El Como lay sprawled under the crooked skeleton of a tree, panting like a man who had just run from destiny itself and somehow managed to trip it on the way out. His chest rose and fell, the runes etched into his skin still glowing in that strange, bright black, a color that should not exist yet insisted on being very fashionable across his ribs and forearms.
"Note to self," he wheezed, "never challenge a Knight with wings. Or rather—never challenge him, never meet him, never exist in the same postcode. Yes. That should work."
The forest around him was loud with insects, the occasional owl, and the rustle of branches that always sounded like whispers when one was on edge. He closed his eyes, half-hoping he might wake up in his bed, half-hoping he might not wake up at all. Either option was preferable to dealing with more Knights.
But the runes pulsed again. Once. Twice.
El Como sat up, glaring down at them. "Oh, don't you start glowing at me. You're not the ones who had to dodge a seven-foot spear that shoots light beams like an overachieving lighthouse. Where were you then, eh?"
They pulsed again, brighter, crawling faintly across his skin as if expanding.
He groaned. "Wonderful. Tattoos with stage fright. Now they've decided they want more room."
The glow wasn't just light. It was a pull, faint but steady, as though something beneath the earth had tied a string to his veins. El Como had always prided himself on ignoring responsibilities, summons, and unpaid debts, but this tug felt annoyingly insistent.
"Fine," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet. "Lead the way, mysterious cursed graffiti. Let's go find whatever terrible idea you're dragging me toward."
The pull led him deeper into the forest.
It was not a friendly forest. The trees grew too close together, their roots like bony fingers clawing through the soil. Every so often, a patch of mist would coil around his ankles, damp and cold, carrying with it the smell of wet stone and something faintly metallic.
El Como muttered sarcastic commentary under his breath to keep himself sane. "Yes, perfect. Midnight stroll, forest ambiance, haunted atmosphere. Just missing a violin soundtrack and a ghost bride. Truly the universe spares no expense for me."
After what felt like hours—though his sense of time had long ago gone on vacation without him—the ground sloped downward. Rocks jutted out like broken teeth, and he found himself staring at the mouth of an underground passage.
It was half-collapsed, the remains of an old stone arch framing a stairwell that led into darkness. Moss dripped from the stones. The air that drifted up was cold and sour, carrying the faint hiss of something moving far below.
The runes on his body blazed the moment he looked at it.
El Como rubbed his face. "Of course. A spooky underground ruin. Because why would the glowing runes ever lead me somewhere safe, like a bakery or a tavern? No, they crave mildew and despair. Fine. Fine!"
He stepped inside.
The staircase wound downward longer than it had any right to. El Como's boots scuffed against stone that hadn't been touched in decades. The silence pressed close around him, broken only by the faint scrape of his own breathing and the occasional sarcastic quip he whispered just to hear something.
"Note to future Como: if you find stairs that take longer than three bad decisions to descend, turn back."
Finally, the stairway opened into a wide hall. Or at least, it had once been a hall. Now it was a cracked, ruined chamber, filled with toppled columns and walls etched with faint sigils similar to his own. They glowed dully, not bright enough to read by but enough to paint the whole chamber in ghostly outlines.
And he was not alone.
Figures stood in the chamber. Dozens.
At first, El Como thought they were statues. Perfectly still, their bodies etched with cracks, their skin pale as marble. Some sat slumped against the wall, others froze mid-motion as though caught in the middle of turning. Their eyes glowed faintly.
When one of them twitched, El Como realized they were not statues.
"Oh. Oh good. A crypt full of nightmare people. Just what I wanted," he muttered.
The nearest one shifted its head slowly, the sound of cracking stone accompanying the movement. Its mouth opened, dust spilling out as it whispered in a voice like sand on metal.
"Another… marked one…"
El Como waved cheerfully. "Yes, hello, marked one here. Passing through, don't mind me. Just following my glowy tattoos. I'll be gone before you can, ah, crumble further."
The figure tilted its head, glowing eyes narrowing. "He… returns."
"Who?" El Como asked warily. "If you say 'the Knight,' I'm leaving."
But the figure did not answer. Instead, its cracked body shuddered, and faint black light seeped from the lines in its skin. One by one, the others in the hall began to stir, their whispers rising in broken unison:
"He returns… the Breach returns… the seal breaks…"
El Como backed away, hands raised. "Now, now, don't all wake up at once. I can handle one creepy rock-zombie at a time, but this is getting excessive."
