The silence of Tomb Maizel had a weight to it that felt older than time. After the violence of the warden's fall, the corridors of stone seemed to recoil, shuddering into a stillness that was unnatural. Dust clung to the air, disturbed only by Garfield's shallow breaths, and the faint echo of his boots on the floor was swallowed instantly, as though the tomb itself did not permit sound to escape.
He leaned against a cracked pillar, his chest rising and falling, every muscle trembling from the exhaustion that lingered after the fight. His knuckles were raw, bloodied, his cloak torn at the edges. He had won—barely—but the victory did not feel like triumph. The warden's final scream still clawed at the back of his mind, a sound so human and yet so wrong, a scream of something that had once been flesh and will, twisted into servitude for centuries.
"Rest," the Being's voice murmured inside his head. Its tone was quieter than usual, almost weary. "You press yourself too far, Garfield Van Turner. The tomb feeds on the wounded."
Garfield closed his eyes, the faintest smirk crossing his lips despite the fatigue. "Then it should choke on me." His voice was hoarse, but steady.
The Being chuckled—if the jagged distortion of its laugh could be called that. Then silence returned, but not a silence of peace. No, this was a silence alive with watching eyes. Garfield straightened, suddenly aware that he was not alone.
The air itself shifted, carrying a low vibration, like a whisper too soft to be fully heard. The walls pulsed faintly, veins of faint light threading through the carvings as though blood still flowed beneath the stone. He touched one of the glyphs absently with his fingertips. It was warm.
Alive,he realised. The tomb was alive.
And then the whispers began.
Not words, not yet—just a chorus of breathless murmurs, spilling from the cracks in the walls, from the mouths of the statues, from the very floor beneath him. His skin prickled, every instinct screaming at him to flee, but Garfield stayed rooted, staring as the inscriptions glowed brighter. The glyphs, angular and alien, twisted before his eyes, as if mocking his inability to understand.
"What are they saying?" Garfield whispered.
The Being hesitated. For the first time since their bond, there was silence in response. Then, brokenly: "You… should not ask that."
Garfield's jaw clenched. "Translate."
"I cannot," the Being hissed. Its voice cracked with interference, static breaking through its words. "I will not."
But the tomb did not care for the Being's refusal. The symbols rearranged themselves under Garfield's gaze, curling, unfolding, like a serpent baring its fangs. His mana flared on instinct, as though his very soul recognised the script. The whispers sharpened, and suddenly, one word—just one—rose above the chorus.
A word that was not sound, but command.
Garfield staggered back, heart hammering. His breath misted as though the tomb had turned to winter in a blink. "What was that?"
The Being was silent again.
Garfield pressed his palm flat to the glowing glyph. The warmth surged into him, searing, a tide of raw mana forcing itself into his veins. His vision blurred. He felt the weight of meaning, of law, pressing against his mind.
And in that moment, a realisation clawed its way into his thoughts—this was not language for conversation. This was a language for shaping reality.
He stepped back, trembling, sweat breaking along his brow.
The whispers subsided, leaving the chamber heavy with expectation. He was meant to try. The tomb demanded it.
But the Being's voice suddenly returned, fractured, almost pleading:
"Do not speak the word, Garfield. Do not dare."
Garfield stood there, trembling, hand half-raised as though reaching for something that was no longer there. The glyph under his palm had faded back into stone, but the impression of it still burned on his skin, like invisible fire. He flexed his fingers, the phantom heat refusing to leave.
The whispers had fallen silent, but the silence was worse. It was not the quiet of an empty tomb—it was the quiet of something waiting. Watching.
"Garfield." The Being's voice slithered back into his head, but there was no confidence in it this time. Only a fractured edge, like a harp string pulled too tight. "Do not. That word is older than the foundation of your world. It is not meant for you."
Garfield's lips curled faintly. His fatigue, his wounds, the loneliness of his exile—everything coiled into one thought: then why does the tomb show it to me?'
"You said you cannot translate," Garfield muttered under his breath. His voice sounded alien, echoing too loudly in the chamber. "But I heard it. I understood it. Not fully, not yet—but enough to know it has meaning."
The Being shuddered audibly in his skull. "Because the tomb chose you. That is not a blessing. It is a curse."
Garfield turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. "And if I speak of it?"
"You will be unmade," the Being whispered, so quietly it was almost a breath.
Garfield's gaze returned to the stone. He had lived his whole life being told what he could not do. His body too fragile, his mana too vast, his fate too cursed. And yet—he had survived, hadn't he? The desert had tried to bury him, the warden had tried to break him, his clan had discarded him. He was still here.
"Then let it try," he said, his voice firm, defiant.
He closed his eyes. The word that had etched itself into his mind surged forward, tugging at his thoughts like a hook buried deep in flesh. His throat tightened as if some unseen hand clenched it, but he forced his lips to move.
The sound he produced was not human. It was a fracture in reality itself.
The word ripped through the air, vibrating the walls, rattling the statues until dust cascaded from their stone shoulders. The chamber groaned, as though the weight of the tomb itself shifted in protest. Garfield's knees buckled. Pain lanced through his veins, his mana convulsing wildly like a beast unleashed.
His vision blurred into darkness, then white-hot light, then darkness again. The floor cracked beneath his boots, a spiderweb of fissures glowing with molten energy.
The Being screamed in his mind—not words, just raw, distorted static.
