Chapter 2: The Eyes in the Dark
The bedroom window rattled in its frame, a gust of wind slapping against the glass like an impatient hand. Briv looked up from the book in his lap, blinking away the haze of concentration. The candle beside his bed had burned down to a stub, the flame flickering weakly, dancing in the draft that crept through the ancient walls.
He'd been reading for hours. The book—The Hidden Realm: Gantor's History and Enclosure—was one of the yellow-marked volumes his father had gestured to in the cellar. It was dry, academic, dense with footnotes that referenced other footnotes. But buried in the middle of chapter seven, Briv had found something that made his hands go cold.
The island of Gantor exists outside the known borders of Sekrya, separated not by geography but by a barrier of woven magic so ancient that its creators have faded into myth. This shield, commonly referred to as the Veil, serves a dual purpose: it conceals the island from the wider world, and it prevents those within from leaving. Outsiders may stumble through the Veil by chance—lost sailors, wandering travelers, those whose intentions are unclear even to themselves—but once inside, they are bound to the island forever. No ship can cross the waters beyond. No path leads back through the forest. The Veil does not discriminate between those who wish to stay and those who desperately wish to leave.
Furthermore, the Veil suppresses magic within its borders. Spellwork that functions elsewhere in Sekrya fails here. Magical artifacts become inert, their power leached away by the island's ancient enchantment. It is believed this suppression was intentional, a means of protecting the island from the wars that have scarred the mainland. But the cost of this protection is a kind of exile. Those who live within Gantor's borders are cut off from the world they once knew, their histories, their families, their futures—all sacrificed to the island's insatiable need for isolation.
Briv read the passage three times, the words sinking into him like stones into still water. Then he closed the book and stared at the faded cover.
Nobody can leave. Nobody can leave.
He'd grown up on Gantor. He'd left. He'd sailed away on a fishing boat when he was eighteen, worked in three different towns, kissed a girl who laughed at him, failed at a dozen small jobs. And now, supposedly, all of that had happened inside the Veil. He'd never truly escaped. He'd just been wandering inside a cage he hadn't known existed.
"But that doesn't make sense," he muttered to the empty room. "I was born here. Da was born here. If magic can't exist on Gantor, then how did the ritual work? How do the priests still have power?"
Unless they didn't. Unless the ritual had never been about waking his magic at all.
He ran a hand through his tangled hair, pulling at the roots until his scalp prickled. The wooden sphere in his pocket pressed against his hip, a constant reminder of Rori, of the fire, of the secrets woven through his family like threads in a tapestry he'd never been allowed to see whole.
The torn page. He'd almost forgotten it. The one tucked in the journal his father had kept hidden. The one with writing so urgent it had torn through the paper.
Briv stood, his legs stiff from sitting cross-legged on the bed. The house was quiet, settled into the deep silence of late night. He could hear the wind outside, the creak of the old timbers, and—just barely—the low rumble of his father snoring downstairs.
He moved to the door, his bare feet cold against the wooden floor. He paused with his hand on the latch. What was he doing? Snooping through his father's secrets like a thief in the night? But the thought curdled in his mouth, because his father had been keeping secrets for twenty-three years. Rori. The fire. The Archmage prophecy. The Veil.
What else was buried in that house? What else had Chris Bolgrey hidden from his own son?
Briv opened the door, wincing as the hinges let out a quiet groan. He slipped into the hallway, his senses on high alert. The stairs descended into darkness, the living room below lit only by the faint glow of embers in the fireplace.
He could see the lump of his father's body stretched out on the couch, a blanket pulled up to his chin. Chris's snoring continued—slow, rhythmic, like distant thunder. He was a heavy sleeper, always had been. Briv had snuck past him a hundred times as a teenager, though usually in the opposite direction, creeping out of the house to meet friends or wander the docks.
The floorboards creaked beneath Briv's weight, and he froze, holding his breath. His father shifted, muttered something unintelligible, then settled back into stillness.
