Chapter 5 The Boy in the Dark

POV: Vaelis

The ground stopped shaking, but the glow didn’t fade. The chains on the wall pulsed with a dull orange light, like something inside them was waking up. I watched it, my flame still shaking in my hand, too scared to move.

Then the boy pulled himself forward. He crawled more than walked, dragging his body toward the light like it cost him everything he had. When he finally reached where I could see him clearly, I almost dropped my flame.

He was thin. Too thin. His skin looked gray, like he hadn’t seen real sunlight in a long time. What was left of his clothes hung off him in torn pieces, but I still knew what they used to be. A Crimson Moon uniform. The same kind I wore.

His wrists were wrapped in metal cuffs, and the skin under them was raw and red, like the metal had been eating into him for a long time. The cuffs hummed, low and steady, the same sound I felt in my teeth when I first walked into this room.

“Please,” he said again, voice cracking. “Tell me I’m not imagining you.”

“You’re not,” I said. My voice shook. “I’m real.”

His eyes filled with something close to tears, but none fell. He looked like a person who forgot how.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

He swallowed hard. “Kael.” A pause. “Kael Vantor.”

The name hit me like a slap.

I knew that name. Everyone at the Conservatory knew that name, even if nobody said it out loud anymore. Kael Vantor was a story. A warning. A boy who vanished over a year ago, before I even got here. The official story was that he got expelled and sent home in disgrace.

But home didn’t look like chains bolted into a hidden room under the school.

“You’re supposed to be gone,” I whispered. “They said you left.”

“I never left.” His voice cracked again, sharper this time, angrier. “I’ve been down here the whole time.”

My stomach turned. A whole year. Chained in the dark, under everyone’s feet, while the rest of us walked to class like nothing was wrong.

“Who did this to you?” I asked. “Why?”

Kael’s eyes went wide, and for the first time, real panic broke through the exhaustion on his face.

“You need to go,” he said fast. “Right now. Before they know you’re here.”

“Who’s they?”

“Vaelis, please.” My name in his mouth still felt strange, like something stolen. “If they find you down here, they won’t let you leave. Not after what I just told you.”

“You haven’t told me anything,” I snapped, fear making my voice sharp. “Who put you here? What is this place?”

He looked at the chains around his wrists, then back at me, like he was deciding whether telling me was worth what it might cost him.

“This place,” he started, “it’s older than the Conservatory. It’s where they keep…”

The shackles flared white.

Kael’s whole body locked up. His back arched, his mouth opened in a scream that ripped through the chamber and bounced off every wall at once. The light from the chains turned blinding, and the smell hit me a second later, burning skin, sharp and wrong, filling the air so fast I gagged.

“Kael!”

I ran toward him without thinking. My hands reached out to grab the chains, to pull them off him, anything.

I hit something hard in the air, invisible, like slamming into a wall of glass I never saw coming. It threw me back, and I landed hard on the stone, pain shooting up my spine. I scrambled up and tried again. Same wall. Same impact. I couldn’t get near him.

“Stop it!” I screamed at the room, at the chains, at whatever was doing this. “Stop hurting him!”

Nobody answered. Kael kept screaming, his body twisting against the chains, smoke curling off his wrists where the metal burned into his skin.

I pressed both hands against the invisible barrier, pushing with everything I had, feeling heat build up my arms, my magic answering my fear without me even calling it. Sparks jumped between my fingers.

“Please,” I begged, not even sure who I was begging. “Please stop.”

Slowly, the light dimmed. Kael’s screaming broke into ragged gasps, then silence, except for his shaking breath. He slumped against the chains, barely holding himself up, sweat and tears mixing on his face.

I dropped to my knees in front of the barrier, close enough to see him shaking but too far to touch him.

“Kael,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He lifted his head slow, eyes barely open, but he found mine anyway.

“Now you know,” he said, voice so quiet I almost missed it. “Someone’s always listening.”

My whole body went cold. Someone was listening. Right now. In this room. Every word I said, every question I asked, someone or something heard it all, and they had just punished Kael for trying to answer me.

Which meant whatever secret this place was hiding, it was big enough that they’d rather torture a boy half to death than let one more word slip out.

I opened my mouth to ask him something else, anything, but I stopped myself just in time, terrified of what might happen to him if I did.

Instead, I just stared at him, chained and broken in front of me, and felt my fear turn into something else. Something that burned hotter than fear ever could.

Behind me, the low hum in the chamber shifted. Changed, grew louder. And somewhere above us, far above the sealed hole in the ceiling, I heard footsteps.

Someone was coming down…