NOVEL NEXT Chapter 44- Marked Yet Forgotten [Part 1]
The room didn't breathe.
The air itself felt taut, like something just beneath the surface had cracked, and everyone sensed it, even if they refused to speak it aloud.
A slow shift passed through the room. Chairs froze mid-angle. Utensils hovered. Fingers hung in stillness just above plates.
One by one, heads turned. Not toward Eddy.
But toward him.
Toward Sentinel.
Thorne's smirk had vanished. He leaned forward slightly, shoulders squared, eyes locked as if bracing for something heavy. Lyric's hand had curled into a soft fist against her dress. Elias sank deeper into the shadow of his chair, arms folded tight, jaw clenched with the force of iron. Alice stared ahead, unmoving but for the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Aiden's eyes stayed fixed, brow drawn, mouth tense, corners twitching as though words tried to break through but didn't quite make it.
Cassandra sat like carved stone, upright, unreadable. But her gaze had already found him.
And Maris...
Maris, who never faltered, remained still. Her eyes, always sharp and unrelenting, dimmed just slightly. Something uncertain flickered there, like a blade waiting to be touched but left untouched.
Every face turned toward Sentinel.
Because they understood.
He was the one voice the Elders might still heed.
And if he chose silence, the rest would follow.
The quiet in the hall didn't feel sacred. It strangled.
It wasn't a breath waiting in hope, it waited for judgment.
And that's when Eddy noticed.
He turned, gaze sweeping the table, the stiff spines, the suspended motion, the deliberate way no eyes met his. They had stopped looking at him altogether.
They were watching Sentinel now.
And when Eddy looked back at him, the expression on his face carried no challenge, no resistance.
Only the weight of something already known, begging to be confirmed.
The question didn't leave his lips.
But it pressed into the hall like a sharp edge drawn from the dark:
Will you erase my memory too?
Inside Sentinel, the balance shifted.
The silence fractured.
He doesn't deserve that.
Vaelthar's voice came, calm but edged with a cold flame. The kind that burned quietly and left nothing untouched.
Sentinel's eyes held steady, but a flicker in his jaw betrayed the force of the storm rising inside him.
He's different.
The dragon's voice deepened, measured, certain.
Human in form. But you know what stirs beneath. You've seen the traces. He carries more than he understands. More than they will ever admit. He's far from ordinary.
Then it happened.
A flicker. Brief as breath.
Just beneath Eddy's right hand, pressed firm against the edge of the table, a glow shimmered across his skin. Pale, pulsing, silver-blue. A mark revealed itself for the briefest moment.
Etched lines curved in perfect symmetry. Ancient, beautiful, and alive, like it had been waiting all this time to be seen.
It circled his wrist: a ring of interlocking shapes—five distinct symbols, each unique in form yet joined in one continuous flow. A flame. A fang. A wing. A star. A bloom.
Each delicate and precise. Each carrying the essence of one of them.
Together, they formed a whole.
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Complete.
Bound.
One purpose. One path.
A mark of belonging.
Of unity born through difference.
A bond, carved in light.
Sentinel caught it.
Not an accident.
Not illusion.
Recognition stirred behind his eyes.
The mark vanished as fast as it came, slipping beneath the surface like it had never existed.
But it had.
And now, he knew.
Vaelthar stirred again.
A sign. The first spark. It's beginning, whether we choose to act or not.
Sentinel didn't speak. Not yet. His silence held the weight of a dozen possibilities pressing against one fragile truth.
That decision isn't mine alone, he finally replied inwardly, each thought slow, precise, reluctant.
If the Elders demand it—
You can stop them, Vaelthar cut in, sharp as steel.
And you will.
Heat curled beneath Sentinel's skin like breath from a slumbering dragon.
Vaelthar wasn't just present, he was anchored now. Not in voice alone, but in will. In force. In the weight of what had to be done.
They've always listened when you speak, the dragon murmured, slow and edged with quiet thunder.
And if they don't this time… then we stop asking. We stop letting fear write our laws.
A low thrum of power echoed beneath his words.
We show them our true selves. And you know, once we do, they won't be able to deny what we say.
A pause, but only the kind that signals deeper truth.
He didn't come here on his own, Vaelthar said.
We asked him. We brought him. And if he hadn't been there, those five wouldn't have made it out. Not alive. Not whole.
Now it's our turn to pay the debt.
Beside him, Cassandra set down her goblet, the faintest click breaking the stillness. She leaned forward slightly, her tone quiet but deliberate.