Briv exhaled slowly and continued his careful descent.
The living room was warmer than the rest of the house, the remnants of the fire casting a soft orange glow across the worn furniture. Briv's eyes adjusted quickly, his gaze sweeping the room for the journal he'd seen earlier. He'd left it in the cellar, hadn't he? No—wait. He'd brought it upstairs. He'd been leafing through it at the table, trying to read more of his father's frantic handwriting, when Chris had called him in for dinner.
Briv glanced toward the kitchen table. Empty. He scanned the room again, his frustration mounting. The journal wasn't there. It must still be in the cellar, locked in the chest with the books.
The cellar door was tucked beside the pantry, a heavy slab of wood that always stuck in the frame. Briv moved toward it, trying to keep his steps silent on the creaking floorboards.
A soft rustling from the corner made him freeze. He turned, his heart hammering, to find a pair of eyes gleaming in the dim light.
Peaches.
The cat was a living puff of orange fluff, her face upturned. She gave a small, questioning meow.
"Shh," Briv whispered, crouching down and holding out a hand. "Quiet, girl. It's just me. Me."
Peaches padded over and butted her head against his palm, her purr loud in the stillness. Briv glanced toward the couch, but his father hadn't stirred.
"Good cat," he murmured, straightening up. "Now, if you could just not alert the entire household to my presence, that would be great."
Peaches meowed again, louder this time.
"Betrayer."
Briv reached the cellar door and pulled it open, bracing himself for the groan of old hinges. To his surprise, it swung silently, the faint scent of must and dust wafting up from the darkness below. He grabbed a small lantern from the hook beside the door, fumbled with his flint, and managed to light it with shaking hands.
The cellar stairs were narrow, the lantern casting trembling shadows across the stone walls. Briv descended carefully, his bare feet registering the cold seep of the flagstones. He'd always hated this cellar, the way the ceiling seemed to press down on him, the weight of the house resting on his shoulders.
He reached the bottom and lifted the lantern high. The chest was exactly where he'd left it, the lock still hanging open. Briv knelt and raised the lid, the hinges protesting with a metallic screech.
He winced and glanced up, but no sound came from the living room. His father was still snoring.
He searched through the books, his hands moving quickly now. He knew what he was looking for—the journal with the torn pages, the one with his father's frantic handwriting. He'd left it in the chest, hadn't he? No, he'd definitely brought it upstairs. He'd been reading it over dinner, and then—
Then his father had spoken to him. And Briv had forgotten about the journal entirely.
"Stupid," he muttered under his breath. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
He sifted through the books, scanning the titles, the yellow markers, the loose pages stuffed between covers. But the journal wasn't there. It wasn't in the kitchen either. It could be anywhere.
A soft thump from above made Briv freeze. He held his breath, straining to hear. But it was just the cat, probably knocking something off a shelf. Peaches was a menace with her tail.
He knelt there for a long moment, the lantern casting wild shadows. And then, between two volumes of ancient Sekryan history, he saw it. A torn scrap of paper, yellowed at the edges, covered in cramped handwriting. It wasn't the journal—it was the page that had been torn OUT of the journal, the one his father had tried to hide.
Briv pulled it out carefully, like he was handling a wounded bird. The paper was thin, almost transparent in places. He lifted the lantern and squinted at the writing.
...they are still watching. I am certain of it. The woman from the feast, the one they call the Weaver, she looked at Briv directly. I saw her eyes widen. I saw her mark the moment. And I cannot forget the way Chiara's hand shook when she told me about the Immortalys flower.
The prophecy is real. The Archmage is real. And my son does not know what he is.
If they find him before I can prepare him, before he can understand what's happening—
The page ended there, the writing cut off mid-sentence. Briv stared at it, the words burning into him. The Weaver. Chiara. Immortalys flower. It was all connected. All of it—his childhood, his accident, the strange woman his father had mentioned, the prophecy that wanted him dead.
