Chapter Four: The Cracked Seal
The sky had turned gray.
Not from the clouds, but from silence—the sort that precedes a storm bursting forth. Not a leaf moved. The air itself appeared to be holding its breath.
Elarion stood over the seal in the ground, the dim light below it throbbing like a heartbeat—his own. The pendant on his chest glittered in tandem, brighter now, threads of gold-light tracing its path like veins as it fought to heal.
He did not know what was underneath the rock. Only that something was calling him.
Something old.
Something that remembered him even before he knew his own name.
He breathed in. And again.
He placed his hand on the seal.
The reaction was immediate.
The runes flared with light, searing against the moss and dirt. The air around him warped, pulling inwards, as if the world itself were bending towards that single moment. Elarion's feet stepped back, but the light held him fast—pulling him, testing him.
Then came the sound.
Not a voice. A memory, fragmented and piped directly into his mind.
Children laughing. A girl with silver eyes. A scream. Fire.
His hand snapped back.
The light vanished. The runes dissipated.
Elarion dropped and fell to his knees, gasping, the chill earth nipping through his flesh. He coughed up ash. Heard nothing. Felt everything.
It was as if something inside him had nearly opened—and the world had recoiled.
His vision clouded briefly, but when it cleared, he found he was not alone.
There was a shape beyond the treeline.
Wrapped in darkness. Silent. Watching.
Elarion's breath was caught in his throat.
The figure lacked a face.
Only a mask—white, smooth, divided by a single vertical groove from top to middle. Half of it was in shadow, as though light feared to approach. And it was motionless, yet Elarion was aware of it like a presence at the nape of his spine.
He slowly stood.
The figure tilted its head.
And then, wordlessly, it vanished and went into the woods.
Elarion pursued it, branches lashing against him, roots grasping at his ankles, yet the figure drifted like mist—always just beyond his grasp. He burst through a curtain of dangling vines—
And stopped.
The figure had vanished.
But laid on top of a moss-covered rock instead, was a folded piece of parchment.
He received it with shaking hands.
There were no words—a symbol only.
The same star as on the arch. Cracked down the middle.
But now… a second crack had developed. He didn't know what it meant. But he knew how it felt. Something was waking.
And the world wasn't ready yet.