CHAPTER 202: ACADEMY HAVE EYES

We made it back to Noctis Ardentis under gray skies and suspicious eyes.

The academy gates didn’t creak open in welcome. They hissed. The runes embedded into the iron glowed faint red—not the usual blue of recognition—as if the wards were uncertain of our identities.

Or perhaps they recognized us all too well.

Felix limped. Mira was uncharacteristically quiet. Garrick carried the bags without complaint. Wallace had barely spoken since the Maw. Even Leo—eternal whiner—had said nothing about his sore back or how much he hated hiking.

We’d all changed. You can’t walk into something older than time and leave untouched.

And Cassandra was still gone.

I hadn’t told the others what Vaughn—whatever was left of him—had said. About sleepers in every academy. About buried gods waking up.

I didn’t know how to say it.

Welcome back. By the way, our home may already be infected.

Headmaster Irian met me at the Observatory Hall. Alone.

The rest of Class C was dismissed with orders to report to campus medics for a full scan. Not that it would find anything.

The corruption we carried wasn’t physical.

"Lucian," Irian began, clasping his hands behind his back, "you’ve returned from your... unsanctioned expedition."

He didn’t sound angry. That was what made it worse.

"I had cause."

"So I’ve heard," he said, glancing toward the massive scrying mirror that dominated the hall. "Reports of ancient runes, strange entities, and your students being marked by forces we don’t yet understand."

"We found something in the Dorne Estate. The Maw. It—"

"It opened, yes," he cut in gently. "The runes on the outer wall activated briefly. The entire Academy felt it."

I stared. "You knew it was real?"

"We suspected. We didn’t know you’d open it."

There was no judgment in his voice.

Only inevitability.

Later that night

I stood at my usual place—on the western balcony of the Runic Tower, staring at the moons.

There were three in the sky now.

Not two.

The third was faint. Veiled in shadow. Barely visible except in the corners of your eye.

I hadn’t noticed it until the Maw.

___

"One for the world above," I murmured. "One for the dead beneath. And one... for the things that should never wake."

___

"Poetic," said a voice behind me.

I turned.

Julien stood there. Arms folded. No smirk.

Just sharp eyes and something unreadable in his expression.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"What?"

"That we’re cursed."

I didn’t answer.

He stepped closer. "Felix hasn’t slept. Mira’s seeing runes that aren’t there. Wallace keeps drawing diagrams in his sleep. Leo—Leo volunteered for extra training this morning. We’re all going wrong, Professor."

"You’re adapting."

"Is that what you call it?"

"No," I admitted. "But it’s better than dying."

Julien nodded once. Then, he held something out to me.

A note. Sealed with dark wax.

"This came to my dorm. No sender."

I broke it open.

The parchment was coarse, old. Smelled of rot and iron.

The handwriting was beautiful. Flowing. And unfamiliar.

___

To the Bloodmarked Professor and his Class of Echoes,

The Hollow welcomes your return. The Second Eclipse begins soon.

Choose your patron. Or be chosen.

___

There was no signature.

Only a symbol.

Three overlapping moons.

The moon shouldn’t whisper.

But it did.

Three nights since the letter arrived, and every time I stepped onto the balcony, the third moon hummed. Not in sound—but in the marrow of my bones. A kind of pressure, like a memory trying to surface through mud.

None of the other professors mentioned it.

Maybe they couldn’t see it.

Or maybe they were pretending.

Pretending nothing was wrong, even as the air in Noctis Ardentis felt thinner. Even as my students reported nightmares. Even as Vaughn’s absence was explained away by "urgent travel to the southern branches."

I burned the letter.

But its words wouldn’t leave me.

Choose your patron. Or be chosen.

I didn’t want a patron.

I already had a past that followed me like a curse.

Class C hadn’t asked for another lesson. So I gave one anyway.

We met in the Subterranean Runes Hall, the one beneath the East Library—the classroom nobody used anymore, where chalk still clung to old boards and the air carried dust instead of answers.

Julien sat at the back. Mira up front, leaning over the desk. Felix, pale and silent. Wallace stared into his notebook with a dull expression. Garrick had his sword out and was polishing it out of habit.

Leo was absent.

No one mentioned it.

I drew three overlapping circles on the blackboard.

"What do you see?"

"Venn diagram," Wallace muttered.

"Wrong," I replied. "This is a death clock."

That got their attention.

"These circles appeared in pre-Collapse ruins all across the Xuntai Basin. Even before the Dynasty fell. Some scholars believe they represent ancient factions. Others say they’re divine seals."

"And what do you say?" Mira asked.

I stared at the chalk in my hand.

"I say it’s a warning. Three gates. Three Eclipses. Three chances to drown."

Felix swallowed hard. "What happens after the third?"

"You don’t want to know."

That night, the seal pulsed.

Not the one on the blackboard.

The one carved into my skin.

You see, I lied before.

I did have a patron once. I just never knew its name.

After the war. After everything crumbled and I took this job—I thought the seal had gone dormant. A relic of foolishness. A symbol of survival.

But now?

It bled light. Not red, not blue—iridescent. Like oil over water. It moved even when I didn’t.

I stood shirtless in my quarters, watching the runes pulse in the mirror. My eyes glowed faintly, too. Drelmont lineage, they used to say. Cyan eyes mean power.

Now, they meant something else.