He didn't know exactly where the page had come from, but it was important. He could feel it, a thrumming certainty beneath his ribs. He couldn't leave it unguarded. Not here, where his father might find it or worse, lose it.
He tucked the scrap of paper into his sleeve and picked up a thick red leather book from the pile, its cover blank but its pages filled with diagrams and sketches. Carefully, gently, he slipped the torn page between the pages of the book—a book his father would never suspect, a book that looked like it wasn't valuable. Then he closed the chest, snuffed the lantern, and made his way back upstairs.
Peaches was waiting at the top of the stairs, her eyes gleaming in the dark. She let out a quiet chirp, and Briv put a finger to his lips.
"Not a word," he whispered. "Not a single word."
Peaches blinked slowly and turned away, as if she understood the gravity of the situation. As if she, too, was a keeper of secrets.
Behind him, from the bookshelf, two small marble eyes gleamed in the dark. Spot, the stuffed owl that had belonged to Briv as a child, sat perched atop a stack of old newspapers, watching him with unblinking intensity. Briv could have sworn the owl's head had moved, but that was impossible. Wasn't it?
"Don't you start either," he whispered.
He made it back to his room without waking his father, the adrenaline making his hands tremble. He closed the door softly and leaned against it, his heart pounding. The torn page in the red book was safe. He had done something, even if he didn't fully understand what.
Hours passed. Briv sat at his desk, his journal open before him, the old pen scratching across the page. He wrote everything: the Veil, the shield, the passage about magic being suppressed. He wrote about the torn page, the Weaver, Chiara, the Immortalys flower. He wrote until his hand cramped and his eyes burned, the words spilling out of him like blood from a wound.
I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a puzzle I've been trapped inside my whole life, and everyone else already knows the picture. I just see scattered pieces. His pen hesitated, hovering over the page. Maybe that's what being the Archmage means. Maybe you're supposed to be blind, just stumbling forward until the universe decides you're ready.
He blew out the candle and lay down on his bed, the darkness folding around him like a blanket. His mind was still churning, chasing the threads of truth, but his body was exhausted, weighed down by the day's revelations. He drifted off to sleep without meaning to.
The forest appeared around him like a memory rising out of mist.
Briv stood ankle-deep in moss, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and something sweet, almost floral. It was night, but not dark. A soft luminescence clung to the leaves, glowing in shades of green and violet, like the forest was releasing its own breath.
The trees were enormous—ancient, sprawling things with trunks wider than his house. Their roots cradled the ground, creating channels where water trickled and pooled. Silver light filtered through the canopy from an unseen moon, making the forest feel underwater.
Briv turned in a slow circle, his boots sinking slightly into the soft earth. He didn't remember coming here. He didn't remember falling asleep, either, but this didn't feel like a dream.
It felt like being somewhere.
His breath fogged in the air, and he noticed the silence. No birdsong, no rustling leaves, no insects. Just stillness—profound, suffocating stillness.
"This is fine," he murmured to himself. "This is fine. I've just been teleported to a magical forest with no explanation. Perfectly normal."
He walked, choosing direction by instinct, which was terrible because his instinct had never been reliable. But the forest seemed to shift around him, paths appearing where there had been none, shadows receding and advancing like the forest was guiding him somewhere.
Then he saw the symbol.
A tree—taller than the rest, its bark smooth and pale—bore a mark carved into its trunk. Two parallel vertical lines, clean and deliberate, as if a blade had pressed into the wood and left its signature. The symbol was familiar, but Briv couldn't place where he'd seen it before.
"II," he muttered. "What is that supposed to mean? It's a little romantic. A little cryptic. I'm meant to be the Archmage, not a riddle."
He pressed his fingers to the carved lines. The bark was cold, and beneath it, he felt something hum, a faint vibration like the strings of a distant instrument.
He withdrew, unsettled.
