Chapter 8 · The Second Summoning

The ground shook before the alarm even sounded.

Mark grabbed the doorframe. The stone floor rippled under his boots like water. Across the archive room, Ella's face went white. She still had her mother's scroll in one hand, the wax seal broken, the old ink bleeding through where her fingers pressed too hard.

"They found us," she said.

Not a question. Mark didn't ask how she knew. The air tasted like copper and burnt sugar, the same taste from the summoning circle three days ago when they'd dragged him out of his kitchen and dumped him here. His teeth buzzed. His bad knee locked up.

Above them, someone screamed.

Ella shoved the scroll into her coat and ran for the stairs. Mark followed. His knee didn't care that this was life or death. It complained every step, that old skiing injury from twenty years ago coming back to remind him he wasn't eighteen and never had been.

The main hall was chaos. Priests running. Apprentices frozen against the walls. In the center of the floor, right where Mark had landed three days ago, the summoning circle was live again.