The Protectors: Rising from Ashes [Progression Fantasy | Action-Packed | Epic Battles]

The silence didn't lift. It pressed down, heavy, suffocating, clinging to every breath and every glance like a storm cloud just shy of thunder.

Around the obsidian table, all movement slowed to a crawl. Lyric's fingers curled tighter in her lap, knuckles white, her gaze locked on Eddy as if blinking might shatter something delicate. Thorne shifted, his chair creaking beneath him, but his arms remained folded, brows furrowed, lips tight with thought. Aiden had gone still, no more tapping feet or restless hands. Just stillness. Coiled, waiting. Only Alice moved, her fingertip circling the rim of her goblet in distracted loops, the glass trembling faintly with each turn.

Elias broke the silence, his voice edged and low, the words slicing through the tension like a blade.

"That doesn't make sense. Echo Weaving isn't something a human can do."

Alice blinked slowly, as if returning from somewhere far away. Her finger paused mid-circle.

"He's right," she murmured, voice barely audible. "Echo Weaving isn't taught. It's... ancient. Instinctive. Even among witches, it's a mystery. I've only seen footnotes, never anyone actually use it."

Cassandra's hands rested, folded and calm, but there was steel behind the serenity.

"That's because it's not a spell," she said, gaze firm. "It's not a chant or trick. Echo Weaving lives deep, it's written into the soul. You don't cast it. You awaken it. And once it wakes, it doesn't sleep again. You either survive it or you don't."

A dry sound escaped Aiden. Something between a breath and a scoff. It barely passed his lips, but it carried bitterness.

"Right. Sure." His fingers twitched on the table's edge. "And yet here we are. Watching something we barely believe in crack open inside a guy who can't even light a candle."

He turned to Eddy again, jaw tightening. The doubt hadn't left his eyes, but a flicker of hesitation surfaced beneath it, a question he wasn't ready to ask.

"He's human. So how the hell does he have magic?"

A voice stirred in his mind. Calm, gruff, and laced with disbelief.

Even I wouldn't have believed something like that could exist in a human, Fenrik murmured. There was no judgment, only stunned awe.

Yeah... same, Aiden replied silently, shoulders stiffening. But it's real. And that's the problem.

At the head of the table, Sentinel didn't flinch, didn't shift. But when he spoke, his voice rolled out like distant thunder, quiet, steady, inevitable.

"We told you before. The Eclipse Heart's magic doesn't only reside in chosen artifacts. It pulses through everything that breathes on Zephyros. The air. The land. The blood."

A pause followed, brief, intentional. The kind that let words settle like dust after an avalanche.

"It doesn't belong to just witches or fae or dragons. Not just wolves or vampires. It lives in humans, too. In every heartbeat."
He turned his gaze to Eddy. "Even yours."

The weight of the moment didn't crush, it expanded. A widening space where an old presence seemed to stir and breathe.

"And if it chose him... it's because it always could. It always did."

You're stalling again, Inside Sentinel's mind, Vaelthar's voice came, calm but firm. They deserve to know. You know what he is. You've known the truth about him from the start. Tell them.

Not yet, Sentinel replied inwardly, gaze steady. He doesn't even know what's inside him.

And that's exactly why they need to see it, Vaelthar whispered. Before it's too late.

Sentinel replied in his thoughts, voice steady.
We can't say what he is. Not until we understand it ourselves. Whether what he carries matches the blood of his ancestors or if it's something else entirely.

Eddy's brows knit together. He looked around, eyes darting like someone searching for footing on crumbling ground. His hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing hard, as if trying to press the confusion back into his skin.

"Okay, wait. Can someone, anyone, explain what the Eclipse Heart actually is? Because I'm still stuck on the part where I woke up in a dream mall and stabbed a demon with someone else's memory!"

Alice's breath hitched. Then a laugh escaped—sharp, sudden, suspended between disbelief and something closer to relief.

"That's... not the worst summary I've heard," she said, a corner of her mouth twitching upward.

Across the table, Cassandra stayed motionless. Her back straight. Her hands folded just so in her lap, each finger relaxed, deliberate. No twitch, no hesitation. Only her gaze moved, locking onto Eddy's with quiet finality. She didn't blink.

