Chapter 127 (Part 3): The Wheel Unbroken
The Fractured Hourglass
The chamber's silence deepened as Bennett traced invisible runes across the fossilized behemoth's tusks. Orpheus's gaze sharpened—a falcon assessing wounded prey.
"The knight's final strike pierced Gandolf's temporal ward," Bennett whispered, fingers trembling with calculated vulnerability. "His blade…it flickered. Like light through cracked glass."
Orpheus's teacup froze mid-air, eldergrass steam coiling into serpentine shapes. "Hersein's heresy defied even death?"
"The wound refused closure." Bennett pressed a hand to his own unscathed chest, mirroring Gandolf's final agony. "Divine corruption gnawed at his essence. My master's last words—"
He paused, letting the Chairman lean closer.
"—concerned you, Lord Orpheus."
The temperature plunged. Frost bloomed across the fossil's eye sockets like glacial cataracts.
Dragon's Ruse
Bennett produced the vial with ceremonial slowness. Green powder cascaded like emerald stardust—a performer unveiling his grandest trick.
"Wyrmspoor," Orpheus breathed, nostrils flaring at the acrid tang. "Gandolf taught you well. Even death-bound, he armors his pawns."
The Chairman's chuckle held no mirth as he circled Bennett. "Yet pawns become queens when crossing the board. Tell me, boy—what true price did that powder demand?"
Bennett met his gaze, innocence perfected through lifetimes of deception. "Merely the stench of survival."
The Unseen Chains
"Your guild medallion," Orpheus declared abruptly, slamming a fist-sized sigil onto the behemoth's skull. Obsidian metal swallowed the chamber's light. "Bearer of Gandolf's Legacy. Unbound by noble titles or mortal laws."
Bennett's fingers hovered above the artifact. Its surface rippled—a dark mirror showing his reflection crowned with frozen flames.
"Summerfire Festival's conclusion," the Chairman continued, "you'll face the Trial of Echoing Souls. Fail, and your bones shall nourish this tower's foundations. Succeed…"
The unspoken promise hung heavier than executioner's steel.
Bennett bowed, mind racing. A collar disguised as laurels.
Whispers in the Walls
Alaric's blade hovered near Bennett's ribs throughout the tense carriage ride home—less bodyguard than jailer. The moment his chamber door sealed, Bennett unleashed the containment wards.
Geggo emerged in a whirlwind of squeaks and torn parchment. "You agreed to what? Old Ereko's broomstick delusions? That lunatic once grafted griffin wings to a golem! The resulting explosion flattened—"
Bennett silenced him with the Quintessence Core's prismatic glow.
The rat mage's whiskers trembled. "Fivefold Mana Convergence… The Alchemist's Grail… You hold a god's ransom!"
"Dangerous?"
"Dangerous?" Geggo's laughter edged on hysteria. "That stone could power a siege golem for centuries! Or unravel a kingdom's ley lines! And Ereko just—gave it?"
The Puppeteer's Thread
Bennett rotated the core before candlelight. Fractal patterns danced across walls like imprisoned constellations. "Orpheus seeks to bind me. Ereko arms me. Why?"
Geggo's claws scraped obsessively at the stone's reflection. "The Chairman smells blood in Gandolf's legacy. As for the Mad Artificer…" The rat's voice dropped to sepulchral whisper. "They say he converses with the Frozen Crown."
"The what?"
"A myth. A curse. The whispering thing beneath the Chronohedron's ruins." Geggo's beady eyes gleamed with primal fear. "Whatever game you're playing, boy—you've already stepped on the board where elder things make their moves."
Bennett pocketed the core, its weight suddenly unbearable. Through his window, the guild's obsidian spires clawed at moonlit clouds—jagged teeth in a waiting maw.
Chapter 128 (Part 1): The Alchemist's Gambit
The Rat's Revelation
Geggo's claws tapped rhythmically against the Quintessence Core, its prismatic hues bleeding across the workshop walls like liquid auroras. Bennett stared at the stone, its surface shimmering with trapped starlight.
