The hidden chamber seemed to shrink around Rowan as the voice echoed from above. The knock came again - slow, deliberate. Whoever stood on the other side wasn't asking. They were demanding.
Avery's eyes darted to Lyra. "How did they find us?"
"They always do," she whispered.
Rowan's pulse pounded. His mind screamed for him to run, but his body wouldn't move. The weight of the revelation - the Order of Twelve, the vanished names, the prophecy he hadn't yet unraveled - pressed against his chest like an iron cage.
The knock came again.
"Rowan Vale," the voice repeated, firmer this time. "We know you're in there."
Lyra grabbed his wrist, her grip ice-cold. "We have to move. Now."
Avery hesitated. "What if we—"
A blast of force shook the ceiling, sending dust cascading down. The door above them rattled as unseen magic surged against it. Whoever was on the other side wasn't waiting anymore.
Lyra pulled Rowan toward the back of the chamber. "There's another way out."
Avery shot her a look. "Since when?"
Lyra ignored him, pressing her hand against the far wall. The stone glowed faintly, the same eerie blue as the fire Rowan had conjured in the duel. A seam appeared in the wall, widening into a narrow passage.
"Go," she ordered.
Rowan forced himself to move, stepping into the passage just as the door above them shattered.
Cold air rushed in, carrying the scent of night and something sharp - like burnt metal and old magic.
Footsteps.
Lyra shoved Rowan forward. "Run!"
He didn't need to be told twice.
The tunnel twisted and turned, rough stone scraping against his hands as he pushed forward. Behind him, Avery and Lyra kept pace, their breath ragged.
A burst of golden light erupted from the tunnel's entrance as their pursuers stepped inside. Rowan risked a glance back - just in time to see a hooded figure stepping through the shattered doorway.
The man raised his hand. A sigil glowed on his palm - twelve interlocking rings.
"The Thirteenth has awakened," the hunter murmured. His voice was almost reverent.
Then he raised his other hand.
And the tunnel collapsed.
The world lurched as stone crumbled behind them. Dust and debris clouded the air, choking Rowan's lungs as he stumbled forward.
Avery coughed violently. "Great. Fantastic. We're trapped."
Rowan pressed his hands against the wall, chest heaving. "There has to be another way out."
"There isn't," Lyra said grimly. "This tunnel only leads deeper."
Rowan turned to her, eyes narrowing. "You knew this?"
She didn't answer.
Avery groaned. "So what now? We sit here and wait for them to dig us out?"
Lyra didn't respond right away. She placed her hand against the stone wall - this time, pressing her fingers into the carvings Rowan hadn't noticed before. Strange symbols, glowing faintly under her touch.
A pulse of energy rippled through the rock.
Rowan felt it deep in his bones.
"The Thirteenth House may be forgotten," Lyra murmured, eyes dark. "But its magic isn't."
The ground shifted.
Stone moved, parting like doors that had been waiting centuries to open.
Beyond it lay a spiral staircase descending into blackness.
Avery paled. "You've got to be kidding me."
Lyra stepped forward. "Welcome to the last secret of the Thirteenth House."
Rowan hesitated, staring into the abyss below.
Somewhere above, the Order of Twelve was still searching for him.
Somewhere below, something else was waiting.
And Rowan was about to find out which was worse.
Rowan swallowed hard, staring down the spiral staircase. The air that rose from below was thick with magic, heavy and electric, like a storm waiting to break.
Avery exhaled sharply. "This feels like a terrible idea."
Lyra didn't look back. "It's the only one we've got."
With that, she descended.
Rowan hesitated only a moment before following. The stone steps groaned under his weight, ancient dust swirling with every step. The deeper they went, the colder it became - not the ordinary chill of underground spaces, but a bone-deep frost, tinged with whispers of something old, something watching.
Avery muttered curses behind them, but he kept moving.
Finally, they reached the bottom.
The chamber that greeted them was unlike anything Rowan had ever seen.
It was massive, far larger than should have been possible beneath the school. The walls were covered in glowing sigils, shifting and rearranging themselves as if alive. At the center of the room stood a massive stone archway, its frame cracked but pulsing with an eerie blue light.
And on the floor, a circle of twelve empty cloaks lay in perfect formation—untouched by time, as if their owners had simply vanished.
Avery took one look and swore under his breath. "Tell me we're not standing in a graveyard."
Rowan's throat felt tight. "I think it's worse than that."
Lyra knelt beside the cloaks, brushing her fingers over the nearest one.
"The last Thirteenth," she murmured. "This is where they made their stand."
Rowan took a slow step forward, his pulse pounding in his ears. The air hummed around him, as if reacting to his presence.
Then, the archway pulsed.
The blue light flared, and a voice echoed through the chamber.
"Who dares awaken the House of the Forgotten?"
The words weren't spoken aloud - they were felt, vibrating through Rowan's bones like a spell he wasn't meant to hear.
Avery stumbled back. "Nope. Nope, absolutely not."
Lyra ignored him, standing slowly. "We're not here to awaken anything," she said carefully. "We're here because we have no choice."
Silence.
Then—the cloaks rose.
