Book 1: The Chaos Keys

Chapter Sixteen: Lilith🌊

Lilith cautiously walked down the corridors, her light steps making no sound on the carpet. Aku was perched on her head, seeming to understand the need for silence. The one dark blue cloak that she owned was wrapped around her shoulders, and lightly glided along the floor behind her. It was there to disguise her in general, but mostly to shield her from Lazuli's ever present eye. She'd managed to continuously avoid him, but she was waiting anxiously for her good luck in that regard to run out.

It had been two weeks since Ash's mysterious appearance, and the haunting words that had stunned them all to silence. To the knowledge of none but herself, Lilith had been able to read the symbols with no difficulty. In fact, they made perhaps more sense than the other words. It deeply bothered her that when Ash spoke, the words felt extremely familiar. The memory of them was right there, but every time she attempted to grasp it, it slipped away.

That had been the last odd thing that had happened at the school, and recently, Drake had not been teaching their MT classes. There had been no opportunity to discuss the occurrence. She had not seen Ash, she'd barely seen Melody, Ethan was avoiding her, Alexis had been straight up absent... Aspen had been stalking her, but she always managed to shake the girl before she had to leave to go home. Aspen, thankfully, didn't seem to know where Lilith lived. Lilith almost dared say that the lack of contact between everyone was somehow on purpose.

She went down the spiralling stairs, into the darker area of the castle. She had become much more skilled at navigating the halls now she had a few markers to tell apart the identical doors.

She stopped at the locked wooden door at the bottom of the stairs, and raised a hand to knock. However, it flung inward before she could do such.

As she had expected, Onyx stood there. She had never seen a single person go down here, and with the way every member of the castle staff seemed afriad of Onyx, this was the place she expected to find him.

His cloak was absent, yet he was still shielded from the light. A long sleeved black shirt pulled against his muscles arms, and was tucked into his black jeans. Black combat boots, thin black gloves, it wasn't difficult to tell what his favourite colour seemed to be.

She was somehow not surprised to see a sheathed dagger strapped to his belt. What did intruige her however, were the intricate silver symbols tattooed upon the black dagger hilt.

'Blue'

What a strange mark.

He glanced over her attire, and stepped aside so she could enter, immediately closing the door behind him. He didn't say a word about her staring at his dagger. Either he had not noticed, or he had alternative reasons for remaining silent.

The room was completely dark, not a single thread of light from the outside filtering in. There was a heavy chill that blew through the room, despite the absence of windows, just like the MT room.

He flicked a switch, and Lilith waited for the light to flood the room. However, the light simply seemed to mingle with the darkness, mixing the two entities instead of overpowering it. She could not even find the light source. The shadows almost seemed to have a mind of their own, fleeting from certain parts of the room, and thickly blanketing others.

She could see shelves full of books and papers, and a couple tables here and there. A few had scattered pens, others housed jagged pieces of metal, all of various types and sizes. A massive, rusty metal chain was balled into a corner, where the shadows lay so heavy that she could see nothing else. There was his black cloak tossed over a table, a pair of combat boots, and a couple items of clothing. Interestingly enough, Onyx seemed to live in the dark, eerie room. She did not see a bed, but she supposed the thick carpet was not impossible to sleep on.