Chapter 14 – The Fracture Awakens
The shadow creature rose from the shattered platform like smoke given form. Its body was a shifting mass of black, arms too long, fingers like blades. Red eyes burned in its formless head, glowing with a hunger older than the academy itself.
Karl's fists clenched. His chest was a storm. The whispers surged through his mind, so loud he thought his skull would split.
Break it.
Tear it apart.
You are mine.
The creature lunged.
Karl met it head-on.
His fist smashed into shadow, and for a heartbeat it was like striking mist. Then the force connected, rippling through the monster's body, tearing a hole through its chest. But instead of falling, the creature screamed—a sound like iron grinding on bone—and the hole closed again, shadows knitting back together.
"Great," Jax muttered, fumbling for a spell scroll. "It's a punching bag that heals itself."
"Stay back!" Karl shouted.
The creature's blade-hand slashed downward. Karl blocked with his forearm, the impact sending him skidding across the stone floor. He gritted his teeth and pushed back, muscles burning, veins standing out like cords.
Lira raised her staff, chanting quickly. A bolt of white fire shot from the crystal, slamming into the creature's side. The flame seared through shadow, burning it to ash—but again, the wound healed, slower this time but inevitable.
"It's bound to the chamber!" Lira cried. "As long as those runes burn, it can't be destroyed!"
"Then snuff the runes!" Jax shouted, tearing open his scroll. He unleashed a burst of wind magic that scattered the glowing lines across the floor. The light flickered, dimming for a breath.
Karl saw his opening.
He charged, every step cracking stone beneath his boots. The creature swung again, but Karl ducked low, came up under its guard, and drove his fist straight through its head. The impact detonated like thunder, shadows exploding outward in a storm of black dust.
The runes across the chamber shattered.
The creature's body convulsed, twisting in on itself. But as it broke apart, Karl felt something slip into him. A surge of power—cold, violent, endless. It coursed through his veins, dragging his heart into rhythm with a deeper pulse. The Void King's pulse.
The whispers screamed.
Yes.
Yes.
Break them all.
Karl staggered. His fists glowed faintly, black smoke coiling from his knuckles. His vision tunneled. For a moment, he wasn't in the chamber. He was somewhere else—standing before a throne of bone and shadow, a crown of jagged fire watching him from above.
"Fracture," the voice said. Not in his head this time. In the world around him.
Karl roared and slammed his fist into the floor. The stone cracked in a spiderweb around him, the echo snapping the vision away.
When the dust cleared, the creature was gone. Only Karl remained, chest heaving, fists trembling.
Silence.
Then the chamber doors burst open.
Professors stormed in, their staffs glowing with protective wards. Behind them came enforcers in armored robes, their sigils blazing. They stopped short at the sight: the shattered runes, the broken platform, the mural of the Void King, and Karl standing at the center with smoke still curling from his fists.
"What have you done?" one professor whispered.
"It wasn't him!" Lira cried, rushing forward. "The seal was breaking already—we only stumbled in!"
But the professors' eyes were on Karl. Always on Karl.
"He is the fracture," an enforcer said, his voice hard. "He should be contained before the rot spreads."
Karl's jaw tightened. He wanted to shout, to defend himself—but he wasn't sure he could. His fists still glowed faintly, betraying him.
Headmaster Orwen pushed through the crowd. His eyes swept the scene once, twice. Then he raised a hand, silencing the room.
"No containment," he said. "No punishment."
The enforcers bristled. "Headmaster—"
"Silence," Orwen snapped. His gaze fixed on Karl. "The fracture has awakened. We cannot cage it. We can only guide it."
His voice lowered, though every word carried. "Karl Draven, your path is no longer that of an ordinary student. What sleeps inside you will not stay silent forever. You must master it—or it will master us all."
Karl's fists finally stopped glowing. He met the Headmaster's stare, heart heavy, the whispers still coiling at the edges of his mind.
He didn't say what he was thinking: that maybe he couldn't control it. That maybe it wasn't meant to be controlled.
The chamber seemed to lean closer around him, the mural's shadowed king still grinning down.
And for the first time, Karl felt afraid—not of the Void King. But of himself.