From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 49: Unsealed

The corridors were no longer safe.

Leon moved fast now, Ashveil low in his grip, its glow barely enough to cut the shadow curling along the walls. The Fifth Cohort had regrouped on the western tier, but not without losses. A third of their number were still unaccounted for.

The circles weren’t just waking things. They were changing them.

The first bodies recovered didn’t stay dead. Not in any way that resembled life. Instructors spoke of cadets rising with empty eyes and mouths filled with smoke, whispering in voices that didn’t belong to them. Old languages. Older malice.

And they weren’t hostile at first. Just listening and whispering.

Until someone screamed.

Now Leon walked beside Marien, three other cadets at their back now. Every stairwell felt tighter. Every doorway echoed. The broken symbols had spread beyond the citadel. Reports were coming in from the outer barracks, the watch towers, even the northern line. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

The resonance wasn’t just spreading. It was syncing.

"We’re being....tuned," Marien muttered, pressing her palm to the wall as another hum rolled through the stone. "Like strings."

"Like it’s trying to control us."

"I sense it too," Leon said, "and whatever’s behind this doesn’t need to single us out to make us snap."

A distant boom cut across the corridor.

They turned. Smoke drifted up the shaft leading to the Southern Hall. Flares burst orange along the edge. Someone had activated the fallback wards.

"Too early for retreat," Leon growled.

One of the cadets behind him fumbled a breath. "Then what do we do?"

Marien answered before he could. "We take back the core. We find the central seal and shut it down before the pattern completes."

Leon nodded. But he knew what she wasn’t saying.

The core wasn’t just deep. It was buried beneath the Thorne crypt.

The air thickened as they descended, the magic growing dense enough to taste—like copper and ash. Every step toward the crypt felt heavier, not from exhaustion, but from resistance. The kind that came from ancient wards waking up after centuries of stillness and deciding they didn’t like what they sensed approaching.

The torchlight ahead began to stutter. Marien didn’t flinch, but Leon felt the unease in her steps. Not hesitation— it was recognition.

He knew it too. The deeper they went, the less of the citadel’s present remained. This place wasn’t built for the living. The walls bore no tapestries, no banners—just smooth stone, sealed shut with layered runes that shimmered faintly under Ashveil’s light. Marks of protection. And confinement.

When they reached the final landing, they found the gate open.

The Thorne crypt had been opened.

Not shattered. Not broken. Opened.

By someone with the right to enter.

Leon stepped through first.

The chamber beyond was massive—circular, with twelve sarcophagi set into the floor, each marked with a crest long thought extinct. His ancestors. Fallen lords and disgraced knights. Most forgotten by the world.

But not by this place.

Ashveil pulsed in his hand. Dim. Receptive.

One of the coffins was already opened.

Marien approached it slowly, eyes narrowing at the disturbed dust, the smear of soot across the lid.

"Leon..." she said softly.

He didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

He already knew whose tomb it was.

The First Lord. Vaerin Thorne.

The founder. The one who broke the Oathbound War. The one whose blade carved the early boundaries of their house—and whose disappearance sparked the slow collapse of everything after.

Except there was no body.

Only a hollow impression in the stone, as if something old and heavy had risen from centuries of sleep and simply walked out.

And beside the sarcophagus, drawn in that same burnt-black soot as the other circles, was a second symbol.

This one wasn’t broken.

It was whole.

Complete.

Marien turned sharply as footsteps echoed behind them.

But it wasn’t a soldier.

It was Idran.

The Highmaster moved without his usual retinue. No guards. No sigils. Just the weight of knowledge behind his eyes.

"You knew this was here," Leon said.

Idran didn’t deny it.

"You seem to think the Vault tested you to crown you or because you were special, you’re wrong" he said. "It tested you to see if you were strong enough to endure what comes next."

He walked past them, knelt beside the seal, and touched it with bare fingers. The symbol flared—not in warning, but in welcome.

"They weren’t buried to be honored," Idran said. "They were buried here to be sealed."

Marien’s voice was low. "Then why open it?"

"Because the seal was already breaking," Idran replied. "Someone’s been working to undo it from the outside. Your passing through the Vault woke the rest. It was always tied to your bloodline."

Leon felt Ashveil heat in his hand.

"You’re saying I triggered this?"

"Yes. And I’m saying only you can end it."

And from deep below the chamber—beneath even the crypt—another sound began to rise.

Not a growl. Not a scream.

Voices.

Each rising in turn.

And above them all, the sound of something dragging metal across stone.

Coming closer.

The air in the crypt turned colder.

Not from any gust, but as if the walls themselves exhaled frost. Leon glanced back just for a second—but the corridor behind them looked... wrong. The shadows leaned forward. The runes along the archway pulsed dimmer. The way back was closing, not physically, but in presence. As if this place had decided the outside world no longer mattered.

Marien drew her blade in silence. The cadets behind them stayed at the edge, their eyes locked on the passageway, unwilling to enter. Maybe unable.

Leon stepped forward.

With each footfall, the chant grew clearer.

Not words. Not even syllables. Just tone.

Rising. Falling. The voices in slow, perfect unison. They didn’t echo. They didn’t need to. The sound pressed directly into bone.

The stone beneath the sarcophagi began to shift.

Rotate.

A great circle inscribed around the chamber’s edge started turning, faint symbols illuminating in sequence—each tied to one of the crests on the coffins. The seal was not just spiritual. It was mechanical. Ritualistic.

And it had begun to reverse.

Idran stood, expression grim. "They’re completing the rite from beneath."

Marien’s voice was sharp. "You mean summoning."

"No." Idran turned. "They’re releasing them."

The runes flared brighter. Ashveil pulsed in Leon’s hand.

Then he saw it.

In the far corner, where the chamber dipped into a downward slope barely visible in the gloom—stairs. Old, narrow, and carved into the same stone as the crypt.

They hadn’t been there before.

Or perhaps they just couldn’t see it.

"They’re not coming to us," Leon said.

Marien followed his gaze. "Then we go to them."

Idran raised a hand. "No one leaves this room until—"

But Leon was already moving.

Because the Another voice had joined the chant.

And it sounded exactly like his own.

Leon didn’t wait for permission.

Each step toward the downward slope pulled at something deeper than instinct. Like echoes moving in reverse, he felt the weight of decisions he hadn’t made and battles he’d never fought—but someone bearing his blood had.

Marien caught up, falling into step beside him. Her eyes never left the dark spiral below.

"Leon," she said, low. "If this is a trap—"

"It probably is," he replied. "But it’s meant for all of us."

The stairwell curved inward, swallowing light. Ashveil’s glow dimmed now as if reluctant. The sound of the chanting deepened, not louder, but denser—like voices calling from under water. Every wall bore the sigil of a Thorne, though many he didn’t recognise. Forgotten cousins. Branches never mentioned in council records.

And then the stairs ended.

They stepped into a lower vault—smaller than the crypt above but by far older. No runes here. No seals. Just a flat black chamber carved into bedrock, and at its centre, a mirror.

Not glass.

Stone. Polished. Utterly still.

Leon took one step forward—and the last voice he heard, his voice, stopped.

The others followed.

Silence fell.

In the mirror, his reflection didn’t move.

It smiled.

And spoke.

"You came late, blood of Thorne. But the inheritance was always yours."

Behind them, the stairwell groaned.

Marien spun.

And standing there now—blocking the way back—was a figure cloaked in shadows and ash.

The First Lord had returned.