"The Eclipse Heart isn't something you define," she said, her tone even, like someone reciting an unshakable truth. "It doesn't speak. It doesn't explain. It calls. It chooses. It binds people, not for what they are, but for what they might become."

Her voice didn't rise, but it didn't need to. Every syllable hung in the air like weight on a scale.

She didn't glance away, didn't soften.

"You don't know this," she went on, gentler now, "but the world you've stepped into, the one we were born into, exists because of it."

Eddy blinked, a small hitch in his breath. His fingers curled tighter around the edge of his chair.

Cassandra leaned back slightly, her posture never wavering. Her voice, however, settled deeper, quieter, like the pull of a tide that couldn't be stopped.

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"Zephyros breathes because of it. Every leaf that grows, every thread of magic, every bright invention your kind labels science, it all stems from the same current. The trees. The oceans. The storms. The spells. Everything is part of it. Even those who scoff at it still carry its touch."

A trace of something passed across her face. Not quite a smile, more a flicker of memory.

"It's not just an artifact or a myth. It's the core of everything. Without it, Zephyros falls apart. It's the force that keeps this world alive."

A beat passed. No one spoke. No one moved.

Then, a voice broke the stillness.

Maris.

She didn't raise her head, but her voice was clear. Not loud, not forceful. Just final.

"And everyone in this room grew up knowing that," she said. "Except you."

Eddy's eyes jumped toward her. No challenge. No accusation. Just the kind of certainty that didn't need defending.

He looked down. His palms rested on the table now, spread flat, unmoving. Same hands. Same pale skin. Still his.

But something felt different. The quiet closed in tighter around him, like the dining hall itself was watching.

Sentinel's voice came next, softer than before, words rolling slowly into the space Maris left behind.

"You weren't pulled into their story by accident."

His eyes didn't waver as they found Eddy.

"You were always part of it."

Eddy didn't speak. He sat, shoulders drawn in, as if an unseen weight pressed against him. The Eclipse Heart. Magic. Whatever this was. It didn't make sense, not fully. But beneath the disbelief, a pull remained. A thread he couldn't see, yet it hummed through him, ancient and familiar, like a truth he was never meant to forget.

He raised his head again, slower this time. When he spoke, the words barely left his throat.

"Then... why don't we humans know about it?" He glanced at the others, one by one. "If something like that exists on Zephyros... why keep it from us?"

The silence that answered was colder than the last.

Sentinel's expression didn't change, but his voice turned deliberate.

"Because humans were never meant to know."

Eddy's chest pulled tight. "What?"

Sentinel didn't repeat himself. He just kept speaking, each word measured, like bricks being laid in a wall.

"You are the only kind among us without inherent powers. No ability that ties you to the magic of this world. While the rest of us are shaped by it from the moment we're born, humans remain... separate."

Elias leaned forward, elbows braced on the table. His brow furrowed in thought.

"He's right. I never noticed it before, but... magic doesn't pass through your kind the way it does in ours."

Across from him, Lyric twisted the threads of her sleeve around her fingers, lips parted in apology before she even spoke.

"We didn't mean to leave you out. It's just... how it's always been."

Thorne's arms crossed tighter. His jaw clenched for a second before he spoke.

"Even I didn't know everything about the Eclipse Heart. Not like this. But I knew it mattered. We all did. Humans were just... kept away."

Aiden let out a low, humorless scoff. "That wasn't our decision. It was the the Highborn Elders. Said they were keeping the peace."

Eddy's brow furrowed. He turned toward Aiden, then to the others.

"Highborn Elders?" he asked, the words tight in his throat. "Who are they?"

Alice shifted, slowly, then spoke—quietly, but with purpose. "The Highborn Elders aren't just old. They're from the earliest bloodlines. Ones who remember when the first gates between worlds were sealed. To them, peace has always meant control. Silence. Even if it meant erasing the truth."

She paused, her hands folded tightly in her lap.

