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  Chapter 25: The Secret of the Giant Eye

  The fog slowly began to lift from the horizon, and Irene stood in the middle of the group, gazing up at the sky where the colossal eye floated—rooted in mid-air as if watching every move within the kingdom of Atelia.

  She spoke in a calm voice, laced with reverence and fear:

  "What you see up there… wasn't always suspended in the sky. It once belonged to a man."

  Everyone froze.

  She continued:

  "Thousands of years ago, the first king of Atelia wished to build a kingdom governed not by the laws of the outside world. No sun to dictate time, no gravity to bind things to the ground. He wanted a unique system… one that responded to the heart of the kingdom, not to the universe."

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  "And so he summoned the greatest alchemist of the age… Noval, a brilliant man who hid his madness beneath a white cloak."

  She raised her hand toward the sky.

  "Noval was the creator of what we now call the Heart Cube of the Kingdom—a massive five-sided stone pulsing with hidden energy. Its purpose was to maintain balance among seven elements: wind, light, darkness, time, sound, water, and life. It was a fragile harmony… but a perfect one."

  Then her eyes dropped to the ground, and her voice softened, nearly breaking:

  "But Noval… was not content."

  "He longed for more than balance. He craved control. He sought what we now call the 'All-Seeing Eye'. And one night, driven by madness, he tore out his own right eye, and bathed it in forbidden mercury, drawn from the king’s secret vault… a substance no one was ever meant to touch."

  "And the moment the mercury touched his eye… it began to grow. First to the size of a fist… then a room… then an entire palace! Within days, it rose from the ground…"

  By then, the sky above them had started to darken, as if echoing the story.

  "It floated up until it hung between the heavens, watchful, unmoving, terrifying… and the people began to call it: Noval’s Eye."

  "At first, everyone feared it, thought it a curse. But generations passed, and it became part of the skyline. Children were born beneath it, kings rose and fell under its shadow… yet no one truly understood it."

  "To this day… no one dares get close. The legend says that whoever approaches the Eye… loses their memory, their identity, perhaps even their soul."

  She turned to Hanto and the others, eyes intense:

  "But if we want to reach the heart of the city… if we want to uncover what the enemy is planning… then we must understand the Eye’s secret. It is the key."

  And with that, the chapter closes on a panoramic view of the giant eye, looming silently above the kingdom—still, yet pulsing with something deeper… something yet to be revealed.

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