Silas turned back from the window, his face still pale but his expression hardening with determination.
"Interesting," he said, though his voice carried no trace of genuine curiosity—only grim acceptance. "We're not sure if there are only two eyes. There could be more."
Aster felt his stomach drop. "More? How many more?"
But Silas wasn't listening. His glowing blue eyes had taken on a distant quality, as if he were seeing something far away. His mind was clearly racing through memories, piecing together fragments of information.
The sounds came back to him—the ritual from last night. The witches in their dark robes, chanting in that abandoned mansion across the city. The blood circle. The candles burning with unnatural flames. And that skull... that otherworldly skull that didn't belong to any creature from this realm.
"Then what was that otherworldly creature at the old mansion?" Silas muttered to himself, his fingers drumming against his staff. "The skull they were using in the ritual... if the eyes are multiplying, if they're trying to summon something..."
He stopped abruptly and turned to face Aster with sudden urgency.
"Take one of the staffs from the collection and follow me," Silas ordered, already moving toward the cabinet where various magical implements were stored.
Aster stood up quickly, confused but sensing the importance. "I've never used a staff before. And why should I come with you?"
"Don't question," Silas said sharply, pulling open the cabinet and gesturing at the array of staffs inside. "Choose one that feels right. We don't have time for a full explanation."
Aster approached the cabinet hesitantly and looked at the staffs. There were at least a dozen—some ornate with crystal tops, some simple carved wood, some that seemed to pulse with their own inner light. He reached out and his hand was drawn to a medium-length staff made of dark wood with silver inlay. The moment his fingers touched it, he felt a strange warmth spread through his palm.
"Good choice," Silas said, already heading for the door. "That one was crafted for defensive magic. Now come."
They left the study and moved quickly through the house, Silas in the lead. When they reached the front entrance, Silas threw open the door and stepped out into the morning sunlight. Aster followed, clutching his newly acquired staff awkwardly.
They stood in the street in front of Silas's house. A few passersby glanced at them curiously—a mage in formal robes and a young noble holding a staff were not an uncommon sight in the capital, but there was something about Silas's intensity that made people give them a wide berth.
Silas raised his own staff high and began speaking in a language Aster didn't recognize—ancient words that seemed to make the air itself vibrate.
"*Draconis portare nos ad locum maledictum!*"
Take us to the cursed place.
The ground beneath them began to tremble. Aster stumbled backward, his eyes widening as cracks appeared in the cobblestones. Red light poured from those cracks, growing brighter and hotter with each passing second.
Then, with a roar that shook the nearby buildings and sent people screaming and running for cover, a dragon erupted from the ground.
Not a real dragon—or at least, not entirely. This was a creature of pure magic, summoned from the elemental plane. Its body was massive, easily the size of a house, covered in scales that appeared to be made of molten lava. Red and orange light pulsed through its form like veins of liquid fire. Its eyes burned with white-hot intensity. Steam rose from its body in waves.
The dragon opened its massive jaws, revealing teeth sharper than swords and a throat that glowed like the heart of a furnace.
And it swallowed them whole.
"ARE WE BEING EATEN?!" Aster screamed as the jaws closed around them and darkness enveloped everything.
But instead of the crushing death he expected, Aster found himself standing inside... a space. The interior of the dragon was impossibly large—bigger than its exterior should have allowed—and the walls pulsed with red light. The heat was intense but not unbearable, like standing too close to a massive fireplace.
"Relax," Silas said calmly, standing beside him as if being inside a dragon's mouth was the most normal thing in the world. "This is my pet dragon, Volcaness. Well, not exactly a pet—more of a contracted familiar. He's made of pure elemental fire magic. He can transport us anywhere in the city instantaneously."
Aster looked around in awe and terror. The dragon's teeth were visible as lines of white-hot light above and below them. The heat radiating from the walls made sweat bead on his forehead immediately.
"This is... amazing," Aster breathed, fear giving way to excitement despite the circumstances.
"Hold on," Silas warned.
There was a sensation of movement—not physical movement but something deeper, as if they were being pulled through space itself. The red light intensified for just a moment, becoming almost blinding.
Then it faded.
The dragon's jaws opened, and they stepped out onto solid ground again. Behind them, Volcaness dissolved back into red light and sank into the earth, disappearing as quickly as he'd appeared.
Aster blinked in the sudden brightness of normal daylight and looked around, trying to get his bearings.
They were standing in front of an old mansion.
A sign near the rusted iron gate identified it: THE WILLIAMS MANSION.
The place was enormous—at least as large as the Thornwood estate—but where Aster's home was pristine and well-maintained, this building was clearly abandoned. The walls were stained and crumbling. Windows were broken or boarded up. The gardens had long since gone wild, with dead vines crawling up the walls like skeletal fingers. The roof sagged in places, and Aster could see bats flying in and out through gaps in the structure.
The entire property radiated wrongness. Just looking at it made Aster's skin crawl.
"So why are we here?" Aster asked quietly, not wanting to raise his voice in this oppressive atmosphere.
"We're here to find out about the eyes," Silas replied, approaching the gate. "This is where the cult was performing their ritual last night. If they were trying to summon something, there might be clues left behind about what the Eye of Evil truly is and why it's—"
*THUD.*
A sound. Massive. Like a giant's footstep shaking the earth.
Silas's head whipped around, his eyes going wide. "Don't look!" he shouted in panic. "Whatever you do, don't look behind us!"
But the command came too late. The sound was so loud, so impossibly deep, that Aster's body had already begun turning before his conscious mind could process Silas's warning.
He looked behind them.
And there it was.
The Eye of Evil.
Not in a dream this time. Not in a vision. In *reality*.
It hung in the air about thirty feet behind them, massive beyond comprehension. Easily the size of a house, perhaps larger. The eye itself was a swirling mass of darkness—not black, but something deeper than black, as if it were a hole punched through reality into some nightmare dimension beyond. The iris seemed to shift and move like oil on water, never quite settling on a single color. And at the center, the pupil was a point of absolute darkness that seemed to pull at Aster's consciousness, trying to drag him in.
It was *watching* them. Watching him specifically.
And the moment Aster's eyes met that terrible gaze, everything went wrong.
His legs gave out. He fell to the ground, his staff clattering from his numb fingers. Darkness rushed into his vision from the edges, swallowing the world.
The last thing he heard was Silas shouting his name.
Then nothing.
---
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