**Meanwhile, at the park...**
Aster finally stood from the bench, deciding he'd rested long enough. The sun was fully up now, the morning well and truly begun. Time to head back home for that birthday breakfast.
He started walking back toward his neighborhood, still feeling that strange sense of peace the sunrise had given him. His hands remained in his pockets, his pace leisurely.
A bus passed him on the street—yellow, with the crest of one of the city's schools on its side. Probably Lily's bus heading to her academy, he realized.
He was looking up at the clear blue sky, admiring how different it looked from the storm-dark clouds of last night, when he heard it.
*CRASH!*
The sharp sound of ceramic shattering against stone.
"What was that?" Aster said immediately, his head snapping forward.
He rushed ahead, his peaceful mood evaporating, replaced by alertness.
Just ahead of him, near the entrance to a small shop, stood a woman. She wore dark clothing—a long black coat that reached her ankles, black gloves, and a hood pulled up to shadow her face. Her head was tilted downward, eyes fixed on the ground at her feet.
As Aster approached, he saw what had made the sound—a decorative vase had fallen and shattered on the cobblestones. Shards of painted ceramic lay scattered across the sidewalk, the pieces still settling with small clicking sounds.
The woman just stood there, motionless, staring at the broken vase. Her eyes—what Aster could see of them beneath the hood—were dark. Not just brown, but truly *dark*, like wells of shadow.
"Can I help?" Aster offered, stopping a respectful distance away.
The woman slowly raised her head to look at him. For several long seconds, she didn't respond. Just studied him with those unnaturally dark eyes, her expression completely neutral.
Then, finally, a small smile touched her lips—cold and thin, never reaching her eyes. "Sure. I would be thankful."
Her voice was flat, emotionless. Like someone reading lines from a script without understanding their meaning.
Aster knelt down and examined the broken vase. It had been beautiful before it fell—hand-painted with intricate floral designs, probably quite expensive. He raised his hands, and familiar blue light gathered around his palms.
The shards began to lift off the ground one by one, floating in the air. They drew together like puzzle pieces finding their matches, the cracks sealing seamlessly as his magic worked. Within seconds, the vase was whole again, looking exactly as it had before it fell.
He stood and offered it to the woman. "Here you go, miss."
She took it from him, her gloved fingers cold even through the fabric when they briefly touched his hand. "I am thankful to you," she said in that same flat, dead tone.
Then she turned and continued walking down the sidewalk, the restored vase cradled in her arms, her footsteps making no sound.
Aster watched her go, that familiar unease creeping back into his chest.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
When the vase had been broken, when he'd been close to her, he'd instinctively tried to sense her emotional state—something he could do naturally with most people, a minor empathic ability inherited from his mother's bloodline. But with this woman, he'd felt *nothing*.
Not upset about the broken vase. Not embarrassed about dropping it. Not grateful for his help. Not annoyed or curious or anything at all.
Just... emptiness. A void where a person's emotions should be. Like standing next to a hollow shell.
He turned to continue toward home, but curiosity made him glance back over his shoulder one more time.
The woman was gone.
Completely, impossibly gone.
The sidewalk stretched empty behind him. She couldn't have turned a corner—there was no corner to turn for another block. She couldn't have entered a building—he would have heard the door, and besides, all the nearby shops were still closed at this hour.
She had simply vanished into thin air.
Aster's heart began to race. His breath quickened.
Then the world lurched violently.
Everything went dark—not gradually, but all at once, like someone had blown out a candle. The morning sunlight, the buildings, the street, all of it disappeared.
Aster felt himself falling, but there was no ground to catch him. Just endless darkness, cold and suffocating. He tried to cry out, but no sound came. His body felt weightless and heavy at the same time, spinning through a void.
He could still hear things—the distant chirping of birds, the rustle of wind through leaves, the faint sounds of the city—but they seemed to be coming from very far away, as if through water or thick glass. Muffled. Distorted. Wrong.