I had been chosen once.

What if I was being chosen again?

A knock broke the trance.

When I opened the door, it wasn’t a student.

It was Raina Ferrow—a senior archivist from the Seal Ward.

Eyes sharp. Gloves on. And carrying a thick red tome.

"Lucian," she said, without preamble. "We need to talk about the Eclipsed Ones."

I didn’t blink.

"I thought they were just a myth."

She handed me the book.

"No. They were the first students."

The book was thick, its cover aged and scarred, as if it had been through countless hands and countless storms. The moment my fingers brushed its surface, the pulse beneath my skin quickened. Not the seal—no—something else. Something older, deeper, familiar.

Raina watched me with calculating eyes. She wasn’t here to waste time. Neither was I.

I sat at my desk, opened the tome, and began reading.

The first thing I noticed was the title—The Eclipsed Ones: Lost Scholars of the Collapse.

Written by someone long dead. The ink was faded, the handwriting uneven, but the words were unmistakable.

___

"Before the Collapse, there were three great orders of magic. They ruled the land, divided the world, and brought ruin in their wake. The strongest among them were the Scholars of the Eclipse—those who bore the mark of the moon, a symbol that bound their souls to the curse of knowledge. These Scholars would awaken the first true Eclipse, a cataclysm that no one saw coming. The Eclipse is not a singular event, but a series of trials. Each trial demands a sacrifice. Each trial brings destruction."

___

Raina’s voice cut through the silence, her tone a soft whisper but laden with urgency. "The Eclipse trials weren’t natural, Lucian. They were designed. Created by the ancient factions to test their greatest minds. To see who would be worthy of the knowledge they possessed. But those who failed..."

I closed the book. The words already felt like they were seeping into my skin.

"Tell me what I’m dealing with, Raina."

She stepped closer, her gaze flicking to the doorway as if someone might be listening.

"They weren’t all failures. Some passed the trials, but the price was too high. Those who succeeded were twisted by what they learned. The mark—" She gestured to the intricate sigils on her own gloves. "—it’s part of the process. It fuses with you. You can’t remove it. You become a vessel for something else."

I glanced at the seal on my chest. The one I hadn’t thought about for years.

"The Eclipsed Ones weren’t just scholars. They were bound—to an ancient power."

My mind raced, but I forced myself to remain calm. "What does this have to do with me?"

"You bear the mark, Lucian," she said bluntly. "You’ve been chosen."

The room seemed to contract, the air thick with something I couldn’t name. I looked at Raina. I could see the lines of worry on her face now. She knew something I didn’t, and it was eating away at her.

"How do you know about my seal?" I asked, voice low.

"I’ve seen the same one before," she replied, her eyes narrowing. "A long time ago. It’s not just any symbol. It’s ancient. The last time I saw it, it was on the skin of someone who was—" She stopped herself, taking a slow breath. "It’s the mark of an Eclipsed One. And it’s been dormant for centuries."

I leaned back in my chair, absorbing her words like a blow. I had always thought it was some relic of the Drelmont family’s cursed history, a mark tied to their bloodline. A cruel joke meant to remind me of my past.

But this?

This was something else entirely.

Raina pulled out another small parchment, this one sealed in wax. She broke the seal with a practiced motion, revealing an ancient map. As she unrolled it, I saw regions that were no longer in the records. Forbidden lands, forgotten archives, and the location of something that made my heart skip a beat: The Hollow.

"My informants discovered something in the Hollow," she continued. "An anomaly. Something alive—something that shouldn’t be."

My mind flashed back to the Hollow, that cursed place where time didn’t seem to move, where the ruins of forgotten civilizations lay scattered like broken toys. I had never dared venture too far into its depths, nor had any of the other professors. It was a place for myth and madness, not for those who sought knowledge.

And yet, here it was, pulling at the edge of my consciousness.

"You’re telling me this is connected to the Eclipse trials?" I asked, my voice steady despite the growing turmoil within me.

Raina nodded grimly. "The Hollow wasn’t just a ruin—it was a trial ground. Part of the original design. A place where the failed Eclipsed Ones were cast away."

The weight of her words settled heavily on me, and for the first time, I questioned everything I thought I knew about the world. About myself.

The Hollow wasn’t just a place of darkness. It was alive with something old—something that had been waiting. Waiting for the right vessel.

I could feel it now. It wasn’t just the moon.

It was the Seal.

I placed my hand over it, feeling the hum beneath my skin. It throbbed, pulsating in time with the distant rhythm of the night. The moon, the seal, the map—it all connected in ways I couldn’t fully understand. But I knew one thing: the coming trials, the darkness in the Hollow, the Eclipsed Ones—they were no longer myths.

They were my future.

"Lucian," Raina’s voice cut through the haze, and I looked up to see her holding the map tighter, a glimmer of something in her eyes—fear, perhaps. "There’s one thing you need to know before you go to the Hollow."

"What?"

She paused, as if weighing her words carefully.

"Not all Eclipsed Ones are... human anymore. Some of them became something else."

I swallowed hard.

"Something else?"

"The Hollow is where they were discarded. Those who failed. And those who passed..."

Her voice trailed off, leaving the unspoken hanging between us like a curse.

I closed my eyes, the weight of her words sinking in. If the trials were real, if the mark was part of something larger, if the Hollow was where the failed scholars were discarded...

What did that make me?