loud, through the girl he had sworn to protect.

And when her gaze met his, it wasn't Elena looking at him. It was the entity in the dark.

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