For three days, Arjun remained within the chamber of black stone and golden veins, the air heavy with the scent of myrrh and moss. The hooded healers came and went like the tide. Silent, and deliberate, their hands always warm, their salves always cool.

  Some never spoke a word, eyes hidden beneath layers of fabric. Others, more curious or perhaps simply kinder, began to speak.

  The first to show his face was a young man with burn scars that crawled up his jaw. He spoke softly, introduced himself only as Loran, and asked no questions in return.

  The second was a woman with a voice like a flute and eyes ringed with kohl. Kiva, who hummed as she worked and once laughed when Arjun flinched from a bitter salve.

  More followed, women mostly. One plaited her hair with brass wire, another wore rings of bone on each finger. They revealed faces slowly, as if unveiling pieces of themselves, not all, but enough.

  Arjun watched them, listened, and said little. They didn’t seem to mind.

  When he asked about Vashisht or where he was, they would only say, “He is busy, and you are with the Sable Order.”

  When he pressed, their expressions would cool, and they'd murmur, “He will explain, when the time is right.”

  So, he waited.

  The dreams returned, but they were different now, murky, hollow. The scenes blurred like water-stained parchment, yet each time he woke, there was the same cold weight in his chest, the echo of something unspeakable.

  He couldn’t remember the faces, but he remembered the blood.

  Children, always children, always dying. He would wake gasping, sweat soaking the sheets, hands clenched as if still trying to stop something that had already happened.

  By the morning of what he assumed to be the fourth day, a woman with a tattooed throat gently placed her hand on his shoulder and said, “You are healed enough now. If you wish to walk, the door is yours.”

  Arjun sat in the quiet for a long time after she left. The chamber felt smaller suddenly, like a cocoon about to split.

  He glanced at the numbers etched across the inside of his wrist. No ink, no scar, but there all the same.

  Core: 55

  Acclimation: 35

  Eclipse: 95

  He didn’t know what they truly meant, not yet. But he knew enough to be afraid of them.

  Throwing aside the sheet, he stood and dressed, gray tunic, leather cords to tie the sleeves. The boots were soft and new, left beside his bed the night before.

  He stepped toward the door, the rune-marked arch that had stood still for days, and placed his hand against the cool stone.

  The runes pulsed gently, as if recognizing him, and parted with a breath of sound. The corridor beyond was dim, torchlit, carved from the same dark stone as the chamber but larger, older.

  Arjun stepped through, eyes sharp, jaw set. The world was waiting, and he wanted answers.

  The castle stretched far beneath the earth, its corridors wide as rivers, walls ribbed with old runes and veins of flickering crystal. The air carried a low, humming pressure, like the breath of something massive slumbering just out of sight.

  Arjun moved cautiously through the hallways, boots muffled against the stone, eyes flicking toward every shadow.

  Others moved around him. Silent, hooded figures, their steps sure, their faces hidden. Some turned toward him as they passed, offering subtle nods. Others ignored him entirely, gliding like wraiths down halls that branched in ways the mind didn’t like to follow.

  He turned a corner sharply, and collided into someone solid. A startled breath left his chest as he stumbled back, hands instinctively raised, shadow flickering in his blood like a warning.

  “Ah,” came a familiar voice, calm and amused. “I was just coming to find you.”

  Arjun blinked. “Vashisht?”

  The old scholar stood there, robed in the same layered silks, his beard neatly combed, his eyes sharp as ever.

  “You nearly knocked me flat,” Vashisht said with a chuckle. “A good sign. It means the healing worked.”

  Arjun’s gaze narrowed. “You said you’d come. It’s been three days.”

  Vashisht exhaled through his nose, tired. “Yes, and I meant to. But the Order’s needs... they don’t always align with my intentions.” He glanced over his shoulder, then nodded for Arjun to walk with him. “Come, You have questions. It’s time you got some answers.”

  They moved together through a side passage, dimly lit but warm with torchlight. The walls here bore different symbols, etched in blackened silver, not gold. Arjun brushed one lightly as they passed.

  “What is the Sable Order?” he asked. “They said you were with them.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Vashisht smiled faintly. “We’re not a military, nor priests. Think of us as... watchers, scholars, guardians of restraint. We believe Eclipse is not evil, but dangerous. Powerful, and misunderstood.”

  He gestured around them. “This place, these halls, are old. They were built long before we came. We only inherited them, and with them, a purpose.”

  “To keep the Eclipse in check?”

  “Exactly,” Vashisht nodded. “Too many arrive here and treat power like salvation, especially those touched by blood. That caste... they change too fast. Their Eclipse reshapes them, breaks them.”

  Arjun’s brow furrowed. “You think the Shadow caste is different?”

  “I do. Shadows pull from unseen realms, yes, but they channel, they command, they don’t become. Blood-wielders… often lose that line.”

  They passed under a high arch, beyond which loomed a stairwell spiraling downward.

  “And corruption?” Arjun asked, his voice quieter.

  Vashisht’s expression darkened. “Corruption is the cost of power untempered. When someone pushes Eclipse too far, too fast, when they hit one hundred too often, it begins.”

  “One hundred?” Arjun echoed.

  Vashisht nodded solemnly. “When Eclipse reaches a hundred, it renews, and becomes zero again, but stronger. It’s called a Bloom. Some see it as ascension, some as a curse. We know it's both. We’ve watched too many bloom again and again, growing in strength, yes, but losing themselves. Their memories, their thoughts, their shape.”

  He paused. “Most go mad, and others become monsters. You’ve seen the Abysswretches, haven’t you?”

  The word made Arjun’s stomach drop.

  Yes, he had.

