His hand moved toward the sigil.
Fingers outstretched, barely trembling. The world around him dulled — not in sound, not in color, but in meaning. The clash of blades, the ragged breath of Shadow, the sharp cadence of Vos's steps — all of it peeled away, like mist fleeing from fire.
Time thickened.
Just before his skin met the obsidian surface, a jolt ran through him. Not pain. Not fear. Something deeper. A strange familiarity, like walking into a dream he'd forgotten he'd had.
And just like that—
He wasn't in the alley anymore.
A boy sat in a dim stone chamber, dwarfed by pillars and candlelight.
Not Edwin. Not truly.
Elias.
That was the name — a quiet thing from a quiet life. One that had slipped through the cracks of the old world, unnoticed and unloved. And now he wore someone else's skin. Someone else's ending.
But this memory wasn't his either.
Elias sat cross-legged, cloaked in a too-small mantle that reeked of mildew. The old Edwin — this body's former soul — huddled in the same spot long ago, within the catacombs beneath Thorneveil's Scholar Quarter.
A voice echoed from the dais. Smooth. Calculated. Coiled.
"The gods gifted bloodlines not for glory," the speaker said, pacing in a half-mask of burnished glass, "but to ensure obedience. They made you dependent. Predictable. Our Circle? We write our own rules. We etch them in flesh. And if that brings ruin—so be it. It will be ours."
Around him, hooded listeners remained still. A few scribbled notes in cramped journals. Others just watched. One sat perfectly still — hooded, face obscured, but unmistakable in her stillness.
Shadow.
Even then, she moved like a rumor.
The speaker unrolled a scroll — frayed at the edges, ink still wet with whispered power. Glyphs spiraled like a falling star. One rune, pulsing faintly in the candlelight, looked scorched.
"This is the Enchantment Sigil," he said. "Born not of inheritance. Not of fate. But of choice. A gate drawn in blood — and opened with sacrifice."
Young Edwin — the original — leaned forward.
So did Elias.
The vision broke.
Elias blinked, breath ragged. The alley shimmered back into place around him. The battle still raged, but it felt… distant. Like echoes in a tomb.
More fragments rose.
The rules of the world, as written in Rise of the Inhuman King, were brutal in their order.
Elemental Inheritance. Tied to bloodlines, ignited only through the Awakening Ceremony.
Divine Bonds. Bestowed by temples, rare and revered — often marking those meant to reshape history.
Arcane Arts. Tedious, learned magic. Incantation-heavy. Too slow to matter in real battlefields.
And then—
The unspoken path.
Pacts.
He remembered reading it — when Mirek Vayne appeared in the book. He had no noble crest No divine sigil. Just carved symbols in broken skin. A tongue blackened by forbidden chants.
Power that answered to no bloodline.
And when the hero faced him during the Siege of Hollowmere, a brutal internal purge disguised as a noble dispute — it took everything the hero had to survive.
Mirek didn't win.
He endured. He had managed to escape.
That's what made him terrifying.
And then came the hero.
Elias could still recall the passage — the first time Ardyn Kael appeared in golden armor, descending from the high sanctum.
He had awakened. Power surged from his bones like sunrise breaking through stone. The world tilted in his favor.
Even Elias — as a reader — had been moved.
Elias looked down.
The sigil pulsed inches from his palm. He could feel it.
He let his breath leave his lungs.
And reached.
Pain came first.
Blinding. Clean. Instead of burning, it consumed itself from within.
The moment Elias's fingers made contact, the sigil pulsed. Devoid of greeting, devoid of ceremony. It latched on.
A jagged pull shot up his arm like barbed wire threading into his veins. He tried to yank his hand back — too late. The symbols etched into the obsidian box ignited in red, veins of angry light crawling from stone to skin.
Elias gasped, stumbling back with the box in hand.
The glyphs weren't responding like a key fitting a lock.
They were absorbing him.
Drawing blood directly from his palm. Lines seared into his skin in a rough ring around his thumb — not clean runes but raw, reactive marks, alive and thrumming like open wounds.
And for a heartbeat, the world listened.
The air compressed.
Shadow turned — eyes wide — and lunged.
Her dagger flashed in the dark, aimed for his ribs.
A kill strike.
And then —
The sigil reacted.
It wasn't a spell. Control? It was far from that.
It was a defense reflex, like a scab tearing open and flinging blood in every direction. A wave of black-red energy exploded from Elias's body in a circle — something deeper, like gravity given form.
Shadow's blade was inches from his flesh when it hit her.
She flew back, crashing into the alley wall with a grunt. Brick cracked.
Vos shifted slightly, armor gleaming. Still unmoving. Still watching.
Elias dropped to one knee.
The sigil in his hand had gone dull, but the glyph carved into his palm glowed brighter now — burning.
And then it hit him.
Pain and suffering.
His heart seized. His vision collapsed inward. It felt like drowning in molten oil. His nerves twitched, his mouth opened — but no scream came out. Just a dry, choking gasp.
The contract wasn't complete.
He'd triggered it — half-born, unbound.
The sigil had chosen him, but the pact hadn't been sealed. It needed the chant. The altar. The offering.
Instead, he'd forced it into himself like a blade shoved into a locked door.
And now it was tearing its way in.
His fingers spasmed. His vision warped. His limbs buckled as the mark pulsed again, a ring of unstable power radiating from his hand — then vanishing like breath on glass.
He collapsed to the cobblestones, face-down, trembling.
Shadow coughed, staggering upright. Her blade clattered away. She looked at him her eyes were cold.
Unease.
Elias wasn't dead.
But something inside him had cracked wide open.
And the sigil wasn't done with him.
Atleast not yet.