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Chapter 5: The Announcement
Last Updated:
2025-03-18 13:49:15
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THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH Chapter 80:Not All Summons Are His
The sky had changed by the time we left the stone archways of the dining hall. The sun was still up—barely—but it clung to the horizon like it, too, wasn’t ready to see what came next. Everything was steeped in that late-winter dusk, the kind that blurred edges and made the world feel half-real, as though the trees and stone paths had all been dipped in smoke and memory.I followed the boy in silence. His pace was neither hurried nor idle, but something in between—like someone accustomed to being watched, or followed, but not spoken to. I didn’t ask his name. He didn’t offer it. We weren’t companions, or classmates, or anything close to familiar. He was only the bridge. A necessary thread woven between one decision and the next.With each step, Ashwood Academy began to shrink behind us—not physically, but in weight. In presence. The sharp iron gates, the frost-etched towers, even the haunting rhythm of the Academy bell tolling the hour—all of it began to fade as the path sloped downwa
THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH Chapter 79: Summoned by Fire
For a moment, I didn’t move.Didn’t breathe.Didn’t blink.The name echoed in my mind like a bell rung too close to the ear—sharp and resonant, reverberating long after the sound itself had faded. Atlas Blackwood. Two words that unraveled something in me, pulled a hidden thread I hadn’t realized was holding so many things together. My name still hung in the air, unanswered. Aubrey Sinclair. It didn’t feel like mine anymore. It felt like a summons.I stared at the boy who had delivered it, as if doing so long enough might cause him to vanish. But he didn’t. He simply stood there—silent, still, patient in the way only someone who had never been denied could be. He wasn’t older than us, not by much, but he wore his legacy like armor, polished and unyielding. His blazer was pressed without crease, his collar starched to severity, and the insignia on his chest—Blackwood’s crest—gleamed cold as a winter star. His hands were folded behind his back. Not as a gesture of politeness, but of cont
THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH Chapter 78: House Morrow’s Leverage
We returned to the table not because we wanted to, but because there was nowhere else to go. The long mahogany bench beneath us groaned as we sat, its worn edges gleaming faintly beneath the breakfast hall’s flickering chandeliers. Steam curled from chipped teacups abandoned by earlier students, the scent of orange peel and bitter herbs clinging to the air. Somewhere down the row, someone laughed. The clang of cutlery rose and fell in the background—too distant to matter, yet loud enough to remind me the world was still moving.Callum sat across from us, elbows braced on the table, his fingers steepled as if in prayer—or restraint. His gaze flicked from me to Ingrid, then back again. “Are you two all right?” he asked finally, but it wasn’t really a question. It was a placeholder. A bridge to something heavier.Ingrid didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t look at me either. She just stared forward, eyes blank, the corner of her mouth drawn taut like she was biting the insid
THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH Chapter 77: Crisis Management Over Croissants
The next thing I knew—though perhaps “knew” was too generous a word for the way time frayed after trauma—I was sitting in the dining hall, legs folded stiffly beneath the table’s edge, hands curled in my lap, the scent of honeyed pastries and brewed coffee wafting faintly beneath the vaulted ceiling, as though nothing had happened, as though my skin hadn’t almost been branded in front of an entire courtyard filled with faculty only hours ago. Across from me sat Callum, posture straight but not rigid, the corners of his mouth slack with the sort of careful, quiet restraint he wore when the world around him cracked but he hadn’t quite decided whether to patch it or let it break clean through. He wasn’t speaking. Not yet. Just watching, the way one might watch a storm cloud that hadn’t decided whether to pass or strike. His gaze wasn’t on me, though—not entirely. No, his attention—like mine—had been commandeered by the third person at our table, who, for all intents and purposes, appear
THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH Chapter 76: By Order of the High Council
The man with the scroll let the final words settle—no, sink—into the courtyard like ash descending from a pyre long since burned, the syllables hanging with the weight of law that had no room for mercy. He did not look at me as he gave the next command. He didn’t have to.“Proceed,” he said simply, and the two guards stepped forward in unison.Their movements were precise, practiced—so eerily synchronized that I wondered how many times they had performed this same ritual, how many bodies had passed through their hands to be bound, stilled, branded. They were not cruel in the way they touched me—there was no malice in their grip—but neither was there softness. One guard took my right shoulder, the other my left, and I felt the weight of them settle into place behind me like a yoke, like stone pillars closing in, each hand heavy and unyielding as they pressed down through the fabric of my sleeves and into the bone beneath. I did not resist—not yet—but my muscles locked instinctively ben
THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH Chapter 75: The Ember Decree
The moment Professor Marwood’s footsteps vanished beyond the stone archway, it was as if the air thinned with his absence. The tension he left behind did not dissipate—it hovered, thick and immovable, like the remnants of smoke after something sacred has burned. I stood in the echo of it, wrists clasped too tightly behind me, the cold from the flagstone floor beginning to seep through the thin soles of my shoes and into the bones of my heels.Callum hadn’t spoken. Not yet. Not since the final pronouncement.His silence wasn’t cold, but it was restrained—tightly wound, as though he was holding something back with both hands and wasn’t sure whether it would come out as words… or fire.I turned to him, slowly. I didn’t try to mask the tremor in my voice.“Callum,” I said, and the sound of his name felt strange in the stillness—too soft, too human for what we were standing inside. “What is it? The Ember Marking?”He didn’t look at me right away. His eyes were still fixed on the archway wh
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