Chapter 54 Leo
I entered the Realm through the lower descent, not because it was required, but because I needed the extra distance between the world I had just left and the one I was about to step into. The upper crossings were too clean, too quick. They made it easy to pretend that nothing carried over. The lower paths did not allow that kind of self deception.
Stone curved inward as I descended, the walls damp with old magic that had seeped into every crack over centuries. The Realm breathed differently down here. The air pressed heavier against my lungs, thick with residue from spells that had never fully faded. Every step echoed longer than it should have, as if the place wanted me to hear myself coming.
I did not rush. I did not hesitate. I let the silence stretch.
By the time I reached the Oracle’s sanctum, my jaw ached from how tightly I had been holding it.
Mist rolled low across the floor, curling around my boots like something alive. Runes glowed faintly beneath the haze, ancient markings etched into stone long before Bloodhounds existed, before Kyros vanished, before the tear in the world became something guarded instead of sealed. The chamber was circular and deep, its ceiling lost in shadow, its edges softened by layers of illusion that never stayed the same shape twice.
She stood at the center.
She always did.
The Oracle did not turn when I entered. She did not need to. Her presence filled the space in a way that made orientation meaningless. Veiled eyes. Still posture. A voice that never raised and never softened, like water flowing over smoke.
“You’ve come with questions you already know the answers to,” she said.
I stopped a few paces away. The mist curled higher, brushing my calves.
“We found the gargoyle,” I said. “What was left of him.”
She shifted then, just slightly. The air responded immediately, the runes beneath my feet pulsing once before settling.
“He wore a human face,” I continued. “Lived among them. Studied them. He waited. That wasn’t instinct.”
The Oracle turned her head, not toward me, but toward the space beside me, as if listening to something only she could hear.
“Then it’s him,” she said.
The words tightened something in my chest.
“Who,” I said, even though I already knew.
She faced me fully now. Even veiled, her gaze felt sharp, invasive. Like it was peeling layers back that I kept buried on purpose.
“Orryx,” she said. “The Black.”
The name hit like a physical weight. Heavy. Old. Dangerous in a way that did not fade with time.
“The one cast out,” she went on. “The human who learned to wear too many faces and forgot which one was his own.”
I felt my hands curl slowly at my sides.
“He doesn’t kill to mimic,” she said. “He chooses. He becomes. He infects.”
I exhaled through my nose, slow and controlled. “Then the gargoyle wasn’t acting alone.”
“No,” she said. “Rhaz was sent.”
The name tasted bitter. A soldier. A zealot. A tool.
“But Orryx never sends just one,” she added.
The mist thickened. I felt it settle against my skin like a warning.
“If Rhaz failed,” I said, “he will try again.”
“Yes.”
“With someone else.”
“Yes.”
“With someone closer.”
This time, she did not answer at all.
My jaw tightened. “It doesn’t matter. I’m living in the house now. I’m watching her. She isn’t alone.”
The words came out firm, deliberate. A declaration. A line drawn in stone.
The Oracle tilted her head, slow and precise. “Is that why you moved in?”
The question landed harder than I expected. Not because it was unexpected, but because it cut too close to something I had been refusing to name.
“Jacob trusted me to protect her,” I said.
The sentence sounded practiced. Like something I had repeated often enough that it no longer needed thought.
The Oracle stepped closer. The temperature in the chamber dropped a fraction, enough to raise the fine hairs along my arms.
“Is that all you’re doing, Leo,” she asked.
Her voice did not accuse. It did not comfort. It simply asked.
Silence expanded between us, stretching the space until it felt like a living thing.
I thought of Kristen standing in the kitchen that morning, eyes sharp, jaw set, daring me to tell her the truth. I thought of the way her fear that night had cracked open into something ancient and violent and precise. I thought of the way my body reacted to her presence now, to her anger, to her defiance, to the simple fact that she existed too close to me and refused to stay contained.
Jacob trusted me.
But trust was not the same as purity.
I swallowed.
The Oracle did not push. She did not need to. She turned away, her robes whispering softly against stone, the mist parting for her like it recognized authority older than language.
“You are guarding the girl,” she said. “Good.”
She paused, just long enough for the words to settle.
“But who guards her from you?”
The question stayed behind after she left. It did not echo. It did not fade. It simply existed, lodged deep where answers were supposed to be.
I stood there alone, the runes beneath my boots dimming one by one, the mist curling and uncurling like breath. I had faced wars. I had faced creatures that could tear cities apart. I had stood in front of prophecies written in blood and stone and accepted them without flinching.
None of them unsettled me like that question.
Because for the first time since this began, I could not say with certainty that I was the safest thing in Kristen Lockwood’s life.
And that terrified me more than Orryx ever could.