Chapter Seven: Return to Ashes
The Grove was still when Aleister opened his eyes. Not quiet. Still. As if something sacred had just died, or something monstrous had just been born.
The masked figures were gone. The blackroot trees no longer whispered. The wind refused to move.
Aleister sat up slowly. His limbs felt wrong. Heavier. His breath came shallow. The card hovered above his palm, no longer lifeless. Its surface shimmered with a black liquid glow, and a single rune pulsed from within. The shape of it twisted when he tried to focus, but it reminded him of a horned crown.
His skin felt hot beneath the cold air. His thoughts weren't entirely his own.
Something inside him had shifted. Not like unlocking a door. More like breaking a wall and finding a different house behind it.
He stood.
The trees didn't creak. The moss beneath his boots flattened without a sound. The world, for the first time in his life, seemed to be watching him back.
He moved through the Whispering Veil, retracing his path. Roots once hostile now curled out of his way. Shadows peeled back when he passed. Where fear had lived in him for years, something colder had taken its place. Not rage. Not calm.
Recognition.
By the time he reached the forest's edge, the sky over Nethra had darkened. The clouds above the outer districts had turned deep gray, then black. Trails of red light rippled across the sky like veins.
He looked up and knew it wasn't a storm.
The world had felt what woke inside him.
In the lower chambers of Nethra's government vault, voices broke through stone.
"The Grove is active again."
"That's impossible."
"Tell that to the sky."
They stood around a round obsidian table. Seven voices. Seven Arcgloves. Each bearing a different rune.
"The card that never awakened has done so. And it didn't choose a school."
"It didn't need to."
One of them stepped forward. Her eyes were a pale violet, her voice dry.
"The boy didn't just bond with a creature. He returned with part of it."
Another voice spoke, quieter.
"No. He returned with something worse. A shape."
They all fell silent.
Aleister reached his camp by nightfall. The sky remained black. The fire pit was cold. He didn't try to light it.
He sat on the crate he used for sleeping. The card hovered beside him, casting a faint red reflection on the ground.
Then it moved. Slowly. A ripple of black smoke peeled off its edge and twisted upward into the air. It shimmered, then shaped. Horns. Wings. Fangs. A body with no face.
Aleister stared. The image was not projected. It was remembered. It was him.
He felt the shift before he understood it. His fingers burned. His spine ached. His shadow stretched out before him and then split in two.
Then the voice came. Not Irikrit's. His own.
But older. Deeper. Inside him.
"The devil is not summoned. He is remembered."
Aleister collapsed forward, gripping the earth.
Memories that weren't his surged through his body. A tower of flame. A blade of bone. Chains breaking. People screaming. A city on its knees. A body not entirely human, not entirely demon.
His body.
He forced himself upright. He looked at his reflection in a pool of spilled water beside the camp.
For a moment, his eyes were black with glowing red rings.
Then they returned to normal.
But the voice remained.
"You are not borrowing power. You are reclaiming shape."
Aleister clenched his fists.
He had not just awakened.
He had begun to remember what he truly was.
And the world would too.