"Sir."
It was soft. Respectful. But it landed like a bell ringing through fog.
Sentinel looked at her, really looked, and in that gaze, a thousand silent decisions shifted.
Then finally, he turned toward Eddy.
And spoke.
"No one will take your memories," he said.
His voice was steady, but quiet, like it was still balancing on the edge of all the choices he hadn't yet made.
"I assure you that."
The words left Sentinel's lips like stone dropped into still water.
No one moved. No one exhaled.
A subtle shift followed, chairs creaked softly, shoulders loosened by a fraction, the tension in the air thinning just enough for hope to take its first cautious breath.
Then Sentinel's voice changed. Firmer. No warmth, no malice—just reality laid bare.
"But I can't promise you anything yet. Not completely."
Aiden's jaw tightened again. Lyric's fingers curled beneath the table. Thorne leaned back, brows drawn.
Sentinel's gaze stayed forward, unmoving.
"Because we don't have proof. Not anything solid. Nothing I can carry to the Elders and place before them without being dismissed outright."
Eddy's brow creased. He opened his mouth, breath catching—but before he could speak, Elias was already moving.
He leaned forward, slow but sharp, hands pressing into the table as if steadying fire beneath his skin.
"Wouldn't we be enough?" he asked, each word clipped, deliberate. "If we stood before them—if we vouched for him, with everything we've seen—wouldn't that mean something?"
"No."
Sentinel didn't blink.
"They won't listen."
His eyes turned now, one by one, passing across all five of them. No accusation in the look, but no comfort either.
"They barely trust any of you," he said. "The Eclipse Heart chose you, and still they doubt you, because of who you are. Because of what you're not. Because the world's decided weakness looks a certain way."
He looked back at Eddy.
"If you speak for him, they'll only believe you've already been compromised."
A beat of silence passed. Just the faint hum of overhead lights and the wind brushing against the high windows.
Then Cassandra's voice broke through, low, almost hoarse.
"Then what do we do, sir?"
She didn't look at the others. Only at him.
But the tremor in her words betrayed what was building behind her eyes.
Cassandra's head turned, slowly, like the world had narrowed to one question, toward the end of the table.
Toward Eddy.
He sat in silence, the edges of his frame still as stone beneath the warm flicker of lanternlight. No questions in his eyes now. No jokes. Just quiet.
She drew a breath, small, caught at the back of her throat.
"What happens when someone from our kind finds out about him? If they see what we've seen... they'll either erase his memory, or kill him."
The words didn't linger.
They landed.
Across the table, Eddy stiffened.
The color in his face receded, the warmth leached away like water draining from cupped hands. He didn't flinch. Didn't turn.
His fingers tightened against the table's edge, slow and deliberate, knuckles pressing white. Not from anger. Or fear.
From control.
His jaw tensed once. Then again. And held.
Something sparked in his gaze, not alarm, not grief, but a restrained flame just beginning to take shape. A hardened calm gathering in the shadows behind his eyes.
He blinked once. Swallowed the weight of her words.
Said nothing.
But Sentinel saw it.
The shift.
The way stillness changed shape, how silence stopped being passive and became its own kind of defiance.
"That's why I told you to cloak his scent," Sentinel said looking at Cassandra, voice now edged with cold purpose, measured, exact. "To keep him hidden. If anyone catches the scent of what he is… it ends."
His attention settled back on Eddy.
"And that's why we wait. Until we have something—anything—undeniable. When the war comes, and if the Heart was right to bring you into this… we'll find it. We'll give them no reason to take your memories. Or your life."
Around the hall, stillness pressed in like a held breath.
No chairs scraped. No utensils clinked. Even the low hum of light overhead seemed to settle, casting a soft, unmoving glow.
Eddy didn't shift. Didn't twitch. But something in the air bent around him, tense, weighted.
The others felt it. The way the moment pulled tighter around his frame.
Not with fear.
Not with hope.
With gravity.
Then, his voice surfaced.
Low. Rough. As if dragged from a place far beneath what anyone else could see.
"But how are we supposed to find it?"
He leaned forward slowly, elbows anchoring to the edge of the table. His fingers curled, not in frustration, but to keep himself from unraveling.
"This… Echo Weaving. Whatever it is. You said it's ancient. Rare. Then why is it inside me?"
His gaze lifted, slow and searching. It latched onto Sentinel's face with quiet urgency.
"Out of millions of humans—why me?"