The Labyrinthine Tower part 3

Inside the Vault
The Vault of Seals was vast — a cathedral of black marble and sigil-carved pillars. At its center floated the Orb of Containment, but it no longer pulsed with serene light. It churned — red and violet streaks twisting like storm clouds.

Around it stood five students in ritual robes, chanting from a half-burned grimoire. When they saw us, one shouted,

“Stay back! We’re so close! The demon will obey us—”

Lirien’s voice cut him off like a blade.

“No. It never obeys.”

The air shattered. A wave of force threw us back as the Orb cracked open — not fully, but enough. A clawed hand of pure shadow burst forth, snaring one of the students and dragging him into the air.

The others screamed. Chaos erupted.

Combat
I launched a containment rune while Lirien began sealing the pillars one by one, chanting faster than the cultists could scream. The demon’s shadow lashed across the chamber, severing chains of light. Every strike left streaks of frost in the air, the temperature dropping until our breath turned to shards of ice.

Finally, I channeled the sigils Magnos had inscribed on my gloves — the same ones he said not to use indoors. The result was… spectacular. The entire chamber flashed white.

When the smoke cleared, three cultists were unconscious, one was crying, and the last had turned himself into a new species of regret.

Lirien caught the falling Orb midair and forced it shut with a sealing glyph. The runes dimmed. The silence that followed was deafening.

We dragged the surviving cultists upstairs, where the staff waited grimly. Magnos inspected the orb, eyes narrowing.

“Cracked,” he muttered. “Containment compromised. But stable… for now.”

Sera looked over the unconscious students and sighed.

“They were trying to summon knowledge. They just didn’t care what form it came in.”

Lirien turned to me.

“Power without wisdom always ends like this. The labyrinth tempts everyone — even us.”

I nodded, though my hands were still trembling. I wasn’t sure if it was from adrenaline or the faint aftertaste of sulfur in the air.

The Archmage’s Puzzle
The message came sealed with gold filigree, its sigil pulsing faintly — the unmistakable mark of Archmage Arcen. No one ever received a personal summons from him. Unless they’d done something brilliant... or catastrophic.

I unfolded it. The script shimmered as I read:

“To the aspirant whose curiosity exceeds their caution — Meet me beneath the Tower, at the Gate Stabilization Chamber. — Arcen”

So, both then.

The staircase spiraled downward beyond where torches dared to burn. The air thickened with ancient enchantments — the kind that hummed in your teeth and made every heartbeat feel like a spell miscast. When I reached the door, runes flickered alive across its archway.

“Access granted,” a disembodied voice murmured. “Puzzle sequence initiated.”

Inside, a vast circular room waited. At its center hovered three concentric runic rings, slowly rotating around a glowing core. Glyphs shifted across their surfaces, rearranging in dizzying, unpredictable patterns.

A crystalline sphere hung above it all — the Gate Core, pulsing faintly like a restrained heartbeat.

And, somewhere unseen, Archmage Arcen’s voice resonated in my mind. Calm. Amused. Dangerous.

“Ah, there you are. I trust the descent wasn’t... discouraging?”

I muttered, “You could’ve sent stairs that didn’t whisper my name every step.”

He chuckled.

“An enchantment from a less paranoid era. Now — let us see if you can stabilize chaos without being devoured by it.”

The trial was simple in theory: align the rings so their runes formed the Sigil of Continuity, restoring balance to the unstable Gate Core. In practice? The rings reversed direction. Randomly. The sigils changed languages mid-alignment. And the faint whispering made it hard to remember which glyph meant continuity and which meant implosion.

The first attempt ended with a sharp flash and the taste of burnt air.

“Fascinating,” Arcen mused telepathically. “You fail beautifully. Try again.”

I swore quietly and started over.

The second failure sent me sprawling — the floor shimmered like water, and ghostly silhouettes of past students flickered beside me, endlessly repeating their own mistakes.

“Ah, I see you’ve met my other students. They, too, found the process... enlightening.”

Third attempt. My fingers trembled, tracing the sigils, mind straining to hear the rhythm beneath the chaos — until it clicked. The symbols aligned.

