Chapter 4 The Hollow Crown

The morning after the silver fire, Caelan awoke in a cold bed that wasn't his, tucked beneath velvet sheets that smelled faintly of cedar, dust, and something older-iron and parchment, maybe blood. The mark on his wrist had stopped glowing, but it throbbed, a heartbeat of something buried too deep to name.

Astra sat in a chair nearby, wide awake and staring out the window at a fog that hadn't moved since dawn. Her knuckles were pale where they clenched the armrests, and the air between them hung with words unspoken and memories they hadn't yet earned.

"You passed the First Gate," she said without looking. "It doesn't let everyone through."

Caelan sat up slowly, the cold air biting his chest where his shirt clung damp to his skin. "And now?"

"Now you're bound."

The words fell like an oath.

He remembered the glyphs, the light, the ancient voice that had sung not in melody but in purpose. It had called him by a name not his own.

He hadn't yet dared to speak it aloud.

Outside, bells chimed in threes-a summons only certain ears could hear. Astra stood, her voice hollow. "Classes are canceled for you now. You study elsewhere."

He followed her, silent, through secret corridors and mirror-cloaked turns that shouldn't have existed in any human architecture. Doors opened where none had been, and staircases bent as they descended, as if folding to accommodate them.

Beneath the school lay the Arcarium.

A cathedral of black stone and broken moonlight, filled with shelves that reached beyond sight and whispered in tongues that bled from one ear to the other.

A boy was waiting for them.

Or perhaps something that wore the shape of a boy.

His name was Elion, and his smile was the kind that carved, not comforted.

"New blood," Elion murmured, stepping forward and circling Caelan like a starved wolf. "You smell like song and shadow."

"Elion," Astra warned, and he backed off, laughing.

"I only wanted to greet our newest Marked."

Caelan said nothing. The mark on his wrist tingled.

Elion tapped a tome bound in living bark and handed it over. "Your first trial begins at dusk. Read fast."

He did.

The words on the pages rearranged themselves as he read, responding to his thoughts, revealing only what he was ready to see. Astra coached him through the layers, pointing out traps and lies embedded in the truth.

By the time dusk fell, he knew the name of the beast beneath the chapel.

And the price of waking it.

The trial was not a test of strength.

It was a memory.

Caelan stood in a chamber flooded with shadows and was forced to relive his mother's death-only this time, he saw the mark burning on her skin too.

She'd tried to hide it.

He'd never known.

When he screamed, the chamber gave him no echo.

Only silence.

Only Astra's hand, warm in the dark, pulling him back.

"You passed," she whispered, though her eyes looked haunted.

Later, she told him her truth.

Her twin sister had vanished beneath the Arcarium years ago.

Taken, not by accident, but as part of a pact.

Astra had bargained to bring her back.

The mark had accepted.

But the price was delay.

She could search, but never retrieve. Not until she found the Second Key.

And now Caelan was her partner.

The Arcarium appointed bonds.

Not friendships.

Contracts.

They began to explore the lower levels of the Arcarium together, where books breathed and doors aged backwards. In a corridor of glass bones, they encountered something new.

A girl named Sorell.

Sorell bore a double mark-a twisting ouroboros that burned at both wrists.

"She's broken the cycle," Elion said, appearing as he always did-uninvited.

Sorell was older, her eyes quiet with ancient grief. "Or maybe I'm what happens when it runs too long."

She joined them, at the Arcarium's suggestion.

Together they uncovered the Temple Door.

Carved into the ceiling of a library that floated upside-down.

It could only be opened with blood, but not theirs.

"What if we don't want to open it?" Caelan asked.

Sorell smiled sadly. "It will open anyway."

The first twist came when Astra was summoned in the night and didn't return.

Only her voice did.

Trapped in a mirror.

The Arcarium held her soul.

To get it back, Caelan would need to face the chapel beast alone.

He descended by the forbidden stair.

Fought his way past illusions that wore his face.

And came face to face with the beast: a wolf of bone and smoke, with the same mark burned into its skull.

It knew him.

"You are the echo," it growled.

And then it attacked.

He bled.

He burned.

And then he remembered the name the glyphs had given him.

He spoke it.

And the beast fell silent.

Kneeling.

Tamed?

No.

Bound.

It merged into his shadow.

When Caelan returned, the mirror shattered.

Astra fell free.

But now her eyes were different.

Two shades of moon.

"It left something in me," she whispered.

They didn't speak of it again.

The Arcarium turned a page.

A new trial was set.

They were sent into the dream library-a place that only existed when you closed your eyes and whispered the passphrase into silence.

Inside, the books wrote themselves.

But they weren't alone.

Elion had followed.

He opened a forbidden page.

Reality cracked.

The Arcarium itself screamed.

The dream collapsed.

And when they awoke, everything had changed.

The school above was silent.

Frozen.

Everyone else was gone.

Or paused.

Trapped in time.

Only the Marked remained.

Elion laughed. "We flipped the hourglass. Now we walk backwards."

Caelan looked at the sky.

The moon had turned red.

And in its face, he saw the wolf.

Smiling.

Hungry.

The hunt had begun again.

But this time, he wasn't prey.

He was the key.

The chapter would continue...