Garfield staggered forward, blood dripping from his nose, but he could feel it—power.A command that was not cast like a spell, but woven into existence itself. The word had answered him, bending the tomb's stillness into trembling submission.
He raised his hand without realising it, and the fissures of light coiled upward, forming a twisting spear of fire and shadow. It was not a spell. It was not mana manipulation. It was the word itself reshaping reality.
Garfield gasped, and the spear shattered into dust. His chest seized, his vision tilted sideways, and he fell to one knee, coughing violently. Blood spattered the stone floor. His body felt like it was being pulled apart and sewn back together in the wrong order.
When the pain dulled enough for him to breathe again, the Being finally spoke. Its tone was broken, harsh, like glass dragged across metal.
"Fool. You dared to speak it."
Garfield wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes alight with something between terror and exhilaration. "I survived."
"No," the Being hissed. "You endured. Survival comes later. If you speak another before you are ready, you will not remain you."
Garfield smirked, though his body shook uncontrollably. "Then I'll get ready."
The tomb answered him with silence. But it was no longer the silence of waiting. No, now it was the silence of approval. The tomb had accepted his first step.
And the whispers… were returning
The whispers didn't return as words this time.
They returned as faces.
Garfield pressed a palm against the cold floor to steady himself, but the stone beneath him pulsed faintly with light, as though something inside the tomb itself was awake and beating. His chest rose and fell in ragged bursts. Blood still streaked his lips, yet his eyes were open, unblinking, fixed on the sudden images swimming across the walls.
Shadows crawled outward, stretching into figures—dozens of them. Some were human, some monstrously twisted, others little more than outlines that flickered in and out like broken candlelight. They stood along the cracked chamber, watching him, their empty eyes carved with grief.
One stepped forward. A boy with hair the colour of dried wheat, his body half-dissolved into smoke. His mouth opened, but no sound came—only the echo of a voice inside Garfield's skull:
"Brother… why did you leave us…?"
Garfield's heart lurched. He knew that voice. It was too close to his younger half-brother back at the Turner estate. But this boy wasn't him—not truly. The illusion flickered again, the features stretching, breaking, reforming into something he couldn't recognise.
Another face tore through the shadows: a woman cloaked in ragged white, hair coiled like serpents. Her voice was harsher, deeper:
"Blood of the forgotten… cursed of the vanished… you call words not meant for mortal tongues."
Garfield staggered to his feet, every muscle screaming in protest. "Who are you?" he demanded, his voice cracking against the chamber's stone.
The woman did not answer. Instead, all of the shadows moved at once—snapping their heads toward him, their mouths opening wide. A single chant shook the chamber:
"Maizel. Maizel. Maizel."
The name hammered against his skull until Garfield's vision swam. He clutched his head, teeth gritted, but the sound burrowed deeper, becoming part of his pulse.
The Being shrieked suddenly, its voice breaking with static:
"STOP! Do not listen! These are phantoms—the tomb's echo, fragments of lives devoured by Maizel's curse! Do not let them in!"
But it was already too late. The phantoms pressed closer, their faces now impossibly near, breathing a cold that cut straight through his bones. One whispered into his ear, softer than a sigh:
"The seventh son still lingers… the forgotten blood still breathes…"
Garfield froze. Seventh son? Forgotten blood?
The Being's voice fractured again, glitching into a garbled mess:
"Sev—\[error]—no—speak—!—not meant for you—!"
Garfield forced himself upright, staggering back until his shoulders hit the tomb wall. The visions surged like waves, flooding the chamber with cries, with prayers, with curses. The word he had spoken still trembled in the air, its power dragging these memories—these phantoms—out from where they had been buried.
And then he saw him.
At the far end of the chamber, beyond the shifting figures, a single presence emerged. Taller than the rest, cloaked in black that shimmered like liquid shadow, his face hidden beneath a hood. Only his hands were visible—pale, skeletal, clutching a blade that bled light instead of steel.
The figure raised its head slightly. And Garfield knew, without knowing how, that this was Maizel.
The Being's scream rattled in his skull, louder than ever, cutting across the vision with sheer force:
"LOOK AWAY! THAT IS NOT FOR YOU! LOOK AWAY!"
But Garfield didn't. He couldn't. His body refused to move, chained by that gaze. Even though he couldn't see Maizel's eyes, he felt them—digging into him, stripping him bare, peeling back the layers of his soul.
And then Maizel spoke.
Not aloud, not in words—but directly into Garfield's blood, into the marrow of his bones:
"You dared to speak one. Then speak more. Carry my curse forward, child of mana. Prove you are not hollow like the rest."
Garfield's throat locked. His body shook violently, but a single truth flashed through him like lightning:
This tomb was not just a prison. It was a crucible.
Maizel wanted him to continue. The Being wanted him to stop. And Garfield—standing between those forces—knew the choice was his alone.
He clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms until blood welled. His voice broke the silence:
"…I will learn."
The phantoms recoiled, their chant fading into whispers. Maizel's shadow dissolved into dust, as though the choice had satisfied him. But the echoes lingered, crawling along the walls in that same dead tongue Garfield had begun to understand.
The Being groaned, exhausted, like someone holding together a fractured mind. "…You do not know what you've promised. Maizel's curse is not knowledge. It is hunger."
Garfield leaned his head back against the cold wall, exhaling raggedly. "Then I'll feed it. Until it feeds me back."
The chamber grew quiet again. But the stone beneath his hand thrummed, and Garfield knew this was only the beginning.