The Great Hall gradually became empty, with faint sounds of whispers and steps filling the air. Lucias' speech seemed to stick to the walls like faint, spiritual songs, his every word burned into people's memories.
Abraham walked out last. His pulse was erratic, breath uneven.
The Hollow Cry inside him was no longer quiet. It shivered.
Lucias's words echoed in his mind "Some of you carry something that shouldn't exist."
He walked into the courtyard, thick with mist. The sun was down, blocked by clouds. Rain started to resume again, a soft rainy sound that made the courtyard stone steps look like they were made of shinny silver.
Abraham leaned one of pillar, suddenly he felt a bad premonition , holding his chest tight. His eye sight getting blurry not by tiresome or fatigue. His mind still on the lecture hall.
'Why did he look at me that way? Like he knew what I was turning into.'
A faint hum rippled across the academy grounds. It wasn't sound — it was vibration, as though the world's rhythm had faltered.
Students passing nearby didn't notice. But Abraham felt it. Every thread of his being pulled toward the eastern courtyard — the old training grounds no one used anymore.
He followed it.
The world around him began to dull — color draining, sound fading. The mist grew thicker, forming shapes. Not random ones — beastly silhouettes. Long horns, spectral eyes, wings that cut the fog.
Then, from the heart of that phantom mist, something watched him back.
[System Alert — Hollow Cry Surge Detected]
[Stabilization Failure: Internal vibration exceeding limit.]
Abraham dropped to his knees, teeth grinding. His vision fractured — blood, light, and shadow bleeding together. He saw flashes — a mountain of bones, a serpent coiled around a black sun, an eye staring through him.
Then, a voice.
"So… you've begun to hear it too."
He looked up.
Maria Forger waited under the arch, her cloak soaked. Her eyes shone with a pale amber light. She would trailed him, moving quietly like his shadow.
"You shouldn't wander when your soul's unstable," she said, tone quiet, but not unkind. "Hollow Cry reacts to will. The stronger your determination, the louder it Cry."
He clenched his jaw, breath shaking. "It's not just screaming… it's calling something."
Maria's eyes glimmered. "Calling?"
The ground shook — just once, but enough to make the lamps along the walls fall.
A deep hum followed, resonant, almost alive. The mist turned darker, denser.
From the depths of the fog, four faint shapes shimmered — indistinct, but primal. One of them — vast, serpentine — lifted its head, eyes opening for a heartbeat before fading.
Abraham staggered back. "What… was that?"
Maria looked pale. "Echoes," she whispered. "Ancient bonds trying to remember their master."
He stared at her. "I believe you have a explanations of this, don't you?"
Her lips tightened. "Not fully. But I know this — Hollow Cry doesn't appear in ordinary tamers. It's tied to something much older… something that predates the system itself."
A sudden, loud thunder rumble split the dark sky. The rain swiftly turned cold and poured down on the courtyard.
The mist shattered — gone in an instant.
Only silence remained.
Maria moved ahead and place her hand on his right shoulder softly. "Rest, Abraham. Whatever's inside you — it's stirring because of him. Lucias Hiemer isn't what he appears to be."
Abraham looked at her, jaw set.
"Then I'll get stronger before he looks at me like that again."
The Hollow Cry pulsed faintly in answer — a heartbeat in the dark.
And somewhere deep beneath Murrchel Academy, in the forgotten vaults sealed by time, something answered back.
A low growl, ancient and vast, rippled through the stone — the whisper of a Beast awakening.