Rowan's breath hitched as twelve spectral figures materialized where the cloaks had once lain. Their faces were obscured, their bodies nothing but swirling shadows wrapped in ancient robes.
One of them stepped forward, its presence pressing against Rowan like an invisible weight.
"Then prove yourself."
The stone beneath Rowan's feet shifted. The sigils on the walls blazed to life.
And then - the floor vanished.
Rowan plunged into darkness.
The fall was endless. Rowan's stomach lurched, the wind roaring in his ears. He tried to scream, but then—
He wasn't falling anymore.
He was standing.
The world around him had changed.
He was no longer in the chamber beneath Blackthorn Academy. Instead, he stood in a burning city. Towers crumbled. The sky was red with fire, the air thick with the scent of smoke and blood.
And ahead of him, standing atop a mountain of ash, was a figure wreathed in blue flames.
Rowan's breath caught.
Because the figure - whoever they were - had his face.
His own eyes, his own features. But older. Sharper. And burning with a power that made the air itself tremble.
The doppelgänger tilted his head.
"So. You're the one they sent this time."
Rowan's heart pounded. "Who—what are you?"
The older version of himself smiled.
"I am what you will become.
If you survive."
The flames around him exploded.
And the trial had begun.
Rowan barely had time to react before the blue flames surged toward him. Instinct screamed at him to run, but his feet were frozen to the ground. The heat was unbearable, yet it didn't burn him - not like fire should.
At the last second, Rowan threw up his arms- and the flames parted.
The world blurred. One second, he was standing in the burning city, and the next - he was somewhere else.
A battlefield. Bodies littered the ground, some wearing the robes of the Twelve Houses, others clad in dark cloaks. Magic crackled through the air, thick with the scent of destruction.
And at the center of it all stood his older self.
The version of him that shouldn't exist.
Rowan watched, heart pounding, as the older version raised a wand of blackened bone - and with a single flick, the battlefield erupted in blue fire.
The soldiers didn't even have time to scream.
Rowan stumbled back. "No—this isn't real."
His doppelgänger finally turned to face him.
"Not yet," he said. "But it will be."
The words slammed into Rowan like a spell. He could feel them wrapping around his mind, twisting like tendrils of fate.
"No," Rowan whispered. "That's not me."
The older version stepped forward, eyes gleaming like molten silver. "It always starts the same way," he said. "You awaken. You survive. And then—" He gestured to the destruction around them. "You burn the world."
Rowan's breath came fast and uneven. "No. I would never—"
His older self tilted his head. "Wouldn't you?"
And suddenly, Rowan was holding the black wand.
The weight of it felt familiar in his hand, as if he had wielded it before. As if it belonged to him.
"Choose, Rowan Vale."
The world shuddered. The blue fire surged higher.
And the trial had only just begun.
Rowan gritted his teeth, gripping the wand with shaking fingers. The air crackled around him, whispering with voices he couldn't understand.
This wasn't just a vision.
This was a test.
He looked at his older self - the man who had burned a city, who had wiped out an army with a single spell.
Could that really be him?
"You have two choices," his older self said. "Embrace the fire - or be consumed by it."
The battlefield shifted again.
Now Rowan stood at a crossroads - one path leading toward a tower wreathed in silver light, the other descending into a chasm of blue fire.
His hands burned. The wand in his grasp pulsed, as if waiting for his decision.
Above, the sky cracked like shattering glass.
The trial was ending.
And Rowan had to choose.
Rowan's chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths.
The silver tower gleamed in the distance, cold and untouchable. The chasm of blue fire burned beneath him, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
Two paths. Two fates.
His older self stood between them, watching. Waiting.
Rowan's fingers clenched around the wand of blackened bone. "What happens if I choose neither?"
His older self smirked. "Then you fail."
The battlefield trembled beneath Rowan's feet. The sky flickered like a dying flame. He was running out of time.
His instincts screamed at him to choose - light or fire, salvation or destruction.
But something else called to him.
A whisper. A pull in the air, like a third path hiding in the space between choices.
Rowan's gaze flickered past the tower, past the fire - and there it was.
A bridge.
Thin as a shadow, barely visible, stretching across the battlefield like a forgotten thread of fate.
"No one ever sees it," his older self murmured. His silver eyes gleamed. "You're the first."
The weight of the wand in Rowan's hand grew heavier. This was it. The moment that changed everything.
The battlefield cracked. The blue fire roared.
Rowan took a breath—and stepped toward the unknown.
The world shattered.
Rowan gasped as he was yanked out of the vision.
The battlefield, the fire, his older self - all gone.
He was back in Blackthorn Academy.
Only… something was wrong.
The air felt heavy, charged with an unnatural silence. The torches along the hallway flickered, their flames bending toward him as if drawn by something inside him.
And then he saw them.
Figures in hooded robes, standing at the far end of the corridor.
They weren't moving. They weren't breathing.
But Rowan could feel them watching.
His pulse pounded in his ears. Every instinct told him to run - but before he could move, one of them tilted their head. Just slightly.
Then, in unison, they stepped forward.
The Silent Ones had found him.