Chapter Four: The Question That Waited
I didn't answer the question.
I couldn't. Because it didn't come in words. It came in a feeling, like being watched from behind the eyes. Like a wound reopening in a place I didn't know I had.
The Grove was silent. The masked figures said nothing. No chants. No dramatic rituals. Just quiet. And a pressure in the air like something holding its breath.
The glow on my card deepened.
Still not bright. Still not showy like a Light card or fiery like an Elemental's. No. This was low and cold and steady. Like the stars you can only see when you're completely alone.
One of the figures stepped forward. The cloth-wrapped man.
"I ask you again, Aleister," he said. "Do you want to know what you are?"
I nodded. Once.
He didn't smile. "Then kneel."
I did.
He reached forward, not with power, but with care. His fingers hovered just above my card. The moment his skin neared the surface, something reacted.
The air snapped.
The Grove pulsed like a heartbeat.
Then my body locked up.
Not in pain. Not from fear. But like gravity had rewritten itself around me. The ground rippled. Not visibly, but through me. The trees blurred. The masks became echoes. My hearing dropped out, replaced by a low static roar in my blood.
Then I fell.
I didn't fall down.
I fell away.
Away from the world, away from the Grove, away from the voice I had always tried to silence, the voice that had asked, for seventeen years, if I was truly nothing… or just not yet.
The place I landed wasn't a dream.
It was too sharp for that.
The sky above me wasn't sky, it was a lid. A swirling, cracked firmament of black and deep violet clouds, pulsing with red veins of light like some wounded eye. The air was thick and alive. It pushed against my skin like a tide that wanted me to drown standing up.
The ground beneath my feet pulsed. Not with heat. With something older. With intent.
I stood. Or tried to.
Then I saw them.
Figures moving through the mist. Tall. Crooked. Not human. Their silhouettes were jagged, too angular for flesh. Some with single horns. Some with two. A few dragged weapons that shimmered with crimson sigils. Others moved like they were searching for something.
One of them passed within inches of me.
It didn't react.
I didn't breathe.
Only the one destined to see you will see you, I remembered. Old theory. Old superstition. But maybe true. Maybe the only thing keeping me alive.
I turned slowly, forcing my legs to obey. There was a path ahead. Not carved. Not lit. But my card floated forward on its own, leading the way.
So I followed.
After what felt like an hour, maybe a lifetime. I reached it.
A structure.
Massive. Broken. But regal.
It didn't belong in this wasteland. It had style. Lines. Architecture. Pillars etched with marks I couldn't read but felt burn across my chest. This wasn't a temple.
It was a throne hall.
And I didn't belong in it.
Which is exactly why I entered.
The inside was colder. Not by temperature, but by presence. The kind of cold that makes you question whether you're real. The walls shimmered with chains that moved like vines, flexing with breath. And at the end, seated upon a throne of blackened bone and obsidian metal...
Was him.
He wasn't like the others. He didn't stalk. He didn't crouch or whisper.
He ruled.
Three horns curled back from his head. His arms were wrapped in burning chains. His skin was carved with runes I could almost read but dared not try to understand.
He didn't look at me.
He felt me.
And still, I stepped forward.
Then his voice came, not through the air, but straight into the marrow of my bones.
"Who dares enter the throne room of Irikrit?"