Part Three – Shadows and Runes
Night inside the Citadel was no true night. The ceilings dimmed to deep indigo, and the mist thickened until corridors resembled dream-tunnels. In his assigned quarters — a chamber with a single black-silver bed and walls that whispered faintly — Alexander lay staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
Mara's voice crept into his thoughts, faint and distorted like a signal through static. Alexander… the Citadel is older than the Trials. Watch the Overseer. There are doors beneath its foundations, doors locked with seven runes…
He sat up. "Seven runes?" His skin tingled. The Ashborn Heart thumped once, hard. He felt an answering pulse from somewhere below, as if the Citadel itself were alive.
—locked for a reason— Mara's voice cut off abruptly.
He dressed and wandered the corridor, following an instinct he couldn't name. The hallways twisted and re-formed; staircases inverted; doorways vanished behind him. Eventually he found himself at the edge of a vast chasm inside the Citadel, its floor lost to darkness. A bridge of broken runes stretched out over nothing.
Below, faint glowing lines etched themselves into the dark — seven runes, identical to those Mara had whispered about.
He reached for the nearest rune. Ash flared on his fingertips, and the rune glowed brighter. His skin prickled with energy. The Heart inside him echoed the pattern, syncing like a heartbeat.
Visions flickered: his parents' faces, Mara's eyes, Alan's laughter turned to screams, Cael standing over a field of ash with a crown of roots and thorns. Then nothing.
He jerked his hand back, gasping.
"I'm not ready," he muttered. But the runes had marked him — faint glowing sigils now traced along his palm and wrist, like shackles of light.
From far above came a sound like a bell tolling in reverse. Dawn approached. The first challenge of the Citadel — the Guardian of the Ashborn Heart — awaited.
He straightened slowly, palms trembling. "Tomorrow," he whispered to the dark. "I'll be ready."
The seven runes pulsed once, in rhythm with the Ashborn Heart, and then fell silent.