"To those who dream beneath the folds of silence, the stars are only scars of an unfinished wound."
—Inscription on the Fourth Chamber of Stillness, Imperial Observatory.
---
The room had no windows. No torches. Yet light existed.
It pulsed.
Soft, breathing, wrong.
Twelve cloaked figures sat cross-legged in a ring of white ash and powdered bone. They did not move, not truly. Their bodies were still. But their veins twitched with a madness that stirred the unseen.
At the center of the ring stood the Hollow Bowl—a glass sculpture shaped like an inverted eye, filled with milky essence that reflected nothing.
A pigeon, its wings etched with faint symbols, landed atop the bowl with a whisper of air.
The eldest of the Watchers reached out—not with hands, but through sheer will—and the crystal-letter dissolved midair, its contents bleeding into the milky substance. Words formed inside, written in spirals.
She has accepted.
Phase Two begins.
The boy dreams still. The academy stirs. The Blood-Sun heir has arrived.
The altar needs warmth.
A breathless giggle echoed around the circle, but no mouths moved.
"She still dreams of thrones," rasped one.
"She drinks dust and thinks it wine," answered another.
"She is cracked. She is perfect," said a third.
Then silence.
They turned their masked faces to the hollow bowl and began to chant—not in words, but in rhythm, a pounding tempo that made no sound, yet throbbed in the bones of the floor.
One of them—taller, wrapped in gray instead of black—spoke aloud.
"She believes herself a spider. But the web is alive. The web dreams."
A pause.
"And the dreamer?" another Watcher asked, voice like rust.
The tall figure tilted its head. "He forgets what he is. That is what makes him sacred."
A distant sound. Wet, slow. Like stone being chewed.
The floor cracked slightly beneath their circle.
A ripple passed through the bowl. The milky fluid hissed. A faint image appeared.
A pale figure beneath nine thrones of ash. Sleeping. Breathing. Faintly smiling.
The Watchers did not speak this time. They bent their heads low.
One whispered:
"He is not dead. Merely waiting for the knife to remember his name."
And then, the tall one raised their hand. The floor sealed. The image vanished. The circle straightened.
One Watcher reached into their robes and removed a box—obsidian, sealed with strands of hair soaked in silver.
"Send it," they said.
"To whom?"
The Watcher smiled, lips hidden behind the mask. "To the last flame that never died. She waits atop the academy. Watching. Smiling."
---
Beneath the moonlight, the academy library tower pierced the night.
There stood Lady Ishal, wind billowing her silks. The pigeon landed in her palm. The box—sealed and humming—tucked into its claws.
She kissed the bird's head.
"Fly. Let the gods weep if they must. I will rise through rot and embers."
She released it.
Her eyes turned downward, toward the academy grounds, where a boy stood alone, unsure of his place, unaware of the thousand eyes that watched his every breath.
Her lips curled again.
Not in love.
Not in hate.
But in devotion to something vast, broken, and wrong.