The Core pulsed, the runes slowed, and the chamber exhaled a wave of golden light that rippled through the walls.

When the glow faded, Arcen appeared — not physically, but as a projection of light and authority.

He regarded the stabilized Gate Core, then me.
“Control is power,” he said softly. “And you have both. For now.”

He raised a hand, and the chamber sealed itself once more.
“Leave the Core untouched. There are older things in the labyrinth below that dream of freedom.”

As I ascended back toward the tower’s higher floors, I could still feel the hum of the gate beneath my feet — like something vast and hungry waiting for the wrong key.

The Dimensional Gate
The air beneath the Tower grew colder the deeper we went — as if every step peeled away another layer of time. The lower labyrinth wasn’t just forgotten; it was buried alive.

Flickering glyph-lamps lined the narrow path, illuminating faded murals — depictions of mages binding horrors made of flame and void. Their faces were cracked off the walls, erased by something that wanted them forgotten.

I wasn’t alone this time.

Sera walked ahead, staff aglow with soft silver light, ever the calm voice of reason.
“They said no one’s been down here in centuries,” she whispered.

Jorren snorted behind me, blade resting on his shoulder.
“Correction — no one’s come back from down here in centuries.”

A comforting thought.

We reached the final gate — a vast circular door of metal and bone, sealed by intertwining runic locks. The Sigil of Containment pulsed faintly across it like a dying heartbeat. The moment Sera traced her hand over the sigils, the runes awakened, hissing with pale blue light.
“It recognizes our academy seals,” she said, voice trembling. “That means... it still lives.”

The metal groaned, and the door opened with a slow, resonant sigh — the kind that sounded far too alive.

Inside the Gate Chamber
The chamber beyond was enormous — a cathedral carved from obsidian and veins of glowing crystal. At its center stood the Dimensional Gate: a towering archway of shimmering stone, floating above a pit of swirling darkness. Its runes flickered weakly, like a lantern struggling against the wind.

For a moment, I thought it was silent. Then I realized the sound wasn’t in the air — it was inside my head. A low hum. A distant whisper. Almost a heartbeat.

“It’s beautiful,” Sera breathed.
“It’s wrong,” Jorren muttered, hand tightening around his sword.

We approached cautiously. The runes pulsed brighter as I drew near — responding to the residual magic from the Gate Stabilization Trial I’d completed days ago. A faint beam connected my hand to the central rune cluster. Symbols flickered in my vision, rearranging themselves into words not meant for human eyes.

INCOMPLETE... CONNECTION LOST... ENTITY SEALED...

And then — A voice. Not from Arcen, nor the Tower, but something behind the Gate.

“Who disturbs my slumber?”

The chamber shook. The air became heavy with pressure, as though something immense pressed against the other side. The runes blazed once — then dimmed, falling silent.

Sera gasped.
“It’s... it’s sentient. Or it was.”

Jorren gritted his teeth.
“Then let’s make sure it stays dead.”

We worked quickly. Sera deciphered the sealing matrix while I used the Focus-Crystal Pendant to reinforce the containment runes. Jorren stood guard, though his eyes kept flicking to the Gate — drawn to the void like a moth to a storm.

For a brief instant, the symbols flared again, showing images in my mind — Worlds collapsing. Flames devouring skies. A shape with too many wings and too many eyes whispering through time.

Then silence.

The Gate dimmed, its light fading to dull gray stone.

“It’s done,” Sera said softly. “It’s... sleeping again.”

“For how long?” I asked.
“As long as it takes for someone foolish enough to wake it.”

We turned to leave. Behind us, the Gate’s surface rippled once, as though breathing. But only once.

After the Quest
When I reported back, Archmage Arcen listened silently. Finally, he said:
“Sealed does not mean safe. The Gate is a scar — and scars remember the wound.”

He dismissed me with a wave of his hand, though his eyes lingered — calculating, wary.

Later that night, I overheard Wren, the Caretaker, muttering to a circle of nervous students:
“The Gate was meant to bind, not to open. Pray it never confuses the two again.”

And from the upper tower, the whispering voice of Ira drifted through the halls:
“The stars whisper its name again... soon.”

