The wind clawed through the Witches' Covenant, whistling a song that hadn't been heard in centuries.
Allison stood at the base of the sacred steps, staring up at the temple carved into black stone. The mists behind her thickened, as though afraid to follow her in.
Each step she climbed felt like peeling back the layers of her own mind.
When she reached another door, they opened without touch.
Inside, firelight danced in strange colors. Violets and blues flickered across ancient murals — scenes of witches in battle, creatures with skeletal wings, and a burning gate sealed with chains of gold.
Serephina Yevana waited within.
"You feel it too," she said. "The tremble beneath your skin."
Allison nodded slowly. "Something feels off."
Yevana turned toward the Gate etched on the wall, no longer glowing, but humming faintly like it was singing a lullaby.
"He's watching us now," she said.
"Who?" Yueying asked.
"The one who slipped through during the sealing. "
A pause.
"Not your mother," the Yevana added. "And not a friend of friendliness." Her eyes were sharp.
Allison's pendant pulsed. Cold and hollow
LU VILLA
Beatrice paced in Allison's room. She frowned, then picked up the letter Allison had torn and tossed aside.
It wasn't signed but at the bottom was a symbol, an eye.
"I've seen this,"Beatrice whispered.
Lucian passed a sealed door into a room where no human had stepped for a century. Floating books still in midair, candles that burned with red flame, whispers from corners unseen.
He found what he was looking for, it was a cracked stone tablet, cold to the touch.
The inscription read:
"He walks among us. Eyes like silver knives. He seeks the child from the Han bloodline."
Lu Quing traced the last word. It was not written in witch script. It was primordial.
"Elarian".
His jaw clenched. He turned and saw Allison in the doorway.
Their eyes locked.
"Your mom told me abount the sealing," she said softtly. "But it wasn't just you."
He nodded.
"Your mother was the mind. I was the hand." He put on a small smile.
"And the one who slipped through?" she asked.
Lucian looked back at the tablet.
"If it's really him," he whispered, "we're not just fighting for a gate this time."
MOUNTAIN EDGE – THE OUTER REALM
A lone figure stood at the edge of a cliff. Raven hair swept by the wind. A second figure approached, hidden in hood and shadow.
"Yevana seems to know," the hooded one said.
"She always would," said the man.
"Do we proceed?" The silver-eyed man asked.
He smiled.
"Not yet."
He reached out and caught a firefly in his palm. Its light dimmed instantly.
The firefly turned black in the man's palm. Its wings crackled to dust.
"She's near the Gate," said the silver-eyed man.
He didn't blink. The wind moved around him like it feared his skin.
"The First Flame isn't hers," the silver-eyed man continued.
He turned slowly, that gaze searing through the dark.
"No," he said. "It was mine. Long before she was born."
The wind stilled.
"The Gate opened once" he continued. "And my son tried to seal it."
"You mean Lucian."
He smiled. Cruel and familiar.
"I mean the traitor."
A long silence passed before he added, "He was forged from me. But he chose her. The woman who sealed me out along with her friend, Yevana my beloved."
BACK INSIDE
Allison touched the stone tablet again. The word Elarian burned cold beneath her fingers.
"I saw him," she whispered. "In the dream... He was behind my mom."
Lucian didn't move.
Allison's voice trembled. "He wasn't protecting her. He was trying to use her."
Lucian closed his eyes. "He wanted the First Flame not to preserve it but to feed on it. Her power could burn through memory. That's why he wanted her bloodline."
"And you?" she asked.
He looked at her, the darkness in his pupils deeper than before.
"I was born of that hunger," he said. "But raised by mom's oath. My mother chose to seal the Gate and I paid the price. Mom wasn't happy with it anymore."
Her voice low. "You're his son."
Lucian nodded once.
The tablet behind them pulsed once like a heartbeat waking up.
Beatrice was at the Lu Villa at the basement she lit another candle, staring at the journal. Han Liuhua had scrawled furiously in the margins:
"Elarian made her love him deeply but he's just deceitful." A long gap "The Gate only opens when both keys are aligned: Memory... desire and love."
She blinked.
Below the note was a sketch of Allison's pendant and beneath that, a second symbol. Not just a crescent of flame.
A serpent wrapped in black feathers. That was Yevana's symbol.
---
YUEYING – AT THE ARCHIVES
Allison stepped back from the tablet. Her pendant pulsed brighter than before.
Lucian stepped toward her. "You were meant to choose."
"Choose what?"
"The blood that birthed you... the fire that awakened you or power that destroys."
The ground beneath them shook. Chains rattled in the walls of the ancient archive.
From somewhere beneath, far beneath, a voice whispered in a language older than bones.
"Come home."
Allison's knees buckled.
Lucian caught her.
Her eyes glowed crimson fire threading through her irises.
"He's speaking to me," she said in horror. "He knows my name."
Lucian didn't let go.
"Then let him hear mine" he said.
He raised a hand.
The black candles extinguished, then they heard rumbles from the ground like earthquake.
And for a moment, the Devil stood frozen then smirked.