He did not enter like a man.
He entered like a cathedral collapsing into itself.
A living monument, taller than memory, broader than belief.
The Eagle Knight.
His frame was clad in plates of blackened steel that seemed grown, not forged.
Feathers—metal, glass, and bone—jutted from his pauldrons, wings unfurled but fractured, as if each feather had once been alive before being entombed in armor.
Every step he took was not a sound—
but an event.
The flagstones beneath him cracked, as if his weight was not of flesh but of judgment itself.
His helm bore the visage of a bird of prey, sharpened beak curving downward, eyes twin furnaces, white-hot and unblinking.
The beak was not ornamental.
It was sharpened for cutting.
Stained.
Scarred.
He was tall.
Too tall.
So tall the ceiling bent toward him, as though afraid it would not contain him.
His shadow swallowed the torches, stretching farther than geometry allowed, bending the angles of the room into shapes that should not exist.
Looking at him too long was like staring into a riddle.
Something in him refused to be fully understood.
And yet—he was undeniable.
The eye could not leave him.
The mind could not rest.
The Eagle Knight was terror, sculpted into form.
When he spoke, his voice did not sound.
It arrived.
Deep.
Hollow.
The echo of iron gates closing upon eternity.
"An intruder…"
He did not shout.
He did not whisper.
But the word shook inside every ribcage, every skull.
"…has entered."
No one moved.
No one dared.
The silence was a second body in the room, pressing against every throat, pressing against El Como's borrowed chest.
And then—
the others came.
Not men.
Not beasts.
Things.
Humanoid in shape, yes.
But only in the sense that a nightmare resembles a face before it twists away.
Their limbs were uneven, elongated, wrapped in armor that looked more like scabs than metal.
Their mouths—if mouths they were—hung slack, as though the act of closing them had long been forgotten.
Some dripped black saliva that hissed against the stones when it fell.
Others clattered with teeth too many, too sharp, grinding against each other with insect hunger.
Their eyes—
ah, their eyes—
no uniformity.
One pair glowed like coal.
Another bled light like candles drowning in wax.
Some were empty sockets where worms squirmed in quiet feasts.
They walked not in rhythm, but in surrender.
Every step was broken, wrong, but unified by their devotion to the giant who led them.
Chains rattled, fused to their spines, their necks, their jaws.
And wherever they passed, the air dimmed, as though the world itself recoiled.
"You… will be tested.
All of you.
Every vessel.
Every soul.
There will be no hiding."
The torches flickered out as if bowing to his words.
Light bent toward him, refusing to illuminate any other face.
El Como felt his heart collapse inside the body he had taken.
The boy's lungs wheezed.
But it was not the boy who trembled.
It was him—Como, the trespasser.
Then—
the eyes turned.
Those burning suns, those twin forges,
scanned the trembling assembly.
Left.
Right.
Slowly.
Until—
they fell upon him.
The borrowed body.
The boy who was not a boy.
And El Como felt it.
The scrutiny.
The weight of recognition, or suspicion, or perhaps amusement.
He could not tell.
For long moments, the Eagle Knight did nothing but look.
But that look was a blade.
A verdict.
A promise.
Then—
the gaze slid away.
Not because he was free.
But because the Knight had chosen to spare him.
For now.
The horde did not merely stand.
They moved in patterns.
Twitching, jerking, quivering—
like marionettes on unseen strings.
Some knelt.
Some crawled.
Some pressed their foreheads against the stone, as if worshiping not the Knight himself, but the terror he carried.
One figure—taller than the rest, with arms like broken spears—lifted its face.
Its skull was split in the middle, revealing a hollow where a brain should have been.
And inside that hollow, something writhed.
A swarm of luminous insects.
Each insect screamed in tiny, metallic voices, words too small to hear.
El Como forced his gaze away.
He dared not let the horror sink too deep.
At last, the Knight turned.
His cape—if cape it was—was made not of cloth, but of feathers stitched from iron.
They scraped the ground, cutting shallow scars into the stone with every sway.
The horde followed.
A hundred shapes.
A hundred wrong bodies.
Each dragging their devotion behind them like chains.
The torches dimmed further.
The hall seemed emptying itself of air.
And then—
they were gone.
Gone, but not absent.
For their shadow lingered.
Their silence lingered.
Their promise lingered.
The students did not breathe.
Not truly.
They stood in lines, trembling, their minds torn between awe and despair.
No one dared speak.
No one dared ask.
Lyra's eyes flicked toward him—
the boy he had borrowed.
Her gaze lingered longer than it should have.
As if she sensed.
As if she knew.
And El Como, hidden within his shell, could only whisper to himself:
They will test us.
They will find me.
And when they do…
He stopped the thought.
Some truths were too heavy to fnish.
The Knight was gone.
And yet—he wasn't.
His absence was not absence.
It was presence, inverted.
Like a heavy cloth draped across every chest, every throat, every thought.
The silence after his departure was worse than his arrival.
Because silence could lie.
Because silence could wait.
