The gate yawned open before him, black stone grinding against itself with a sound like bone scraping steel.
The Mediator stepped through.
No guards greeted him. No horns blew. The air itself seemed to retreat from his presence, dense, cold and hostile.
Above him loomed the great black castle, Obsidian Sanctum, a fragment of the inverted tower. It wasn't built, it was summoned, etched into reality with blood and memory. Every stone whispered a secret. Every corridor remembered screams.
The Mediator did not look up.
He yet did not hate the place.
The silence followed him as he walked.
The entrance sealed behind him without a sound. Lights flared along the edges of the grand hall, slivers of ghostlight caught in cages of bone and soulglass.
The walls pulsed faintly with cursed mana. Murals moved when you weren't looking. The floor reflected not what was, but what you feared.
He ignored it all.
His boots clicked against the obsidian tiles, echoing like gunshots.
"Calling me back for a meeting," he muttered. "After all that effort. After the gift I left them. Insulting."
His anger didn't burn, it froze. It was a sharp, clean edge behind his teeth. His expression was unreadable, save for the faint twitch in his jaw as he passed under archways older than any living race.
He hated being summoned. He hated being interrupted.
He hated that he had to obey not just their leader's command but also the vice-head's.
He passed through halls that wept smoke. Through an atrium where black roses bloomed on vines made of teeth. Through a spiral corridor that bent time just enough to make your memories bleed.
And still he kept walking.
The Sanctum was not a place for mortals. Even he felt its hunger clawing at his spine. But he didn't slow. He'd walked these halls before. As a servant. As a weapon. As a child.
Now he walked them as a question.
And no one dared stop him.
Finally, the great doors appeared tall enough to swallow the sky, carved with the history of annihilation. They opened at his approach, reluctantly, like beasts letting go of prey.
The Throne Room.
Dim light pooled at the center, framed by stained-glass windows that showed nothing real. Cold wind snaked across the floor. Magic-ancient, brutal and raw hung in the air like smoke from a battlefield.
Thirteen seats formed a crescent around the central dias. Most were filled.
The throne itself was empty.
Of course it was.
The Mediator stepped forward, ignoring the glances cast his way. Every figure in the room wore a different shape. Some cloaked in flame, others shrouded in whispers, still others not entirely there.
Power radiated from all of them. But none of them made him flinch.
"Look who finally arrives," hissed a voice, female, sharp as broken glass. The Lady of Shards.
He didn't even glance at her. "I was working."
"Yes," rumbled another thick, low voice like mountains shifting. The Forge Father. "We felt your little tantrum. Half the leyline screamed."
"It was a field test," the Mediator said flatly. "I needed to measure how much they'd grown."
"Field test?" chuckled a third, nothing but a swarm of moths shaped like a man. "You broke their strongest wards. Killed three students. Nearly shattered the Eclipse."
"They lived," the Mediator replied. "Barely. That was the point."
"You risked exposure," Lady of Shards snapped. "We agreed that we don't do it yet. Not until the Master is ready."
"The Master is silent," the Mediator said, voice low and sharp. "Again."
That shut them up.
He turned toward the empty throne.
It sat like a wound in the world. Not gold. Not stone. Something... else. It pulsed, faintly. Almost like breathing. Or pain.
"Is she hurting again?" the Mediator asked.
No one answered.
Of course they didn't.
He stepped forward, closer than any of them dared to the base of the throne. His fingers twitched once. Then curled into a fist.
He hated how small he felt in this room. Not because of the others but because of that throne. Because of what it meant. Because of the things it had made him do and the silence it answered with now.
He remembered the first time he'd stood here. Barefoot, bloodied and barely twelve. The Master hadn't spoken then, either. But something had moved. Something had chosen him.
And now?
Now he wondered if that choice had meant anything at all.
"You pulled me back," he said, voice quiet now. "So what's changed?"
A figure near the back rose. Tall, thin and faceless. The Watcher.
"The Rift grows unstable," the Watcher said. "The seal frays. Even with your intervention, the interference from the Inverted Tower persists."
"They're accelerating their awakening," added the Forge Father. "We've seen the signs."
"Too soon," the moth-man whispered. "The last dream isn't ready. The vessel isn't shaped."
"They're afraid," the Mediator said. "I saw it. Felt it. Even the strong ones are trembling."
"And yet they still fight," Lady of Shards snapped. "Even your 'test' didn't break them."
"They bled. They buried. They're not broken, but they will be."
He looked up at the throne again. His voice softened.
"Is that what you want, Master? Do you want them crushed? Or do you want them changed?"
No response.
The silence stretched too long. Unnatural. Almost cruel.
His face twitched. "Still no answer," he muttered.
A whisper erupted in his head, not a voice, just pressure. A pulse. Like someone knocking from the inside of a coffin.
He almost pitied the Master.
But only almost.
He turned back to the others. "Next time, don't summon me. I'll come when it matters."
Then, before they could respond, he walked away past the pillars, past the silent throne, back through the hall of shadows.
Behind him, the castle stirred.
And far above, where no one could see, something inside the throne twitched. Something that hadn't moved in weeks. Not a word. Not a sound.
Just the slow, dragging shiver of breath returning to broken lungs.
And a thought, unspoken, unfinished, cracked in the dark:
"Not yet. But soon." A deep voice spoke.