Umbra stirred with a soft groan, her fingers twitching against the cold floor. I was the first to notice, already kneeling beside her, hand lightly resting on her wrist.

“Umbra?” I whispered, leaning closer.

Her eyelids fluttered open, and for a moment her eyes were unfocused, searching for something that wasn’t there. Then they locked onto mine.

We stared at each other.

And I knew.

I knew something had happened. Something bad. Something worse than any of us had guessed.

The others crowded around her, concern etched across each of their faces in different shades of confusion and fear.

“Are you alright?” Oswald asked, crouching next to me.

“You passed out on the floor,” Veronica added, voice tense. “We thought…”

“I’m fine,” Umbra said softly, pushing herself into a sitting position. “I think. It just… took something out of me.”

“What did?” Iris asked, arms crossed and tightly drawn to her chest. “What even happened in here while we were gone?”

Umbra blinked slowly. Her voice had that familiar distant tone to it again, like she was still speaking from inside a dream she hadn’t fully left.

“There was light first,” she began. “Too much light. The motif started glowing again, more than before. It filled the whole room. I thought it was showing me something, or pulling something up from below.”

We listened closely. No one dared interrupt.

“Then a crack opened in the floor,” she said, eyes fixed ahead as if she were still watching it unfold. “Not like a real crack. Not in stone. It was like something had torn open the air. In the center. Just above the scrambled part of the motif.”

She pointed to the place we’d all avoided looking too closely at, the broken center of the design.

“And then… Umbrovultus came through.”

That name sent a ripple of tension through the group.

Cedric swore under his breath. Iris’s mouth flattened. Samuel and Oswald both stepped instinctively closer to the edge of the motif.

“It wasn’t like before,” Umbra continued. “It didn’t strike or howl. It didn’t come to take anything. It just appeared, curled in on itself like it had been thrown through something. It looked confused… and then it was just gone. Like it slipped out of our world as quickly as it came in.”

Luce and Umbra’s eyes met again.

A silent understanding passed between them. There was no doubt.

“It jumped realities,” I said, my voice barely audible. “It left yours… and came into ours. That’s why the seraph vanished during the ritual.”

“Because Umbrovultus stopped it,” Umbra confirmed.

“Or destroyed it,” Iris muttered.

“We saw the same thing in the vision,” I said. “The two forces clashing. Maybe that wasn’t the past. Maybe it was a warning.”

Veronica looked around the room, arms tightly wrapped around herself. “Then why show it to us? Why not just let us live in ignorance?”

“Because something’s not done with us yet,” I replied, glancing at the motif’s flickering center. “This isn’t about balance. This is about convergence.”

Everyone went quiet.

The shadows of the room pressed in around us, too thick for the afternoon sun to explain. It felt like the air had gone still again like something was holding its breath.

Then we heard the soft click of a heel.

We all turned at once.

There, in the doorway, framed by the fading light and the soft flicker of dying candles, stood Rosalyn Lucidus.

Her posture was graceful as ever, her hands folded calmly in front of her. But her eyes, those bright, sunlit eyes, were unreadable now. As if she had buried something behind them.

Her voice came like silk sliding across the marble.

“Children,” she said softly, “what are you doing in this room?”

We all stood frozen, her voice wrapping around us like silk soaked in ice water.

I stepped forward, not caring that everyone was watching, or that we were still in a room that seemed to hum beneath our feet with unspeakable energy. I looked straight into Rosalyn Lucidus’s perfectly composed face.

“Where did you go?” I asked, my voice firmer than I expected. “Back in the hall. I followed you. I called after you and you didn’t even turn around. Then you vanished into a wall like you weren’t real.”

She tilted her head slightly, as if amused. “All in due time, my dear.”

I felt my fists tighten at my sides.

Before I could speak again, she stepped further into the room, her eyes gliding over the motif like someone reacquainting themselves with an old memory.

“You all saw it,” she said softly, her voice now more reflective than icy. “The failed summoning. The shadow that came in its place.”

We didn’t reply.

She raised her chin. “The being you should have seen… was named Lucidareth. A creature of light, knowledge, and absolution. It was meant to be summoned tonight in the old tradition of the Luminary Festival. A silent acknowledgment of the pact we have kept since the days of the division.”

Cedric frowned. “What division?”

Rosalyn’s gaze drifted from one face to another before settling back on me.

“There is a story passed down to the matriarchs of each House,” she said. “A truth that was never written. One we only speak aloud when it begins again.”

“When what begins again?” Samuel asked quietly.

“The unraveling,” she replied.

She took a slow breath and began to speak not like she was reciting, but like she was remembering.

“It started with a man named Lucien Umbraward. A prince by blood, a shadow by birth. His mother was a commoner, a woman whose name was struck from every record the moment she died. Lucien was illegitimate but tolerated, nothing more. His older siblings were golden, proper, and adored. This birthed an inferiority complex in the young prince. Always trying to one-up his siblings. He desperately wanted recognition. But for Lucien, recognition was not given it had to be earned. This unfairness was always planted at the forefront of his mind.”

Rosalyn turned her gaze to the motif, her expression unreadable.

“On the day of his elder brother’s coronation, Lucien murdered him. But he did not stop at just his brother. His sister who always cared for him was the next in line to die on this day. He slit their throats during the dawn ceremony and took the throne with blood still on his hands, face, and clothes. Even the crown was not spared this baptism of blood. That day, he was crowned not as king, but as the Bloodshade King, a name whispered behind closed doors and etched in the margins of unburned texts.”

My stomach twisted, and I heard someone, maybe Iris, inhale sharply.

“In his reign, paranoia took root. He believed vengeance would come for him, someday, somehow. To prevent it, he turned to forbidden rites. To rituals. He sought to make himself untouchable, not just by men, but by fate itself. He desired a protector. Not a soldier. Not a knight. But a being crafted from light and darkness, the two forces he believed governed all.”

Veronica’s voice was low. “He wanted to play god.”

Rosalyn gave a ghost of a nod. “He used the ritual of Umbrovultus as a foundation. Darkness, unknowable, and absolute. Then he studied the summoning of Lucidareth, the light that illuminates all falsehood. He wove them together. A forbidden braid of opposites.”

She looked down at the floor. We all did.

“And from that unholy alchemy, he created something new. Something wrong. He called it Sanctovarrex.”

I swallowed hard. Even the name felt like a curse in the air.

“At first, it obeyed. A being of impossible symmetry. Terrifying and divine. But then it began to tear things apart. Bits of the castle disappeared. Whole wings collapsed into emptiness. People Lucien walked past were never seen again.”

Rosalyn’s voice grew quieter.

“One day, his queen vanished. She stood too close to the creature. And as she turned to speak to him, she simply unraveled. Piece by piece. It didn’t lash out. It didn’t rage. It just was, and the reality around it couldn’t survive that.”

Umbra stood beside me, silent but tense.

“That broke him,” Rosalyn continued. “Lucien attempted to undo what he had created. He performed the ritual again, hoping to split the beast back into Umbrovultus and Lucidareth, to send them away, to undo the mistake. But he failed.”

She looked at us all now, her eyes like stained glass.

“The creature split. And so did reality. One world drowned in shadow. The other smothered in light.”

No one said anything. Not even Cedric.

My heart pounded.

The motif beneath our feet was no longer just a symbol.

It was the wound left behind by a god that should not have been.