William wasn't executed.
He was taken.
Luin was given no explanation. He simply woke up the next morning to find the room empty, a faint trail of dried blood across the stone floor — dragged away, like memories behind closed doors.
He stood there for a long time, staring at the door.
Then whispered,
"I hate doors."
⸻
The servants later led him to a room on the upper floor of Lord Sarin's estate.
It was lavish, polished — tall windows overlooking an abandoned garden.
On the table… a letter.
He opened it slowly.
"Luin Mir,
You have been promoted to the rank of Living Reviewer.
This means the Church has agreed to let you continue existing… until proven otherwise."
The letter was sealed with black wax — not bearing the white sigil of the Church, but its inverted twin: a circle, with a closed eye at its center.
Luin didn't smile.
But something moved inside him. Something that felt less like fear — and more like recognition.
⸻
That evening, Lord Sarin himself came to visit.
He sat across from Luin and asked,
"Do you think what you did was heroic?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"It was the only thing that kept me from falling apart."
The nobleman was silent for a while before saying,
"The real betrayal hasn't come yet, Luin. This was merely a test."
"I don't need your tests."
"Oh, you do. Because we know more than you think."
He leaned closer, meeting Luin's gaze, and whispered,
"We know there's a voice inside you… that isn't yours."
⸻
Luin froze.
How did he know? Who told him? Was it that obvious?
Then he remembered… what the man with the marble mask had said once:
"You're not ordinary… Seals don't open like that."
Was all this just a prelude to something deeper?
⸻
That night, Luin wrote in a small journal he found in the room:
"My voice isn't entirely mine.
But they won't take it from me.
Even if I have to stop breathing… I'll keep whispering my name inside,
so it won't be forgotten."
⸻
Beneath the manor, in the catacombs of House Sarin, there was a chamber that could only be opened with three words — words spoken once in the lifetime of every noble of their bloodline.
That night, it opened.
Not because Luin sought it.
But because it sought him.
He was asleep. Or thought he was.
Then… he was there.
A floor smooth as bone.
Walls carved with names written in blood.
And a voice — not coming from anywhere, but within:
"The second seal only opens… through betrayal."
⸻
He saw William's face — frozen in that final moment, the one time he wasn't allowed to speak.
Then Lord Sarin's, standing before a hall of nobles carrying their own coffins like they were preparing to be buried alive.
And then… a face.
No, a mask.
A mask he recognized.
A reversed reflection of himself.
The voice said:
"You will be reborn… but you will not be you."
And the ground gave way beneath him.
⸻
He woke in a gasp, drenched in sweat.
Hands trembling, chest heaving like he'd been drowning.
But something was different.
On his left shoulder, a mark — black, carved into the skin like a wound that healed wrong.
A reversed key.
And beneath it, words not written, but etched into the soul itself.
The Second Seal.
Opened.
⸻
A knock at the door.
A servant entered, pale-faced, carrying breakfast.
"The council requests your presence this evening," he said.
"There's been… an emergency meeting."
Luin didn't answer.
He stood, put on his coat, closed his eyes for a moment, then said,
"If they think the seal means obedience…
they've never read the torn page."
⸻
The Grand Hall of House Sarin looked that night like a luxurious tomb.
Every face a mask — not of marble, but of pride painted over fear.
Luin sat at the far end of the long table.
All eyes were on him, yet no one dared to speak first.
Finally, Lord Eilric Sarin rose — tall, thin, half-alive by rumor, pale as parchment.
His voice whistled through the air like wind between old castle windows.
"We are gathered because you opened the second seal."
Luin didn't deny it.
Didn't explain.
Didn't even flinch.
Eilric continued,
"You are not one of us.
But the entity inside you… is no longer yours alone.
We demand a full examination."
Silence.
Then Luin spoke, calm as a blade's edge:
"I never asked for acceptance.
And I never sought to belong."
Murmurs rippled across the hall.
But his shadow moved behind him — as if it had its own will.
