CHAPTER105- The Name Beyond the Seal

The voice above Dark Hollow was so powerful that I felt it inside my bones, and for several seconds I could not tell whether the threat was coming from the sky or from somewhere inside my own mind. Every warrior around us had fallen silent, while Damian stood beside me with his weapon raised and his golden eyes fixed on the black opening above the mountains. Aurelius looked completely different from the confident ancient king who had emerged from the prison because the moment that voice demanded his return, genuine fear appeared across his face.

“Who is that?” Damian asked, but Aurelius did not answer immediately because he was staring at the opening as though he had spent centuries trying to forget what waited beyond it. My son moved closer to him and asked the same question, but Aurelius finally looked at me instead. “That is the one who created me,” he said quietly, and the words made my stomach tighten because I suddenly understood that we had uncovered another part of the ancient history that even Aurelius had been unable to remember.

Seraphine stepped backward, and the remaining council members immediately followed her. “You cannot allow him to cross the seal,” she warned me, but I turned toward her in anger because she had spent centuries hiding the truth while pretending that her council was protecting the supernatural world. “You knew he existed,” I accused, and Seraphine lowered her eyes before finally admitting that the council had known something existed beyond the final seal but had never understood that Aurelius was connected to it.

The black circle above us widened as silver cracks spread across the sky. A deep vibration moved through the mountains, and the ancient symbols carved into the ground began glowing one after another until they formed a massive pattern surrounding Dark Hollow. I could feel the pattern responding to my blood, and when I stepped forward, the symbols shifted into a language I suddenly understood.

They were not protecting Dark Hollow. They were protecting the world from what was outside it.

I looked at Aurelius and asked why the being above us called him its son. He swallowed hard before telling me that he only possessed fragments of his childhood memories, but he remembered being taken from a place that existed before the supernatural kingdoms were formed. “I remember a voice,” he said, “and I remember being told that one day I would inherit everything beyond this world.”

My son stared at him in disbelief. “Then why were you brought here?” he asked, and Aurelius looked toward me with an expression filled with pain. “Because your mother stole me from him.”

The answer struck me harder than I expected because it meant my ancient self had not simply sealed Aurelius to protect the kingdom. I had taken him from the very being now threatening Dark Hollow, which explained why the ancient council had feared my first life and why they had spent so much effort making me forget what I had done. Elara had not been the only one hiding the truth from me because my own ancient self had buried the memory, knowing that remembering Aurelius's father would reveal where the final war had truly begun.

Damian stepped forward and asked what would happen if the seal opened. Seraphine answered before Aurelius could, explaining that the being beyond the seal did not want to conquer the supernatural world because it wanted something much worse. “It consumes memories,” she said, and my blood ran cold when I realized the connection to the Devourer.

“The Devourer was only a fragment of its power,” Seraphine continued, “created here because the original creature could not enter our world.” I looked toward Malachi, and the realization was immediate because if the Devourer carried a fragment of this creature, then Malachi had been carrying a connection to something far more ancient than any of us had understood.

Malachi suddenly grabbed his head and dropped to one knee. I rushed toward him, but Aurelius stopped me before I could touch him because black markings had begun spreading across Malachi's face while silver light filled his eyes. Malachi looked up at me with terror and said that he could hear the creature calling him through the connection created when the Devourer was placed inside him.

“It wants me,” he said. The voice from the sky answered immediately.

“Yes.”

The black circle above us opened wider, and this time I saw a pair of enormous silver eyes staring down through the darkness. The creature did not have a recognizable face, but I could feel its attention moving from Aurelius to Malachi before finally settling on me. When it spoke again, the entire forest shook.

“You have carried my stolen darkness for centuries.”

The First Flame reacted violently inside my chest. The darkness answered the creature's voice, pushing against the silver fire as though it wanted to return to its original master. I closed my eyes and reached deep inside myself, forcing the First Flame and the darkness together until they became one steady force instead of two opposing powers.

The moment I succeeded, the creature above us became silent. I opened my eyes and realized that its enormous silver gaze had changed, and for the first time since it appeared, I sensed something I had not expected from a being that powerful.

Fear.

“You cannot erase me,” I said, surprised by the confidence in my own voice. “Because I remember now.”

The creature's eyes narrowed, and Aurelius moved beside me while Damian took his position on my other side. My son stood behind us with Malachi, while Asterion and Vaelgor faced the council and Marcus gathered the remaining Dark Hollow warriors around the courtyard.

For the first time, people who had spent centuries fighting one another stood together because we finally understood that the ancient war had never truly been about a throne. It had always been about keeping the creature outside our world, and now every bloodline connected to that ancient conflict had been brought together in one place.

The creature suddenly reached through the opening. A massive silver hand emerged from the black circle, and the moment it crossed the boundary, every ancient seal surrounding Dark Hollow began breaking.

Seraphine screamed for the council to retreat, but I stepped forward instead because I knew that running would only give the creature more time to enter. I raised both hands, allowing the First Flame to erupt from my right palm while the darkness answered from my left.

Aurelius reached for my shoulders, Damian took my hand, and my son placed his palm against my back. Our bloodlines connected, and the ancient symbols beneath our feet exploded into silver light as they formed a barrier across the entire sky.

The creature's hand struck the barrier with enough force to shake the mountains, but the barrier held. For several seconds, neither side moved, and then the creature spoke with a voice filled with anger.

“You cannot stop me.”

I stared into those enormous silver eyes and felt an ancient memory finally return. I remembered the creature's name, I remembered why I had fought it before, and I remembered the one thing it had always feared.

“Your name is Eryndor,” I whispered.

Aurelius suddenly looked at me in shock. Seraphine dropped her weapon, while Asterion stared at me as though I had just spoken a forbidden word from the beginning of creation.

The creature went completely still. Then it asked, “Who told you that name?”

I smiled because I finally understood that nobody had needed to tell me. The memory had always been inside me, buried beneath the First Flame and the darkness I had carried through every life. “No one,” I answered.

The First Flame burned brighter than it ever had before, and the darkness rose beside it without fighting.

“I remembered it myself.”

Eryndor's hand suddenly tightened against the barrier.

Then the entire sky shattered.