I didn’t sleep that night.

When I finally did, I dreamed of the Gate — and something tapping faintly from the other side.

The Demon’s Return
The morning began with silence. That should’ve been my first warning.

The Labyrinthine Tower was never quiet — always a chorus of echoing incantations, shuffling apprentices, and the occasional explosion from a miscast alchemy experiment. But that day, when I opened my eyes in the dormitory, I heard nothing. No footsteps. No chatter. Just… stillness.

Then the bells began to toll.

Not the melodic summons for class — these bells screamed.

The wards of the Tower were failing.

By the time I reached the upper hall, chaos had taken root. Students ran through the corridors clutching spellbooks and staves. Flames danced along the ceilings, shadows moved against the light, and the air tasted of iron and ash.

“To defensive positions!” shouted Professor Calistra, her voice slicing through the panic. “Demons have breached the outer wards! The lower laboratories have fallen!”

I drew my sword — an odd thing to carry among mages, but one I’d come to trust more than a wand. The air around me throbbed with invisible pressure, like the Tower itself was holding its breath.

A crash echoed below — stone shattering, followed by the unmistakable sound of something crawling.

I caught sight of Eleanora, her hat slightly askew, monocle glowing violently as she channeled lightning down a staircase.

“I told them the barrier matrix was unstable!” she shouted, her voice sharp with both fury and terror. “No one ever listens to me!”

The hallways became warzones. Flames tore through banners of the Academy’s crest. Animated suits of armor clashed with horned horrors that melted and reformed as they died.

I found Magnos in the courtyard, gleefully hurling fireballs into the swarm.
“Finally!” he roared. “Something worth burning!”

His grin was wild, his robes half-charred — and yet his aim was perfect.

Beside him, Sera raised skeletal wards of bone and crystal, her necromantic shields deflecting claw strikes with brittle efficiency.
“Stay behind me — bones are sturdier than flesh!” she yelled over the din.

I didn’t argue.

I followed the trail of scorch marks through the alchemy labs. Broken flasks and runes littered the floor. It smelled of burnt parchment and copper blood.

That’s when I saw him — Professor Malrec, standing before a cracked summoning circle, his hands trembling. His robes were torn, his face pale, his eyes hollow.

“Professor?” I called out.

He turned slowly. His mouth moved, but the words were wrong — twisting, like two voices fighting to speak through one throat.
“Do you think knowledge is without price, child?”

His fingers clawed through the air, and the shadows obeyed.

The fight began.

Flames burst from shattered runes. I parried the first strike — not of steel, but of force. Every motion carried unnatural weight, the kind of power that shouldn’t exist outside the summoning circle.

Malrec’s expression warped between agony and fury. Between every strike, I caught flashes of his real face — the old, weary scholar beneath the thing that puppeted him.

Lirien’s voice echoed faintly from the hall, her spell anchoring my mind:
“Don’t falter — his body’s the tether! Sever it, and the demon will die with him!”

We traded blows through the shattered lab. Potions ignited, arcane fumes caught fire. He struck like a storm of claws and whispers — I fought back with steel, not spells, letting instinct take over.

When his guard broke, I drove my sword through the chest — not out of vengeance, but mercy.

The body convulsed. The thing inside screamed, not aloud but in the mind — a roar that made my bones ache. Then light surged from the wound, and everything went still.

Malrec’s body collapsed to the ground. No shadows. No whispering. No trace of the demon left behind. Only smoke rising from scorched runes.

Archmage Arcen arrived moments later, his robes still immaculate despite the smoke. He surveyed the damage with a heavy expression.

“He used forbidden summoning rites,” Arcen murmured. “A true summoning demands life as payment. He must’ve known it would kill him.”

He looked at me then — calm, almost resigned.
“You did what had to be done. But remember this — the hunger for forbidden power always starts with curiosity.”

Behind him, Sera whispered a short prayer over the fallen professor, her voice steady.
“May he rest where no shadows reach.”

After the quest, the Academy returns to routine. The damaged lab is sealed off under heavy warding — visible scorch marks remain, a quiet reminder of the event. Professors whisper about stricter magical ethics; students glance nervously at the lower halls.