The runes on his arms blazed brighter in response to their whispers.
The statues—no, not statues, prisoners—turned toward him, eyes burning.
And El Como, realizing where this was going, sighed deeply. "I should have just let the Knight skewer me."
The first one moved.
It stepped forward, joints grinding, its hand stretched toward him. Not in aggression—not exactly—but in recognition. Like one cursed creature acknowledging another.
El Como instinctively stumbled back. "Nope. Nope! I don't do cult initiations. I'm allergic to creepy brotherhoods. Also to responsibility. So thank you, but I'll pass."
But when he tried to leave, the runes pulled harder, dragging him a step forward.
The prisoners groaned in unison, a chorus of broken stone. "He cannot leave… he is bound…"
El Como yanked at his own glowing arm like it was a leash. "Excuse me! Whose body is this? Mine! Who gets to decide where it goes? Also mine!—ah, stop pulling!"
The chamber shook faintly. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Something deeper, below even this room, answered the prisoners' whispers. A low thrum, like a heartbeat pressed into stone. It echoed in El Como's chest, making the runes blaze so bright he winced.
"Oh no," he muttered. "That's the sound of Plot happening. I hate it when Plot happens."
One of the prisoners stepped close enough that its cracked face was inches from his own. Its eyes flared with that same impossible black-light.
"You are the key," it rasped. "The Breach lives through you."
El Como swallowed. "Oh, splendid. I always wanted to be a metaphor. Can I be a cheerful one? A rainbow key, perhaps? No? Just a doom key? Wonderful."
The prisoner reached out and pressed its cracked palm to his chest.
For a moment, El Como's vision turned inside out.
He saw… corridors, endless corridors, doors upon doors. A school filled with twisting, impossible halls. Behind some doors: light. Behind others: nothing but screaming void. And in the center of it all, a throne of broken wings and shattered lances.
He stumbled back, gasping. "Nope. Nope! I didn't see that. I reject your vision. Return it to sender!"
The chamber pulsed again with that subterranean heartbeat. The prisoners groaned, their whispers turning to a chant.
"The seal breaks… the seal breaks…"
El Como turned and bolted for the stairs.
His legs, to their credit, agreed with him. He ran faster than he had since the Knight's chase. Behind him, the whispers rose in volume, echoing up the stone like a funeral song.
By the time he staggered out into the forest again, gasping, the runes still blazed like fire across his arms. The moonlight seemed too bright, the air too thin.
He collapsed against a tree, panting.
"Perfect. Absolutely perfect. So not only am I hunted by a Knight with a personal vendetta, but apparently I'm also some kind of key to breaking seals and waking crypt zombies. Congratulations, Como. You're now an indispensable part of the apocalypse."
The runes pulsed once more, as if smug about it.
El Como's groan echoed flatly into the forest.
He lay flat on the damp ground, staring up at the moon, which, as usual, had no sympathy for him. The trees around him whispered with every faint breeze, but he knew the real whisper wasn't in the leaves. It was still in his chest, stitched into his ribs by the glowing runes.
That subterranean heartbeat hadn't stopped.
It pulsed through him in time with his own. Two beats at once. His heart… and something else's.
He sat up and slapped his own chest. "Stop syncing with me. I didn't agree to a duet."
The runes answered with a smug glow.
El Como muttered, "You know, for tattoos, you're awfully opinionated. I'd trade you for a badly spelled sailor's anchor design any day."
The forest didn't laugh. The forest, in fact, had gone very quiet. The kind of quiet that made owls rethink their career choices and bugs shut up mid-chirp.
Then came the sound.
Not footsteps, not wings. Just… resonance. A vibration in the bones, like a string being plucked too deep inside the world. It made the air quiver, it made El Como's teeth itch.
And he knew.
The Eagle Knight was coming back.
The students at the Ability School felt it first. Some were still awake, whispering about the earlier hunt, about how the intruder—whoever he was—had managed to escape the unstoppable Knight. Their stories grew taller by the minute: he had shapeshifted, he had dissolved into smoke, he had bribed the Knight with a joke so clever it confused him.
The Headmaster was not amused. He paced in his tower, staring out at the night, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.
Because he too felt the vibration in the air.
The Eagle Knight had not finished his promise.
And worse, something else was moving with him.
El Como stumbled through the trees, trying very hard not to admit he was lost. "I'm not lost. The forest is lost. I'm exactly where I meant to be: far away from Knights and spooky undead basement people."