The path continued, winding through the trees. More symbols appeared—the same two vertical lines, etched into trunks, carved into stones, once even scraped into the bark of a fallen branch. The same symbol, repeated over and over, as if the forest itself had been marked by something that wanted to be found.
"That's not ominous at all," Briv said, his voice barely above a whisper.
The trees began to thin, and the path opened into a clearing. Briv hesitated at the edge, his instincts screaming at him to turn back. But something pulled him forward, whispering in the depths of his chest.
The clearing was perfectly circular, a circle so precise it had to be intentional. The ground was bare earth, swept clean of debris, and in the center stood a single stone—a flat, grey monolith, taller than a man. Briv walked toward it, his footsteps echoing in the unnatural silence.
And then the light went out.
It happened in an instant, the luminescence vanishing like a flame snuffed out by a cruel hand. Briv froze, plunged into utter darkness. He couldn't see his own hand in front of his face.
"Okay," he said, swallowing hard. "That's not good."
A sound broke the silence. A low, guttural breathing, wet and ragged, coming from somewhere in the darkness. Briv turned, his heart hammering, but there was nothing. Nothing he could see.
But he could feel it.
Something was in the clearing with him. Something massive, its presence pressing against the edges of his awareness like a weight on his sternum. He backed away slowly, his heels catching on the uneven ground.
Then the eyes opened.
Two red coals ignited in the darkness, floating at a height that made Briv's blood run cold. They were too high, too wide apart, the eyes of something that stood significantly larger than a man. They blinked slowly, and the breathing grew louder, closer.
"No," Briv whispered. "No, no, no."
He turned and ran—stumbled, more accurately. His feet caught on roots and stones, but he forced himself forward, chased by the sound of that breathing, the weight of those eyes. He broke through the ring of trees and found himself on a path, but the forest was different now. The lights were gone, replaced by an amber glow at the edges of his vision.
Fire.
Flames surrounded the clearing, closing in on all sides, the heat snapping and licking at the canopy. Briv turned, searching for an exit, but every direction led to flame. The paths had shifted, moved, reoriented themselves into a labyrinth of burning trees.
"This is a dream," he gasped, backing away. "This is just a dream. Wake up. Wake up."
But he didn't wake up. The fire grew closer, the heat baking his skin, and the red eyes watched from the darkness beyond the flames, patient and hungry.
Then, through the blaze, a gap opened—a narrow corridor of darkness between the walls of fire. Briv didn't think. He ran.
He burst through the flames, singed and gasping, into an open space that was suddenly cold. The fire was gone, the forest replaced by a mountainside. Rocky ground sloped upward, jagged cliffs against a grey sky. It was morning. Or maybe it was evening. The light was strange here, diffused and soft.
Briv blinked, the transition stealing his breath. He was standing on a narrow ledge, a sheer drop to his left, a wall of rock to his right. Wind tore at his clothes, and he swayed dangerously.
And then he recognized it.
This was the cliff. The one from his childhood. The one where he and Chiara had climbed, where the accident had happened, where he'd fallen—
He looked down at the drop below, the world tilting around him. It was the same. The same ledge, the same crack in the rock face, the same wildflowers growing in stubborn patches. And there, tucked into the crevice where he'd landed, was the flower.
Immortalys.
It was small and white, its petals glowing faintly in the pale light. It looked exactly the way it had when he'd seen it as a child, before the fall, before everything had changed.
Briv crouched, his hand trembling as he reached for it.
"Immortalys," he whispered. "You're still here."
The flower seemed to pulse, a rhythm like a heartbeat. And behind him, he heard the breathing again.
He turned. The red-eyed creature was there, crouched among the rocks. It looked different in the half-light—less a beast, more a shadow given form, its edges roiling and shifting like smoke. But the eyes were the same. Burning. Hungry.
"You," Briv breathed.
The creature moved, faster than anything that size should have moved. Briv scrambled backward, but there was nowhere to go. The cliff edge was inches behind him, the drop yawning below.