"You fear what you can't understand," he said.
"And I… finally understand more than I wanted."
⸻
Before the meeting could end, news arrived from outside.
A branch of the White Church — in the eastern province — had been attacked.
The attack bore an unfamiliar signature.
A psychic mark, unclassified.
"It's not one of ours," said a councilor.
"Nor does it match the Outcasts' patterns.
It's as if… a new seal has appeared."
The room went cold.
Luin felt a tremor deep in his chest — the old voice whispering, unheard by anyone else:
"The other one… has awakened."
⸻
Amid the ruins of the attacked chapel, investigators found things that defied reason:
Symbols carved into walls.
Incomplete ritual circles.
Eyes without faces.
At the center of the destruction lay a single piece of paper — pure white.
But when held under holy light, a single word appeared:
"Selene."
⸻
Elsewhere — between barren fields dividing noble lands from the psychic frontier — a girl walked alone, dressed in black.
A long staff in her hand, moving like she shepherded lost souls.
One eye bare, the other veiled beneath silk.
Each step she took left a faint mark on the earth,
as though the world itself bent to avoid her.
Selene…
No longer a daughter of the Church.
No longer anyone's child.
An exile.
But not alone.
Beside her walked a shadow — shaped like Luin's,
yet not his.
She looked toward the western horizon,
toward the city where he lived, and said:
"The time's near.
The seal within him… will break soon.
But before that — we must betray him."
⸻
Morning came gray.
The wind smelled of wet soil and faint smoke.
Luin wasn't in the city anymore.
He'd slipped out before dawn through a broken section of the wall,
following a man who spoke little and asked for nothing — only that Luin follow.
He didn't know the man's name, and didn't ask.
His feet simply moved,
as though his shadow was leading him.
They reached a land without paths,
where black leaves carpeted the ground and twisted trees bowed as if ashamed of the sky.
After hours of walking, the man finally said:
"This is where you learn silence before sound… and strike before intent."
Luin said nothing.
He only looked at his hands — once steady, now trembling,
yet precise in a way that scared him.
The man pulled something from beneath his cloak — a mask, featureless and smooth.
"You need more than strength, Luin Mir.
You must learn to wound the mind, not just the flesh.
Now… sit."
⸻
What followed wasn't training.
It was a rite.
Chants. Stillness.
Whispers from nowhere, carried by the forest itself.
The world split in two —
one half blinding light,
the other, relentless ash.
And in between…
Luin learned something unspeakable.
Something that had always been buried in him,
waiting for a language that didn't exist.
Something not entirely human.
⸻
When he returned to the city, he wasn't the same man who had left.
His body still carried the dust of travel,
but his stride was steady —
as if the earth itself now recognized him.
He passed the gate guards; none looked his way.
He wasn't hiding.
He had simply become unseen — not to the eyes,
but to the mind.
Whispers followed him through the alleys.
Some said he'd killed a symbolic Father.
Others swore they'd seen his eyes burn from within.
But Luin himself didn't yet know what he had become.
⸻
At the market, he saw the boy who once sold him bread.
Luin wanted to ask something ordinary —
about the day, the weather, anything.
But the boy wouldn't meet his gaze.
He just left the loaf on the counter
and vanished into the crowd
as if Luin were a ghost escaped from a nightmare.
"They see something in you…
that you haven't seen yet,"
said the voice he'd long tried — and failed — to silence.
⸻
That night, a woman visited.
She entered his small cottage without knocking,
sat before him like someone who had known him for centuries.
"I write old stories," she said.
"And I have one that's incomplete — about you."
Luin raised a brow.
"I'm no one worth writing about."
"Oh, but you are," she smiled —
that unsettling smile that hides more than it reveals.
"You're the missing letter at the end of the oldest prophecy."
And as she left, she whispered:
"Never trust the one who offers the first hand."
Then she was gone.
For the first time in a long while,
Luin's heart didn't beat from fear…
but from awakening.
⸻
End of Chapter 25