His vision was completely black. He couldn't see his own hands in front of his face. Couldn't tell which way was up or down.
And then—
*Thump.*
He hit something solid. The impact drove the air from his lungs. His eyes flew open, and he gasped desperately, as if he'd been drowning.
---
Aster found himself lying on his back on a cold stone floor, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Wooden beams crossed overhead. Stone blocks fitted together with precision. The flickering light of torches and lamps casting dancing shadows.
He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his head spinning, his lungs burning. He looked around wildly, trying to understand where he was and how he'd gotten here.
A bedroom—but not his bedroom. Much simpler. More austere. A bed in the corner that looked barely used, covers neat and undisturbed. A desk piled high with books and papers. A wardrobe. More books on shelves covering every wall, stacked so high they nearly touched the ceiling.
And standing near the desk, his back to Aster, was a figure in dark blue robes embroidered with silver thread. A wooden staff leaned against the wall beside him. His dark hair was pulled back in a simple tail.
Aster struggled to his feet, his legs shaking beneath him. "Wait... I know you."
The figure turned around slowly, and Aster found himself looking at a young man in his mid-twenties with sharp, intelligent eyes and a serious expression.
Recognition sparked. "Aren't you the Mage of Light? Silas?"
The man—Silas—nodded once, his expression grave. "You're right."
Before Aster could ask how he'd gotten here or what was happening, Silas raised one hand. Blue light shimmered around his fingers, and across the room, one of the ancient books began to float. It drifted through the air and settled on the desk directly in front of Aster, opening automatically to a specific page.
Aster looked down and felt his blood turn to ice.
The ornate text at the top read: *"Purify the evil around you, for darkness feeds on the unprepared soul."*
"The same page," Aster whispered, his voice shaking. "The same one from last night."
Silas's expression remained serious, unchanging. "You're right. Last night, I opened that page for you."
"So was it all your work?" Aster demanded, a mixture of relief and confusion flooding through him. "Everything that happened—the books falling, the strange sounds, all of it?"
"I won't say all of it was my work," Silas replied carefully, measuring each word. "But I will say that I saved you."
The words hung heavy in the air between them.
Aster's confusion deepened. "Saved me? Saved me from what?"
Silas gestured to a chair beside the desk. "Sit down. You need to understand what happened to you last night."
Aster sat, though every instinct screamed at him to run, to get back to his normal life, to pretend none of this was real. But he needed answers. He needed to understand.
Silas remained standing, his posture formal, his expression grave. "Last night, you were targeted by an ancient and evil entity. Something that has haunted the nights of the White Dragon Kingdom for centuries. Something that has claimed countless victims over the ages."
He reached for another book on his desk—this one even older than the first, its leather cover cracked and faded with age. He opened it and began turning pages slowly. Each page showed detailed illustrations of different creatures and entities—demons with twisted forms, spirits made of shadow and malice, dark gods from forgotten religions. A bestiary of nightmares.
The pages stopped turning at one specific entry.
Aster leaned forward, unable to stop himself, and felt his breath catch in his throat.
In the center of the page was an illustration that made every hair on his body stand up: a massive eye, rendered in disturbing detail, with strange symbols and arcane text surrounding it in circles. The eye itself seemed almost alive on the page, as if it were watching him even now.
The title above the illustration, written in ancient script, read: *"The Eye of Evil."*
Just reading those words, just seeing that image, brought everything rushing back with terrible clarity—the dream, the vision, the massive eye erupting from the ground beneath him like a diseased sun being born. Another eye descending from the sky above, pushing through the clouds, both of them focusing on him with malevolent intelligence.
The feeling of utter helplessness. The frozen time. The presence whispering in his mind.
*The curse of the unknown follows you.*
Aster's chest tightened painfully. "So... what would have happened if I hadn't read that spell last night?"