"Stay back," he shouted, his voice cracking. "Stay the hell away from me."
The creature didn't stop. It advanced, step by step, forcing him closer to the edge. Briv's heels found empty air, and he windmilled his arms, trying to keep his balance.
"Okay, okay, look, I don't know if you can talk, but if you can, I'm begging you, just give me a second—"
The creature lunged.
Briv's foot slipped. He fell. For a moment, he was weightless, the wind screaming past his ears. Then impact—but not the jolt of hitting the ground. Instead, a numbness spread through his body, a cold emptiness that made no sense.
He should be broken. He should be dead.
Instead, he was lying on his back, staring up at a cliff face that now bore words carved into the stone. They were rough, hasty, filled with a kind of raw, desperate energy.
B BA K II
Briv stared at the letters, his mind struggling to make sense of them.
"B BA K," he muttered. "What does that mean? Something… broken? A name? A code?"
His father's handwriting flashed in his mind—the torn page, the urgent scrawl. Was this it? Was this what Chris had been trying to find? Had he come here? Had he carved this message, or was it something else entirely?
He tried to stand, but his limbs wouldn't obey. The numbness was spreading, swallowing him from the inside. Above him, the sky turned black. Not night—black, as in the color bled out of existence. The clouds became ash, falling in lazy spirals, coating the ground in a layer of grey.
The creature grew above him, the shadow swelling until it blotted out the dead sky, its form stretching across the horizon. It was ready. It was starving.
Briv couldn't move. Couldn't run. Couldn't even close his eyes.
"So this is it," he whispered, his voice empty. "This is how it ends. Not with a bang, not with a fight. Just lying on my back in a fake dream while a shadow monster eats me."
The creature leaned down, its maw stretching wide, darkness already swallowing the edges of his vision.
And then—
A light.
Small and white, fluttering at the edge of his sight. Briv's eyes focused, and he saw a butterfly—a delicate thing made entirely of light, its wings beating softly, leaving trails of shimmering dust in the dead air. It landed on his chest, and in an instant, the numbness was gone.
Everything vanished. The creature, the cliff, the flower, the ashen sky. The white light expanded until Briv could see nothing else, feel nothing else. He was floating, suspended in a void of pure luminescence.
He thought, I'm dying.
But it didn't hurt. It felt like falling into a warm bath, like being held by something that existed before the world was born. The light pressed against him, soothing the ache in his bones, the grief in his chest.
Then the white began to coalesce. A shape emerged—the silhouette of a person walking toward him through the brightness. A woman. Her features were indistinct, hidden by the glow, but he could see the outline of her form, the fall of her hair, the curve of her shoulders.
She knelt beside him. He still couldn't see her face, but he could feel her presence like a shelter from the storm. She didn't speak. Instead, she held out her hand, palm open, waiting.
Briv stared at that hand. So small. So fragile. So impossibly steady.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
No answer.
"I don't even know if you're real," he said.
Still no answer. But her hand remained extended, patient, waiting.
And something in Briv's chest loosened. It was irrational, insane, everything he'd ever known about self-preservation screaming at him to be wary. But he wasn't afraid. For the first time since the dream had begun, he wasn't afraid.
He didn't know her. He didn't know her name, her voice, her history. But somehow, impossibly, he trusted her.
He reached up and took her hand.
Her grip was warm, solid, the fingers curling around his with a strength that surprised him. And then the light surged, brightening to a searing white, and Briv—
Woke up.
He was in his bed, the morning light slanting through the curtains. His heart was pounding, his skin slick with sweat, and his hand was still outstretched, reaching for someone who wasn't there.
He lay still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. The memory of the dream was already fading, fraying at the edges like old fabric. But he could still feel the phantom warmth of her hand, the trust that had bloomed in his chest like a sudden, impossible flower.
"Who are you?" he whispered to the empty room.
There was no answer. But in his chest, something stirred—a tiny flutter, like butterfly wings.