On the night following the incident, no one in Luin's house dared to sleep.
Not because they felt danger… but because the whole neighborhood seemed trapped within its own breath.
Luin sat in his room, staring at the small knife William had given him before disappearing again. It was a simple knife, yet a tiny engraving on its handle made it seem as if it carried an echo deeper than its meaning.
Three dots carved in a row… then a vertical crack between them.
He remembered William's voice when he said:
"If you ever have to use this knife, know that nothing before it will ever be the same."
That night… the door knocked.
Luin didn't open immediately. He only asked:
"Who is it?"
The reply came, female, clear and direct:
"Celine Valemore."
He opened the door slowly, letting her lantern light seep inside, revealing her exhausted features.
"I brought something."
She handed him a letter sealed with a strange emblem: a rose encircled by thorns forming a closed circle.
He opened it… and the words were few:
"Some mirrors do not reflect blood.
Some rituals are not written in ink.
If you want the truth… come alone to the seventh floor of the Weaving House. Midnight."
Luin looked at Celine and asked:
"Who sent this?"
She spoke calmly:
"My brother was part of this. His real name wasn't what people knew. And I… did not come just to deliver a message."
Then, in an even quieter voice:
"I come to you bearing betrayal."
The Weaving House had been abandoned for years. An old building on the outskirts of the city, its windows broken, its floors covered in dust.
Yet Luin came… alone.
With each floor he ascended, the air grew heavier, as if something inside waited to breathe through him.
He reached the seventh floor. No doors, only an open hall with an old loom and a woman sitting before it, weaving transparent threads that could only be seen from certain angles.
She did not look at him, yet she said:
"Finally, you've come."
"Are you the one who sent the letter?"
"I wove it myself."
Luin stepped forward but did not feel closer to her.
It was as if distance was not measured by steps, but by what he had lost of himself.
"I want the truth."
He said it.
The woman stopped her weaving and stood.
"Then… prepare for disappointment."
Then, from a corner of the room, a nobleman appeared.
He wore symbolic armor with the White Church emblem, but drawn in reverse.
"My name is Galahid Valemore. And I betrayed everyone, including you that night."
Luin froze.
"Your brother, Celine?"
"I was."
Luin said,
"She thinks you're dead."
"Just as you thought."
Without warning…
He drew a symbolic sword.
Luin stepped back, but did not use his psychic power yet.
Galahid said:
"Open the seal… or die here."
Everything inside him was screaming.
But a small thing… remained silent, as if waiting for a deeper moment.
So Luin said:
"You betrayed me… then this is the price."
At that moment… the second seal trembled.
His body did not move, yet an inner sensation, as if an ancient memory had awoken, and a scream he had never released came out of him—not as a sound… but as a word carved in the air:
"My name is not Luin Meer."
Everything stopped.
The air, the sounds, even Galahid's gaze shattered like a mirror thrown against stone.
Luin did not move a step, but he felt as if the ground itself had pulled away from him… or he had detached from it.
The name he uttered was not just an identity.
It was like an ancient knife pulled from his chest, its blade still dripping with a memory he had never lived… yet it lived in him.
"My name is not Luin Meer."
He repeated it, quieter this time, as if confessing a secret he did not yet understand.
Galahid did not attack, he stepped back.
"You… the second seal approached without betrayal—this has never happened before."
Luin felt a change within him.
The emptiness that always lingered behind his eyes… began to take shape.
A shape, incomplete, twisted, yet standing.
A voice inside said:
"Ask for your true name."
But he did not.
Instead, he looked at Galahid and said:
"You would not have betrayed me… unless betrayal was a way to uncover something greater. Tell me… who orchestrated all this?"
Galahid sat on the ground.
"Not just the Church. Not just the nobles. There is something… a being called the Shifting Shadow. Whoever opens more than one seal without their permission… becomes a red mark. And you, who do not know your name, are now pursued from all sides."
"And Celine?"
"She was also deceived. They wanted her to lead you to me. And I… was both the bait and the blade."
Luin did not reply.
He turned his back and left the seventh floor, but this time… his steps did not carry hesitation.
It was as if the ground recognized him now.
The second seal was waiting for someone to release it.
He did not return home.
He did not go to the market.
He did not go to William… nor to Celine.
Instead, he walked streets he had never walked before, narrow alleys between forgotten buildings, where stones spoke a language unwritten, and the air carried the specter of distant screams.
Then… he stopped.
A small door on a blank wall.
He did not know why he had arrived here.
But when he raised his hand and knocked… he did not wait for a reply.
The door opened by itself.
Inside, the room was empty, no furniture.
But the walls… were covered with drawings. Circles, eyes, ritual symbols, crossed-out names.
And in the middle of the opposite wall… his name was written.
"Luin Meer"
But beneath it, in bolder letters, was the name:
"Zaher – the Fourth Madman."
He stepped back two steps, and before understanding the meaning of the name, a man appeared from the shadow.
His face was covered with a veil, and his voice came as if the wall itself was speaking:
"Welcome back, Zaher. You are very late."
"I… don't know you."
"But we know you. And now, having approached the second seal… you can hear the voice again."
"What voice?"
The man stepped closer.
Then whispered:
"A voice from those before you… and those who will come after you."
The stranger still stood in the corner of light, his voice older than the walls.
"The voice is not heard with the ear, Zaher."
"My name is not—"
"But it is, you just forgot how it was said."
Luin did not reply, but felt a vibration under his skin… as if a tone had begun to move through his veins.
The wall behind the man receded, revealing a round chamber, its floor engraved with a circle of symbolic layers not belonging to a single era. Some were ritualistic, others seemed remnants of ancient civilizations that died without leaving anything but these symbols.
In the center, there was a chair.
But no one had sat on it for centuries.
The man said:
"Sit, and let the voice return to you."
Luin hesitated.
But he walked… and sat.
The moment his soul settled on that chair, he heard nothing.
Instead, he remembered.
A woman's face… hair the color of ash-blue clouds, eyes shedding light instead of tears. She spoke to him as a child.
Something about his name… about how he had to forget.
Then a man in a black cloak placed his hand on the child's forehead, murmuring what should never be spoken to humans.
The first seal had not been the beginning of power.
But the beginning of forgetting.
When Luin opened his eyes, the stranger had disappeared.
And all the symbols on the wall had transformed into a single word:
"Search the forgotten mirror."
He left the place without knowing how.
Everything around him seemed strangely familiar, as if the city itself was beginning to change with him… or against him.
He went to the only place where mirrors had not been touched for years.
His childhood home.
The abandoned building in the lower district, which he only returned to in dreams.
He opened the door with a creak like the sigh of the dead.
Everything was covered in dust, except for a long mirror at the end of the corridor, still clear as if time did not know how to touch it.
He approached.
But what he saw inside was not his own image.
A reflection different.
Someone like him, same eyes, same scar, but standing firmer, with a seal on his forehead he had never seen before.
The reflection smiled at him.
And said:
"If you want the truth… you must betray something."
"What?"
"Everything."
Then disappeared.
Luin sat on the floor.
He no longer knew which image was his.
But he knew one thing:
Someone was watching him from somewhere, and time was starting to tighten.
And he heard a familiar voice behind him say:
"I knew you would come back here."
He turned.
Celine.
But there was blood on her shoulder.
And a look in her eyes… he had never seen before.
End of Chapter Eighteen