Elias stood frozen to the spot, as if he had been nailed to the floor. For several long seconds his mind refused to form thoughts; his breath came shallow and quick, his limbs trembling. The afterimage of the jeweled axe slamming into his skull from his previous death haunted him — a razor-sharp memory that threatened to drag him back into that final, crushing instant. One fraction slower and the past would have swallowed him again.
His pupils were pinpricks. He could still feel phantom pain at the base of his skull — a phantom fracture that had no wound to show. He put a shaking hand to his head where he had imagined the blow, lips whispering the question like a prayer and an accusation both:
"Is— is he dead?"
The words came out thin, fraying on the edge of his voice. His face, usually warm with the flush of life, had gone suddenly pale, drained of color. His legs felt like lead; for a moment he nearly buckled under the weight of the memory.
Daren, breathing hard, wiped a cold sweat from his brow. His reply was steady but heavy:
"He's not dead. He's only unconscious."
Daren studied Elias for a beat, eyes registering the raw panic still quivering on the younger man's face. Elias had never looked so stripped bare of courage in front of them.
Elias curled his fingers into a fist though they trembled. The shaking didn't stop.
"What… what do we do now?" he asked, the fear coiling in his voice. "If he wakes… if he wakes up—"
Lyra snapped, words flying out like a slash:
"Are you an idiot? Of course we chain him!"
Her anger masked a sharper edge — agitation born of adrenaline. But when she caught sight of Elias's drawn, hollow expression, she swallowed some of the heat from her tone.
Daren cut in with a hard, calm edge to his voice:
"Lyra, steady yourself. If Elias hadn't acted, we wouldn't be alive right now."
Lyra's jaw worked. She inhaled and folded back her fury, folding it into something taut and controlled. "Alright," she muttered. "But if he wakes up and tries anything—"
Elias could only stare at the floor, forcing in deep breaths like someone trying to steady a boat in storm. After a moment he forced himself to move. He went back to the place where Veran had sat sharpening knives and where the tools still lay—the bench scarred with cuts, a coiled iron chain half-hidden under a stool.
His hands were clumsy, but he grabbed the chain. It clattered loud and metallic in the hush of the room, sending another shiver through him. He swallowed bile and forced himself to run it back to where Daren and Lyra were waiting.
"We've got to bind him," Elias panted when he reached them.
Together they hauled the unconscious man to the wooden chair. Daren steadied Veran's shoulders while Elias wrapped the chain tight, looping and cinching it down until metal bit into cloth and leather. The chain's clanging seemed to echo the clanging in Elias's head; every metallic ring sounded like the axe striking stone.
Lyra watched them with folded arms, half-patient, half-iron. Once the chain was cinched, Elias straightened and said in a low voice:
"There's another room in the library. A locked room."
Lyra's eyes snapped to him. "Then let's go," she said.
Daren gave a slow nod. "If there's anything about him in there, we should find it."
They moved out together, but Elias's nerves remained taut as a drawn bowstring. As they walked, he said quietly, almost to himself:
"From the start I felt something off about him. He's not as kind as he pretends to be… there's something slippery, poisonous about him — like a cobra."
Lyra turned sharply. "You can sense killing intent? Like a pulse?" she asked.
Elias shook his head. "No. It's a gut feeling. When I looked in his eyes, there was nothing warm. No softness. Only something cold — a chill that made my spine go tight."
Daren frowned. "He hasn't used a power, either," he said slowly. "Not once in our time with him."
Lyra agreed. "That is strange. So what is his ability?"
Elias walked with them down the corridor, head bent, turning over pieces of the morning in his mind. Then, a flash of recognition came and he stopped short.
"I know," he said sharply, eyes bright with the suddenness of the thought. "Maybe his power is silence. Soundless movement."
Lyra gave a whistle of admiration. "You're smart when your brain's working," she said, half-joking.
Daren's look was thoughtful. "If that's true, when he brought us into the tower we walked through grass and leaves but didn't hear him come. He only spoke when he wanted to be noticed."
