"How did that happen…" Alexandre muttered, raising a suspicious eye at Henry.
"That's what I should be asking your grandchild." Henry's voice was low, tense. He turned sharply toward James, eyes widening, almost deranged. "Boy—where did you get that shell?"
James shrieked, stumbling a few steps back.
I've never seen the professor like this… The thought burned in his mind as he tried to recall who had given him the shell. But the harder he reached for the memory, the foggier it became, as if someone was slamming a door shut inside his head.
"It was… Ocel… Oci—yeah, Ocean," James finally blurted. "She was a blind girl I met at the beach, when they were setting the Array Ward around the city."
Henry's face twisted in deeper puzzlement.
What kind of person hands a treasure like that out of nowhere? Henry pondered.
"Is that yours?" James asked suddenly, pointing at a crow that had caught his attention. It had been perched there silently for the longest time, its feathers dark as ink save for a crimson sheen along its crown. One eye glowed an unnatural green. The eerie stillness of its watchfulness made James shudder.
Henry's blood ran cold. "Oh f*ck."
He bolted toward the bird.
"Alexandre—don't let it escape! That's a familiar!" Henry barked, desperation cutting through his words.
"Get back here!" Alexandre raised his hand, and in the sky a vast translucent hand formed, mirroring his own. It lunged for the bird, but the creature dissolved into black smoke, slipping through the grasp before reforming beside it.
The bird cawed twice, wings beating furiously as it shot higher into the air. Suddenly, a bolt of fire streaked upward, blazing like a second sun, its whistle tearing through the silence as it barely missed the bird.
Alexandre conjured barrier after barrier, each one cutting across the bird's escape. Wherever it dove, the glowing walls appeared, forcing it into sharper, faster turns.
"That's it, Alex!" Henry shouted, guiding the fireball with his hand. The sphere of flame curved in the air, hunting back toward the bird like a predator refusing to miss its prey.
The bird's speed suddenly surged, darting with sharper precision as though it could foresee where the barrier walls would rise. The sky was its stage, and it danced across it with impossible grace.
"It's slipping out of range of my seals—catch it!" Alexandre's voice sharpened with urgency.
The star-shaped tattoo sigils on his hand flared, mirrored by the runes blazing along his Sigrod. One hand twirled the Sig like a conductor guiding an unseen orchestra, while the other swept up and down, dictating the flow of his seals.
At last, he struck. A vast translucent box unfolded, trapping the bird from every direction.
"Here it comes!" Henry barked. The fireball he wielded had swelled unnaturally, its power thrumming like something alive. Control over flame was one thing—but this… what Henry was doing bent the rules themselves. Once a seal was cast, its form was meant to remain fixed.
But the fire kept changing some could change it a little but Not like this. Not to this extent.
The ball of fire twisted, reshaping into a blazing arrow. It shot straight toward the box. Alexandre, with a precise flick, parted a gap in the barrier just wide enough to let it in. The firebolt struck true—piercing the bird. A shrill, broken cry echoed as its body ignited, consumed by searing flame.
Henry exhaled, chest heaving. "Hhh… we got it." His grip loosened, flames guttering out as he released control.
"Open the cage. Let's see."
Alexandre frowned, sigils still glowing faintly. "It's not dead yet. I can feel… something inside. A strange Sar… I thi—"
The words froze on his lips. The translucent walls shivered, then began to melt away. The orange fire, once devouring, was swallowed whole by another flame—black, cold, the kind of fire whispered about in ruin-songs, the kind that swallows cities whole.
"OH SHIT—TAKE JAMES AND RUN!" Alexandre roared.
From the suffocating dark flames, a silhouette stepped forth. A man, or something wearing the shape of one.
The heavens turned, and the clouds grew grey.The winds shifted, and the birds took flight, fleeing as if chased by death, their wings beating toward distant shelter.
The warmth of the air withered; winter returned in a breath.
Then came a voice—calm, soft, echoing like a choir in a hollow cathedral:
"The less talent they possess, the greater their pride, their vanity, their arrogance.
And such fools will, however, find other fools to applaud them.But the truly gifted? They are condemned.
They toil in shadows, their brilliance shamed,their lives bartered in servitude to the very mediocrity that mocks them.
Thus beauty becomes a treasure plundered,and the thieves—blind to its soul—steal only what they cannot understand."
"Who are you?" Alexandre shouted, his voice steady though his hand signaled James and Henry to run.
"Who… am I?I am Death, the taker of breath, ferryman to the underworld.
I am Life, bearer of light, warmth, and comfort.
I am born of sky and earth,the flame of Soth, the shadow that devours kingdoms.
I am Raven."
A cold sweat traced down Alexandre's spine. The name struck like a blade. He had heard whispers—rumors of Sirius Raven, the man who led the very cult that had once laid waste to his home. But never had he thought he would stand before him so soon.
Home. But never had he thought he would stand before him so soon.
The figure at last stepped out from the flames, though his face was veiled in shifting shadow, his whole body wrapped in smoke that seemed to breathe with him.
"Ahhh," Raven's voice coiled, silk and ash, "I see you bear the same gift as I."He moved toward James with an unnatural grace, a blur that seemed to stretch the very air.
Then he raised a hand and pointed."Oh, but you carry another, still hidden," Raven murmured. James stumbled back, confusion etched upon his face. "It was given to you—transferred—just as mine was given to me."
A sudden bolt of fire tore through the air toward him, but it passed through Raven as though he were made of smoke and nothing more.
"Now, now… I would not wound thee," he said, voice dripping with false mercy, his form already thinning into shadow. "We shall meet again, Son of the Stars."
And with that, he vanished.
James collapsed to the ground, striking his back hard against the earth. Terror strangled his chest.I could not breathe.