"You're telling me this pebble could power a siege?" he whispered, throat dry.
The rat mage's whiskers twitched in disdain. "Pebble? This 'pebble' once anchored the Obsidian Citadel's wards for three centuries! The fools who gifted it to you might as well have handed over a dragon's beating heart!" He snatched the walnut Bennett offered, cracking it with theatrical ferocity. "Your precious Guild Chairman likely thinks it's a paperweight. Even Zoltan's apprentice—that preening peacock—barely glanced at it. Ignorance is the true pandemic of this age."
Bennett's fingers traced the stone's unnaturally warm surface. "But how do we—?"
"We?" Geggo's laughter rattled glass vials. "You couldn't channel a campfire without blowing yourself up! Hand over the artificer's kit—the one those guild lackeys gave you to play pretend mage."
The Forge of Infinity
The workshop descended into chaos as Geggo transformed. His usual hunched posture straightened into alchemical precision, claws moving with clockmaker's grace. Leatherbound tools spilled across the workbench—adamantine chisels, moonsteel calipers, a crucible forged from a phoenix's skull.
"Observe," the rat intoned, selecting a silver awl thinner than a spider's thread. "The Quintessence Core isn't stored—it's cultivated."
The tool struck. A sliver no larger than a snowflake sheared off, its glow intensifying to blinding white. Bennett instinctively shielded his eyes—a mistake. When vision returned, the fragment floated above Geggo's palm, pulsing like a captive supernova.
"Your turn." The rat flicked the shard toward him. "Channel everything."
The Abyss Gazes Back
Sweat drenched Bennett's collar within minutes. The fragment drank his magic like parched earth guzzling monsoon rains. Familiar spells—Spark, Magehand, even his half-formed Ward of Unmaking—evaporated into the crystal's bottomless hunger.
"It's…not stopping," he gasped, knees buckling.
Geggo watched impassively. "The Core mirrors its user's limits. You're not filling a vessel—you're confronting your own inadequacy."
Memories surged unbidden—Gandolf's corpse steaming in the snow, Hersein's corrupted blade piercing temporal wards. The fragment brightened, its light now violet-black, a color that hurt the soul to perceive.
When Bennett collapsed, the shard still glowed.
Echoes of Armageddon
"Pathetic," Geggo snorted, catching the falling sliver. "A dozen grandmages once fed this stone for a lunar cycle to power a single working. What you've poured in wouldn't light a beggar's pipe."
He pressed the fragment against Bennett's trembling palm. "But even embers burn when concentrated."
The vision struck without warning:
A battlefield drenched in silent lightning. Soldiers vaporizing mid-charge. A crown of frozen flames hovering above the carnage—not casting the destruction, but drinking it. The Quintessence Core in his hand screaming with stolen power.
Bennett recoiled, the stone clattering to the floor. "It's not a battery…it's a sponge."
Geggo's eyes gleamed feral. "Now you understand why the ancients called it God's Maw. Channel a fireball through it, and you get conflagration. But channel…" His claw traced the air, leaving afterimages of screaming faces. "…say, a Ninth-Circle Annihilation Rune?"
The rat leaned close, breath reeking of burnt ozone. "That's how you store a cataclysm in your pocket."
The Artisan's Price
Dawn found them surrounded by schematics. Geggo had reduced the Core to seventeen shards, each nested in intricate filigree.
"A ring for battle," the rat muttered, soldering starmetal threads. "Ear cuffs for passive absorption. But the main mass…" He gestured to the remaining eighty percent of the stone. "…that becomes your lodestone."
Bennett frowned. "For what?"
"The working that'll get us both killed." Geggo's grin showed too many teeth. "Ever crafted a spell that outlives its caster? A true Eternal Enchantment?"
The blueprint unfurled—a staff design that hurt to examine, its spirals echoing the fractal patterns inside the Core.
"With this," Geggo whispered, "you won't just cast Grand Magic. You'll institutionalize it."