The children—students—disciples—whatever names they were—
stood without daring to speak.
Not because they were told not to.
But because they knew.
One word, one whisper, and perhaps the Knight would return.
Perhaps he had not truly left.
Perhaps he lingered just beyond sight, listeNing.
Inside the trembling boy's skin, El Como gritted his hidden teeth.
The boy's body was frail.
Bones sharp beneath soft skin, breath shallow, muscles starved of courage.
Every tremor betrayed him.
Yet El Como made do.
He had no choice.
The Knight had looked directly at him.
Through him.
And though the gaze had moved on, he could not believe himself safe.
He had hidden, yes—
but a shadow can only conceal for so long when the sun itself is searching.
Lyra.
Her name cut through the silence like a candle-flame through dark fog.
She was there—forward, ahead of the others, spine rigid, eyes alight with something between terror and defiance.
But her gaze returned again and again to him.
Not the boy.
Him.
Did she know?
Could she sense the displacement, the shadow that rode behind another's eyes?
Her stare was not accusation.
Not yet.
But it lingered too long, questioning.
And in this hall where silence weighed heavier than chains, questions were more dangerous than answers.
El Como's mind could not release the image of the horde.
The humanoids that had followed the Knight—
yes, they were gone,
but the afterimage of their deformity danced still against his eyes.
He remembered the one whose jaw opened sideways, unhinging not down but across, splitting its face into halves of teeth.
He remembered another whose arms dragged like ropes, fingers sharpened into hooks that screeched against the floor.
He remembered the one whose body was folded backwards, spine arched the wrong way, head dangling upside down, eyes staring at him as it crawled.
Each had been wrong.
Not wrong as in broken.
Wrong as in rewritten.
Like a human shape had been given to something that did not understand humanity at all.
And they marched, not with the randomness of beasts, but with the discipline of slaves.
They followed their Knight with devotion.
And devotion was more terrifying...
"Every vessel.
Every soul.
There will be no hiding."
The words still pulsed in El Como's skull.
Every vessel.
Did the Knight know?
Did he suspect this trick of possession?
The phrase felt sharpened against him.
As though the Eagle Knight had not been spe to the group—
but to him,
and him al
alone.
He tried, briefly, to imagine what the Knight was.
Was it a man?
Once?
Had there been flesh beneath that armor before the feathers of metal grew into him?
Or was it born this way—
an eagle carved into a man's shape, then multiplied into something larger, something wrong?
The helm had looked forged, yet alive.
The eyes had burned, yet they were not flames.
They were the gaze of a predator so ancient that prey had been bred into existence simply to amuse it.
The Eagle Knight did not walk like a soldier.
He walked like a judge.
Like one who had never doubted the righteousness of his blade.
And the horde.
That was the true horror.
They did not seem to fear him.
They worshiped him.
Their broken bodies bowed in ways bones should not bend.
Their slack mouths mumbled hymns too quiet to hear.
One dragged its fingernails across its own chest until the armor cracked, bleeding black fluid, and still it smiled.
Yes, they smiled.
Smiled as though pain were prayer.
Smiled as though the Eagle Knight's glance was salvation, even if it killed them.
El Como shivered within the boy's skin.
That was the most terrifying thing of all.
Not the armor.
Not the height.
Not the strength.
But the devotion.
Because devotion does not break.
Devotion does not reason.
Devotion kills with joy.
I should run.
The thought rose, sharp, desperate.
But where?
The doors were sealed, heavy, ancient.
And even if he slipped past—where could he flee?
The Knight's horde filled not just the hall.
They filled the world.
Or so it felt.
Running would not save him.
Possession was a thin mask.
Time was his only weapon.
Time—and silence.
Around him, the others still stood.
Their eyes darted, their lips tight.
One girl chewed her tongue bloody to stop herself from screaming.
Another boy's knees knocked so loudly it was a wonder the Knight had not returned.
One child simply stared upward, unblinking, eyes dry, as though terror had burned the tears away.
They were all broken in their own ways already.
And the test had not even begun.
Yes.
The test.
That word was the new monster in the room.
Invisible, but larger than any horde.
What would it be?
Blood?
Pain?
A hunt?
A riddle?
A slaughter?
No one knew.
And not knowing was worse.
Every second of silence was an enemy, stretching their fear longer, sharper, deeper.
El Como clenched the boy's hands into fists.
He would not be unready.
He could not be.
And then—
sound.
A whisper, quiet as breath, softer than silk.
"Como."
His name.
Lyra's voice.
She had spoken it.
Not the boy's name—
his.
Her lips had barely moved, but the syllables cut him like blades.
She knew.
Her eyes burned into him with unspoken questions.
Why are you here?
What have you done?
What are you hiding?
He had no answer.
Not yet.
Not with silence pressing so heavy.
He only prayed the Knight had not heard.
And then, faintly, distantly,
footsteps.
Not one.
Many.
The scrape of chains.
The clatter of hooks.
The hush of wings.
The horde was returning.
And with them—
the Eagle Knight.