Silas's expression darkened further. "No one truly knows what happens once you're fully claimed by the Eye of Evil. Those who are taken... they don't come back. They simply disappear from the world, erased as if they never existed. But there are patterns. Warning signs that appear when it begins to hunt someone."
He began pacing slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, his voice taking on the quality of a teacher explaining a difficult lesson.
"First, time freezes around you. Clocks will tick, but the minutes never advance. You become trapped in a single moment that stretches on forever, isolated from the normal flow of reality."
Aster remembered staring at his clock, watching it remain fixed at 11:30, the second hand moving but the time never changing.
"Second," Silas continued, "you might see hallucinations. Visions of your loved ones appearing at impossible times or behaving in slightly wrong ways. The Eye shows you what you expect to see, using your own assumptions against you to keep you confused and compliant."
Aster thought of his sister entering his room last night, asking about the mess. Had that been real? Or had it been the Eye, showing him a familiar face to keep him from realizing what was happening?
"And third," Silas said, stopping his pacing to look directly at Aster, "before all this starts—before the time freezes and the hallucinations begin—you will have encountered something strange in the normal world. A person who seems subtly wrong. A moment where reality feels like it's tilting. That's when the Eye first marks you, identifying you as its prey."
The party.
The man in the black suit with the blood-red tie. Those eyes that had looked human at first glance but were somehow completely wrong upon closer inspection. The ring falling and hitting the marble floor with that crystal-clear sound. The sudden overwhelming presence of malevolent evil pressing against his consciousness.
"Yes," Aster whispered, his voice barely audible. "It all happened to me. Every single thing you described."
Silas nodded grimly, as if he'd expected this confirmation. "But that's not all, is it? Try to remember the details of that party. Who you spoke to. What you ate. How you got home."
Aster tried. He focused all his attention on pulling up those memories, but it was like trying to grasp smoke. The images slipped away before he could hold them, leaving only fragments and impressions.
"I... I can barely remember anything from the party," he admitted, frustration and fear mixing in his voice. "Just... just that figure. The man who didn't look quite human. And the ring falling. And feeling like something evil was watching me. Everything else is... gone."
"The Eye erases memories," Silas explained quietly. "It wants you confused, disoriented, unable to piece together what's happening. The less you understand, the easier you are to claim. Most victims don't even realize they're being hunted until it's too late."
Aster's hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists, trying to steady himself. This was real. This wasn't some elaborate prank or stress-induced hallucination. He had genuinely come close to something terrible, something that wanted to erase his entire existence.
"But I read the spell," he said, trying to hold onto that fact like a lifeline. "I broke free. So I'm safe now, right? It's over?"
Silas didn't answer immediately. That hesitation was more frightening than anything he'd said so far.
"There's something else you need to tell me," Silas said finally, his voice very quiet. "When you saw the Eye of Evil in your vision—when you were trapped in that frozen moment—describe exactly what you saw. Every detail, no matter how small."
Aster closed his eyes, not wanting to see it again but knowing he had to. The memory was burned into his mind like a brand, impossible to forget.
"One eye came from below," he said slowly, each word painful to speak. "Erupting out of the ground like... like something being born. Massive. Watching me. And another eye came from above. Descending from the sky through the clouds. Both of them focused on me at the same time."
He opened his eyes and looked at Silas.
The mage's face had gone pale. His sharp eyes were wide with something that looked like genuine shock—perhaps even fear. His hands had tightened around his staff so hard his knuckles were white.
"Two eyes?" Silas repeated, his voice tight and strained. "You saw *two* eyes? At the same time? Watching you together?"
"Yes," Aster confirmed, confused by the intensity of Silas's reaction. "One from the ground, one from the sky. Why? What does that mean?"
Silas turned away sharply, moving to the window. He stared out at the morning city for a long moment, his entire body tense.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper, and it carried a weight of dread that made Aster's skin crawl.
"There are two eyes..."
---
*End of Chapter Three*