Outside, thunder rumbled—or perhaps the guild's siege golems shifting in their vaults. Bennett stared at the schematics, understanding at last why Gandolf had hidden this stone from the world.
Some doors shouldn't be opened.
Chapter 128 (Part 2): Inferno's Threshold
The Temptation of Apocalypse
Bennett's fingers dug into the Quintessence Core, its crystalline edges biting into his palm like a promise. Geggo's earlier words echoed through his skull—"A hundred Forbidden Spells in your pocket, boy. A walking Armageddon."
"Imagine," the rat mage crooned, polishing a sliver of the stone with manic precision, "a single scroll containing 'Inferno's Embrace.' Ten thousand souls erased in the time it takes to snap your fingers. No chanting. No incantations. Just…unleashing."
Bennett's throat tightened. He'd heard tavern tales of the legendary firestorm spell—entire cities reduced to glass plains under a mage's wrath. But this…this was different. This was packaged annihilation.
"Even Aragon's ghost would flee," he breathed, vision swimming with images of obliterated battlefields.
Geggo's claw tapped his temple. "Don't get starry-eyed. Forbidden Spells require more than ink and parchment. The Quintessence Core must be attuned—each shard harmonized to a specific magical frequency. One misaligned rune, and…" The rat mimed an explosion with his paws, whiskers twitching.
The Artisan's Crucible
By moonrise, Bennett's chambers resembled an alchemical warzone. Glass vials of dragonbone ink cluttered every surface, their contents shimmering with imprisoned starlight. Geggo hunched over a workbench, magnifying lenses strapped to his head like some deranged jeweler.
"Hold still," the rat snapped as Bennett extended his left hand. A band of orichalcum wire coiled around his ring finger, its surface etched with sigils that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
The pain arrived without warning—a white-hot needle driving through his fingernail. Bennett hissed as the Quintessence shard fused with the metal, its rainbow hues darkening to blood-crimson.
"Congratulations," Geggo muttered, tossing aside the pliers. "You've just become the most dangerous novice in Roland's history. Try not to vaporize yourself before breakfast."
The Spider's Web
Exhaustion should have claimed him. Yet as midnight approached, Bennett found his senses sharpening. The Quintessence Ring hummed against his skin, amplifying his magic in ways that set his teeth on edge.
Just a test, he told himself, settling cross-legged on the floor.
His consciousness unfurled like poisoned honey—thick, cloying, irresistible. Dust motes in the rafters. Ants scuttling between floorboards. A maid's stifled yawn three corridors away. Each sensation burned brighter than torchlight.
Drunk on power, Bennett pushed further.
The ring flared as his mind brushed against Count Raymond's study. For a heartbeat, he glimpsed leather-bound ledgers, a half-empty wine goblet…
Then the world inverted.
The Sentinel's Wrath
Alfard's sword wasn't steel—it was judgment given form.
Bennett's mental tendrils evaporated under the knight-captain's counterstrike, the backlash hurling him bodily against the wall. Vomit burned his throat as phantom blades carved through his psyche. Somewhere in the distance, porcelain shattered.
"Pathetic," Alfard's voice boomed through the psychic link, colder than glacial runoff. "The next intrusion earns you a blade through the eye, mage."
Geggo found him minutes later, trembling in a pool of his own sick. "Touched something you shouldn't, didn't you?" The rat sniffed the Quintessence Ring's corrupted glow. "Lucky to keep your sanity. Alfard's no mere swordsman—that brute's lineage carries Old Blood. They hunt magic like wolves scent prey."
The Prodigy's Knock
Dawn's first light brought an unwelcome reprieve.
"Bennett? You look terrible."
Gabriel stood framed in the doorway, twelve years old and already radiating the poise of a seasoned duelist. His eyes lingered on the shattered ink vials, the scorch marks defiling the family crest on the wall.
"Practicing forbidden arts again?" The boy grinned, tossing an apple between gloved hands. "Father's in one of his moods. Something about 'rogue mages' defiling the estate."