"They believe that silence is safer than truth. That some things are better hidden if it means avoiding another war. And once they made that decision, rules were set, strict ones, and those rules were followed by every generation that came after. All the way down to us.""

Eddy turned, scanning every face like he was trying to read pages of a book he'd never seen before. His voice cracked at the edges, raw and rising.

"So we were kept in the dark... just because we don't have magic?"

His fists clenched on the table, knuckles pale. "We live here too. We breathe the same air. Just because we're different doesn't mean we don't have the right to know."

Cassandra spoke softly, but the stillness in the hall made every word land with weight.

"It wasn't just because you don't have magic, Eddy."

Her features shifted slightly. The calm lines of her face tightened, her jaw tensed. The usual flicker of warmth in her gaze faded, replaced by the dull heaviness of unspoken memories.

"You know what happens when humans are handed power." Her tone stayed even, unwavering. "They don't pause. They don't ask. They take. When they see something greater than themselves, their first instinct isn't wonder. It's control."

Her eyes didn't leave him. They held no accusation, only the weight of hard-earned truth.

"They don't try to understand it. They try to own it."

She paused just long enough for the silence to settle, not awkward but loaded.

"If your kind had found the Eclipse Heart..."

Her voice faded. She gave a small shake of her head, as though finishing the thought would be admitting a truth too familiar to need words.

"They would have tried to cage it. Use it. Break it, just to claim it."

Eddy rose halfway from his seat. The chair legs scraped faintly, but he didn't seem to hear. His hands hovered at his sides, fingers twitching, breath rising fast and shallow.

"But not all humans are like that."

His eyes flicked across the table, searching for something. Understanding, maybe. Hope.

Sentinel remained still, his gaze steady on Eddy.

"No," he said, calm and unreadable. "Not all."

He leaned in slightly, elbows resting on the table, fingertips pressed together in a deliberate line.

"But some."

His voice dropped further, not harsh but firm.

"And you know that better than any of us."

Eddy didn't argue. His shoulders eased downward with a slow breath, and he sank into the chair as if some part of him had deflated. He stared at the plate front of him, his expression blank, eyes unfocused.

No one asked what he was thinking. They didn't need to. It was written in the silence. Memories of leaders clinging to power, of cities turned to battlegrounds, of weapons built before bridges.

"Yeah," he said, barely above a whisper. "I do."

Maris leaned forward slightly, her gaze steady as her voice cut through the silence. Her tone was quiet, smooth, with a blade just beneath the surface.

"Humans fear anything they can't control."

Her forearms on the table, voice low but direct.

"That fear becomes suspicion. That suspicion becomes violence. It's a pattern. Over and over."

She locked eyes with Eddy.

"And when that fear grows, we're always the first to bleed."

The stillness that followed didn't float. It pressed down.

Sentinel gave a slow nod, each movement deliberate.

"That's why the choice was made. Not to exclude your kind. Not to shame them. But to protect what keeps Zephyros alive."

His voice softened, as though explaining a truth long carried.

"Because if humans ever discovered that beings stronger than them walked their same roads, creatures born of fire, magic, and blood—they wouldn't seek balance. They'd panic. They'd lash out. And the rest of us would be forced to respond."

He let the thought hang before continuing.

"That wouldn't be a disagreement. That would be war. Not just between your kind and ours. It would split Zephyros apart."

He looked slowly around the table, then returned to Eddy.

"Witches. Fae. Vampires. Wolves. Dragons. Even humans. All of us would fall with it."

He straightened, voice gaining quiet strength.

"We are supposed to stand together. That unity is what holds us. Because other worlds are out there. They watch. They wait. If we turn on each other, they won't hesitate. They'll take what we destroy."

The weight in his voice deepened, pressing into every corner of the space.

"That's why the Highborn Elders chose secrecy. It wasn't out of hatred. It was caution. Because they understood the cost."

"If that conflict ever began, it wouldn't just wound us. It would unravel everything."

Eddy's head dropped slightly. His hands rested loosely on his legs, no longer curled into fists.

He didn't speak, but the silence was different now.

He looked up slowly. Not to fight. Just to see.

And in his eyes, they all saw it.

He understood.