Elias nodded. "Exactly. If he could move silently, he could have killed us in the forest easily, but that would be inconvenient for him. Think about it: to perform whatever ritual he wants—especially if it requires us to be in the tower—he needs us alive and conscious enough to bring up here. Dragging heavy people through the undergrowth takes time and strength. If he had wanted to kill us on the spot, he'd have had to do it and get us here in thirty minutes—unlikely."
Daren grunted. "Makes sense."
They reached the locked door. Daren drew his sword and, with a practiced swing, smashed the lock and forced the door open. Darkness pooled inside, thick enough to swallow the light they had. For a heartbeat, none of them moved.
Lyra snatched a few books from the nearest shelf and, with a quick snap of her fingers, ignited them into a small bonfire. The flames leapt and filled the room with a smoky glow, casting monstrous moving shadows across the walls.
What met their eyes made them all inhale a single sharp breath.
On the floor lay a huge ritual array, drawn in dried blood. Symbols and spirals radiated from a center like veins, each line precise and horrifying. The air smelled faintly of iron, and the geometry of the design felt wrong in the way only something truly old could feel — like a memory of violence.
Elias's chest tightened so hard it hurt. The tableau pulled back the seam of his memory and spilled the past in a flash: Veran sitting at the center of such a circle, Daren and Lyra spread as offerings, his own head split, the cold glitter of Dianol.
No. No. Not this time. Not again.
He crossed the room in five quick strides and grabbed the black-bound volume resting on a pedestal nearby. The book felt shockingly cold in his hands; its weight was heavier than its size warranted. When he opened it, the pages seemed to whisper at the edges, the inked sigils crawling with meaning.
Lyra moved closer. "What is it?" she asked.
Elias's voice was low, urgent, his face drawn. He turned pages, eyes flicking across diagrams that mirrored the blood-circle below: invocations of sacrifice, steps of a ritual, the way to bind life to stone, and to feed something greater than a man. He read the names, the words, the requirements — and the precision with which they were set shocked him.
"This is what he planned to use," Elias said finally. "This — this book is the ritual. He intended to use the array to bind them, to fuel something… horrible."
The room seemed to tilt. In that instant, everything felt fragile as glass. The chain around Veran's body seemed suddenly too thin and too small. The three of them had a moment of clarity so cold and bright it left them stunned: they had to move fast, learn what the book said, and undo what had been prepared.
Silence pressed in on them again, but it was no longer oppressive. It was urgent.
Lyra's jaw hardened. "We burn this or hide it or take it. Anything but let him wake and use it."
Daren's hands were steady as he spoke. "We secure him here and search the book carefully. If it's a ritual, it will have steps we can disrupt."
Elias, fingers still curled around the margin of the book, met their eyes. He felt the old panic, but tempered now with determination. "If we learn how the ritual works, we can stop him. I won't let what happened before happen again."
They stood over the grisly design, feeling both vulnerable and oddly together — three small humans against a plan that had been set in motion long before any of them had arrived.
Outside, the tower groaned in the night wind. Inside, the flames guttered and cast long teeth-shaped shadows over the blood-drawn circles. Elias held the heavy black book as if it were the only anchor he had left.
"Then we begin," Daren said quietly.
Lyra nodded once, bright-eyed and ready in a way Elias had come to rely on.
Elias forced a breath into himself and opened the page again. He read, translating line by line, trying to pull meaning from arcane language. The words made his skin crawl — ritual components, precise timings, the need for rare materials, and the invocation of a name that sounded like a cold wind through a graveyard.
As the flames popped and the book smelled faintly of char and old dust, a fierce clarity settled in Elias. The past had come close to swallowing them whole. The present offered a chance to fight back.
He would learn what this ritual demanded. He would learn where the steps could be interrupted. He would learn the name Veran had called upon — and he would make sure the name never had the chance to take them.
Their whispers filled the room as they began to work: lists were made, pages were flagged, and a plan, rough and desperate, took shape. Outside the tower the night stretched on, indifferent. Inside, three people moved with a speed and focus born of terror and hope.
If the past reached for him again, Elias thought, he would not be taken without a struggle.