Bennett forced a laugh, the Quintessence Ring burning like a brand. "Just…experimenting."
Gabriel's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Experiments are dangerous, brother. You should take more care."
As the door closed, Bennett stared at his trembling hand. The ring's crimson glow had deepened to arterial black.
Some thresholds, once crossed, couldn't be undone.
Chapter 129: The Prodigy's Shadow
A Brother's Warmth
Bennett's lips curled into an unguarded smile as he swung the door open. There stood Gabriel, the family's golden child, the eight-year-old prodigy destined to inherit the Raymond legacy. Yet in this moment, he was simply a boy—grinning ear to ear, his blue coat studded with pockets like a patchwork rebellion against Roland's stiff aristocratic fashions.
The design was unmistakable. His design.
Bennett's heart swelled. Years ago, during their secret midnight lessons, he'd described the "utility coats" from his past life—garments stitched with practicality over pomp. Now here it was, materialized by Gabriel's stubborn ingenuity. The boy's sleeves were crusted with dirt, his boots muddy, but his eyes sparkled with the same restless curiosity Bennett had nurtured.
"You're back!" Gabriel lunged forward, arms wrapping around Bennett's waist with unapologetic fervor. For a breath, the mansion's cold marble halls faded. No calculating glances from Father, no veiled contempt from courtiers—just a little brother's raw joy.
Bennett ruffled Gabriel's tousled hair, noting how the boy's frame had thickened under swordsmanship training. "What's this? A noble heir playing in mud?"
Gabriel stepped back, proudly jangling a pocket full of coins. "Blame Master Bluewater! He made us dig for earthworms today. Said books lie unless you—"
A floorboard creaked.
Bennett stiffened.
The Silent Sentinel
He hadn't heard the approach. Not the faintest whisper of breath.
The figure emerged from shadow as though conjured—a man in servant's garb, yet radiating lethality like a sheathed dagger. His eyes held the glacial detachment of a seasoned killer, his stance poised to strike or vanish in equal measure.
Gabriel rolled his eyes. "That's Tu. Father's new watchdog. He follows me everywhere now. Won't even smile."
Bennett's fingers twitched. This wasn't protection—it was a threat. Tu moved like quicksilver, his presence muted to near invisibility. Only those who'd walked battlefields honed such instincts.
"Your name," Bennett demanded, voice edged steel.
Tu stared through him.
"Answer!" Gabriel stamped his foot, the command ringing with inherited authority.
A beat. Then, toneless as a funeral bell: "Tu."
Secrets in the Soil
Later, as Gabriel prattled about botany lessons gone awry, Bennett studied the dirt caking his brother's sleeves. Master Bluewater's methods intrigued him—sabotaging textbooks to force students into the field, letting earth-stained hands disprove inked falsehoods. A scholar after his own renegade heart.
"He's right, you know," Bennett murmured, retrieving a brass telescope from his desk. Its lenses gleamed faintly enchanted—crude by Roland's magical standards, yet revolutionary in simplicity. "Truth lives in the mud, not parchment."
Gabriel gasped as Bennett placed the spyglass in his hands. "For me? But… why not teach me yourself? You're smarter than any stuffy old—"
"Keep Tu close." Bennett's whisper cut through the boy's excitement. "Never leave his sight. Understand?"
Gabriel nodded, trust absolute.
Whispers in the Dark
When the door closed, Bennett pressed his forehead to cold oak. Tu's presence changed everything. Father didn't assign shadow-stalkers to heirs—he bred them for heirs.
What storms gather in the capital?
Memories flickered—Mother's tear-stained letters, Father's "gifts" laced with surveillance. Now Gabriel, the family's brightest hope, leashed to a living blade.
Somewhere beyond these walls, chess pieces clattered into place. Knights. Bishops. Pawns.
Bennett's hand drifted to the Quintessence Ring, its corrupted core throbbing in time with his pulse.
Let them scheme.
He'd burn the board itself if they threatened his brother.