But the runes kept glowing, brighter now, not with the steady pulse of earlier but in wild flashes, like signals. Like they were answering something.
He didn't like that.
He stopped by a crooked stream, crouched down, and peered at his reflection in the water. His face looked pale, exhausted, more cracks of light crawling over his skin than he remembered.
"Oh, brilliant. Now I'm becoming a glowstick. Very inconspicuous. Just what a hunted fugitive needs."
The water shimmered, but not with his reflection.
For an instant, he saw the underground chamber again, the prisoners whispering, their eyes fixed on him. And beyond them—deeper still—he glimpsed a throne of feathers. Not white. Not black. A throne woven of broken, bleeding wings, sitting in a hall too vast to exist.
The vision blinked away with the ripple of the stream, but El Como reeled back, falling onto the mud.
"Nope! Nope! I didn't see that. Absolutely not. Forget it. Delete it from memory."
But the runes hummed, and the forest hummed with them.
And then—
The trees bent in one great shudder, as though bowing. A gust of air struck him, cold and sharp.
The Eagle Knight had arrived.
The Knight descended into the clearing as though the forest itself had opened a path for him. His wings folded with the sound of grinding steel. His visor burned with that hollow light.
"You run far," the Knight said, voice echoing like a verdict in a courtroom. "But distance is nothing. Promises remain."
El Como scrambled to his feet, plastering on his usual grin that fooled absolutely no one. "Ah, my favorite glowing-eyed stalker! Lovely of you to drop in. Did you miss me?"
The Knight lifted his lance. The tip shimmered with condensed judgment.
"The Breach lives in you."
"Correction," El Como said quickly, pointing to himself. "The Breach rents space in me. Short-term lease. Non-renewable. You should really take this up with my landlord."
But the Knight didn't move. Didn't strike.
Instead, his visor tilted slightly, as if listening.
The forest throbbed again with that subterranean heartbeat. And for the first time, El Como thought he heard it not just in his chest, but in the Knight's as well.
The Knight stiffened. His lance wavered.
And the voice came.
Not from the Knight. Not from El Como. Not from any one place.
It was the voice of the earth itself, broken stone speaking through cracks.
"Unseal."
The Knight staggered back half a step. "No."
"Unseal."
The runes on El Como's arms blazed so bright he almost screamed. His skin felt like it was burning from the inside.
"I'm voting 'no' as well!" El Como shouted, clutching his arms. "We're doing a democracy, right? Two against one?"
The voice did not care. The heartbeat grew stronger, each thud shaking the soil, rattling branches.
The Knight leveled his lance again—not at El Como, but at the ground itself.
"Stay back," the Knight commanded. "Do not answer it."
El Como blinked. "Oh, wonderful. Now you're telling me not to do the thing my cursed skin is forcing me to do. Do you think I enjoy this? Do I look like someone who wakes up and says, 'Yes, today I'll be a key to an apocalyptic seal'?"
The ground cracked.
A fissure split the clearing, dust and smoke belching out. Shapes moved beneath the soil—winged shadows, clawed silhouettes, things half-born and half-buried.
The runes screamed across El Como's body, every symbol flaring in pain and hunger. He fell to his knees, teeth gritted, a laugh bubbling out of him despite himself.
"Oh yes," he rasped. "This is exactly how I wanted to spend my evening. Chased by a Knight, possessed by tattoos, and now—now the earth itself wants me to play midwife for its horrors. Ten out of ten. Would recommend."
The voice rose louder, deafening.
"UNSEAL."
And with that, the fissure split wide.
From the depths, something began to climb.
El Como barely saw it through the light. Feathers—if they could be called that—rose first, black and white both, shredded and glistening as though dipped in tar. A head followed, more avian than human, but twisted, eyes burning with the same black light as the runes.
The Eagle Knight braced himself, wings spreading in defiance. His voice rang out like a blade on stone:
"You will not rise."
The creature laughed, and the sound was like a thousand broken lances clattering to the floor.
El Como, still clutching his arms, groaned. "I'm starting to think maybe—just maybe—breaking into this school wasn't worth the trouble."
Part II ends here.
This sets up the confrontation:
The underground "sealed thing" has begun to rise.
El Como's runes are tied directly to it, making him the unwilling "key."
The Eagle Knight is suddenly less interested in punishing El Como and more focused on preventing this thing from away.