Chapter Seventeen: Through the Broken Glyph
666 Words
Chapter Seventeen: Through the Broken Glyph
Shayne couldn’t stop thinking about the carvings—the screaming faces embedded in the underground stone.
Every time he closed his eyes, they stared back.
Every time he tried to sleep, he woke in bursts, drenched in sweat, his hands glowing with low, uncontrolled flame.
He was burning from the inside out, and no amount of jokes or bravado could smother it anymore.
Miranda noticed first.
She didn’t ask what was wrong.
She simply pressed a small bundle of herbs into his hand—dark green leaves with blackened veins, wrapped tightly with silver thread.
Spell Ingredient Note:
Sootleaf (harvested from the upper herbarium dome)
Mixed with moonwater and crushed whisper root
Used to brew a sleep draught that shields the mind against dream-based magic and elemental intrusion.
It didn’t erase the nightmares.
But it dulled the fire just enough that Shayne could think.
They met again beneath the Reflection Pool, in the web of hidden chambers Miranda had been slowly mapping.
Nick came this time, carrying a leather satchel stuffed with haphazard notes and old, crumbling glyph sketches.
The three of them crouched around the pool, the mirrored water trembling slightly as if sensing their tension.
"I think the glyphs are breaking because we’re using them wrong," Nick said, tapping his notes against the stone floor.
Shayne frowned.
"How can you use a glyph wrong?"
Nick pushed a hand through his hair, frustrated.
"Nicole’s been suppressing certain spells for years—using containment glyphs instead of restoration glyphs. The compound’s magic wasn’t designed to be held down like that."
Miranda summoned a mirror with a flick of her fingers and poured water across the cracked floor.
The ripples sharpened instantly, the reflection sharpening until it wasn’t their own faces they saw—but a wall, somewhere deep underground.
Behind the west side of the Silent Wing.
Hidden behind stone.
Hidden behind time.
And in that wall—
A door.
A massive slab of black opal, etched with a rune that glowed faintly even through the mirror’s surface.
Shayne leaned forward, his stomach twisting.
"I’ve seen that before," he whispered.
The others looked at him sharply.
"In my first Trial," Shayne said, voice hollow.
"When the maze gave me...me."
He remembered the flame.
The vision.
The burning house.
And on the walls—just for a second—that rune.
Not a glyph for containment.
Not a spell of healing.
Something else.
Something older.
They didn’t open the door.
Not yet.
Some instincts still ran deep, even here at the edge of fear.
Instead, Miranda pressed her hand into the stone floor.
Shayne and Nick followed, hands steady, breath held.
Together, they traced a simple sigil of light:
Three intersecting lines, woven like a braid, anchoring a single point at the center.
Their mark.
A promise.
A way back—when the time was right.
The stone absorbed the sigil slowly, as if reluctant to let it go.
And somewhere far below, deeper than any of them could feel,
something shifted in its sleep.
Reflection Pool: Lore Note
The Reflection Pool is one of the oldest natural constructs within the Moonstone grounds—
older even than the compound’s foundations.
It is not just water.
It is a memory well.
Properties:
Mirrors not the world as it is, but the world as it remembers.
Shows hidden structures, lost places, and fragments of spells bound too deep for surface magic to detect.
Responds to emotion and elemental resonance—especially water, air, and light-based magics.
Danger:
The pool does not lie, but it can show half-truths.
It can reveal what was, what almost was, or what still lingers.
Current Behavior:
As elemental fractures deepen beneath the Moonstone, the Reflection Pool’s visions have become sharper—more aggressive.
Those who look too long risk being pulled into an echo of the past or drawn toward ancient bindings they do not understand.
Whispered Warning:
"Water remembers the wounds the stone dares forget."
- Writer