  His thoughts slid back to the Sunken Prison, to the Drowned Shadows. The things that wore faces, the blood puppets, the cruel laughter, the green eyes, and then, he remembered his own number.

  Ninety-five.

  Arjun stopped walking.

  “Vashisht,” he said, voice strained. “My Eclipse… it’s at ninety-five.”

  The older man turned sharply. For a moment, all the calm in his face fled.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t... I didn’t know what it meant until just now, but it’s at ninety-five.”

  Vashisht’s eyes widened. “How many times have you used it since you arrived?”

  “I.. I don’t know. I didn’t count. I just... It saved me. I used it when I had to.”

  The healer was silent for a beat. Then he moved, fast for someone his age, gripping Arjun’s arm with surprising strength.

  “We need to stabilize you,” he said. “Now, before something inside you decides to do it for us.”

  “But the others,” Arjun said, breath short, “can’t they see...?”

  “No,” Vashisht snapped, already moving. “The numbers are yours alone. That’s the danger. You feel normal...until you aren’t.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Vashisht didn’t answer immediately. They turned into a corridor that sloped downward, runes flaring alive as they passed.

  “To the Eclipse Vault,” he said grimly. “Before you bloom.”

  The vault was colder than the rest of the castle.

  Its walls were carved from obsidian and veined with dull red stone, like old scars. Runes floated mid-air, silent and pulsing, casting strange shadows that moved even when nothing else did. Arjun followed Vashisht through the great arched doorway, his steps heavy, his breath unsteady.

  The chamber was circular, domed, its center marked by a raised platform inlaid with concentric rings of bone-white crystal.

  Standing at its heart was a man Vashisht referred to as Oris the Bound.

  He was tall and gaunt, wrapped in layers of dark cloth and bandages that wound around his arms, throat, and face, leaving only his eyes exposed. They gleamed like wet ink, deep, hollow, inaccessible. Strange metal sigils were fused into his skin, humming faintly. One of his arms moved slower than the other, bound in a lattice of shadowglass.

  When he turned, the room seemed to flinch.

  Vashisht stepped forward, grave. “He’s blooming.”

  “And you brought him here?” Oris rasped, his voice a brittle, scraping thing. “He should be in the courtyard. Open sky, grounded stone.”

  "It's his first bloom and one which will definitely interest you." Vashisth said.

  Then, for the first time, Oris frowned, a subtle twist of the thin visible flesh above the cloth. “How long has he been here?”

  Vashisht didn’t answer at once. He met Oris’s gaze, and when he finally spoke, his voice dropped like a stone into silence.

  “A week.”

  The silence that followed stretched, oppressive.

  Even the runes flickered.

  Oris turned slowly to face Arjun, his eerie gaze sharp now, cutting. “A week,” he echoed, as though tasting something rotten. “You should be unconscious. Dead, even. No one blooms in a week, eclipse doesn’t work like that.”

  Arjun shifted uncomfortably, the thrum in his bones louder now, heavier. The darkness inside him coiled, eager, hungry.

  “He’s stable for now,” Vashisht said. “But he’s close.”

  “Too close,” Oris muttered, moving toward a side table piled with jars, bone instruments, and shadow-soaked cloths. “If he’d stayed outside the Vault, the bloom could have overwhelmed him, burned through his veins, left him hollowed.”

  Arjun’s fists clenched at his sides. “What happens now?”

  Oris turned back to him, holding a long, curved shard of obsidian etched with golden ink. “Now we control the descent, and hold the threshold open while you pass through. Let Eclipse reshape you without destroying you.”

  He looked at Vashisht. “You’re sure about this?”

  Vashisht nodded. “I’ve seen enough.”

  Something about Oris, his voice, the way he moved, the threads of shadow twisting constantly around his wrists, made Arjun’s skin crawl. He wanted to trust Vashisht, but Oris felt wrong. Like something barely holding on to its name.

  He opened his mouth, and almost told them about the gift, about the whispering dream, the boy with green eyes, the power that bled between shadows and something else, but Oris looked at him just then, those hollow, burning eyes, and Arjun said nothing.

  He stepped onto the platform. The moment he crossed the etched circle, the vault changed. The runes flared, the walls began to pulse, and the Eclipse inside him rose.

  It felt like drowning in his own skin, like his bones were unzipping themselves, each breath pulling apart what made him him. Pain flared, white and full, and he screamed, something wet and violent tearing through his chest.

  Vashisht stood still, lips moving silently in old speech. Oris raised the obsidian shard and began to chant, a guttural rhythm that crawled into Arjun’s skull.

  Something snapped, and power rushed through him.

  Not a flame, but a storm. Shadows bloomed from his back like wings, lashing the air, rippling with memories and madness. His hands glowed faintly, black at the edges, the skin fractaling with dark glyphs that faded as quickly as they came.

  He gasped, he felt the shadow, and beneath it all… deep beneath the power of shadow… something else pulsed.

  Not cold, not silent. Warm, wet, alive.

  Blood.

  His heart stuttered, and he clenched his fists, burying the sensation deep, too deep. The platform dimmed, the runes faded, and the silence returned.

  Vashisht approached carefully. “You did it,” he said softly. “You’re through.”

  Arjun looked up, sweat pouring down his brow, his body aching and trembling, but he was stronger. He could feel it. The shadows answered quicker now, sharper, hungrier, but still, that warmth lingered in his veins.

  He swallowed hard.

  “I’m fine,” he lied.

  Oris, watching from behind those bandaged layers, said nothing, but Arjun felt it, the way his gaze lingered too long.

  He wouldn’t tell them, of course.

  Not yet, not about the blood.