The air in the cathedral felt wrong. Heavy with incense and secrets, it clung to Ash's skin, each breath thick with age and judgment. Shadows stretched too far beneath stained glass saints, and the silence settled like damp wool. For a moment, he considered turning back letting Hargrove and his riddles rot in the dark. But the manuscript weighed heavy in his bag, its pages whispering like distant waves.
Ash took a breath, steeling himself. He'd come too far to listen to doubts.
The library was colder than he remembered, shelves rising like headstones. He found the mirror by accident, a full-length pane framed in dark wood at the end of an aisle. Something stopped him—maybe it was the way the glass seemed clearer than it should have been, reflecting not just him but the shadows beyond.
He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. Empty. When he looked back, the mirror showed him in perfect clarity—except his eyes were wrong. Darker. Hollow.
Ash took a step back. The reflection remained. Its lips curved just barely.
Right, Ash scoffed internally, because eerie reflections were perfectly normal. Perhaps next he'd find books whispering his name or statues weeping blood. The world had clearly decided to abandon all subtlety.
He forced himself to look away, rationalizing the sight with clinical precision. Fatigue. Stress. Some trick of the glass. An old game, that. If you could name the absurdity, dissect it, then surely it wasn't real.
Never mind that his heartbeat hadn't slowed.
Hargrove's instructions had been maddeningly vague: "Find the thirteenth key. It is both a lock and a door."Ash's fingers grazed the spines of ancient texts, pausing on one that seemed too pristine its title in a language he didn't recognize. He pulled it free, pages heavy with the scent of dust and damp. Illustrations sprawled across the paper sigils and diagrams, a city's blueprint overlaid with symbols.
His eyes narrowed. The cathedral's shape was unmistakable at the center, but the symbols interwoven circles and jagged lines suggested it was more than just stone and prayer.
A seal, he realized. Or a cage.
Wonderful. Just the sort of revelation he needed ancient prisons, cryptic symbols, and a guide who spoke in riddles like some half-senile oracle. Ash stifled a bitter laugh, fingers tightening on the book.
His rational mind rebelled, cycling through alternatives a hoax, a hallucination, someone's twisted joke. But none fit neatly, and that was the worst part. If it was madness, it was painfully lucid.
A shuffling broke the silence, and Hargrove emerged from the shadows, candlelight turning his eyes hollow."Have you found it?" the old man rasped.
Ash's grip tightened on the book. "Why not tell me plainly what I'm looking for?"Hargrove's smile was all teeth. "Plainly? You wouldn't believe me."
Of course not. Because that would imply sanity in a world that seemed hell-bent on rewriting its own rules. Ash gritted his teeth, annoyance simmering beneath the surface. He half-considered strangling the answers out of Hargrove, if only to end the incessant theatrics.
The old man spoke of old gods and bargains sealed in blood, of a darkness beneath the city bound by thirteen keys, one for each tower that pierced the skyline. But one key, the last, was different. A failsafe or a trigger its purpose shifted with the telling.
Ash arched a brow. "You sound mad," he remarked dryly, more to silence the chill creeping up his spine."Perhaps," Hargrove replied. "Or perhaps I've seen the truth unmasked."
Fantastic, Ash thought. A madman with apocalyptic delusions. If this was the best lead, he really was in trouble.
The Letter
Back at his quarters, Ash found an envelope slipped beneath the door no seal, no name.The paper was rough, the handwriting painfully familiar: his guardian's.Beware the hand that reaches from the dark, Ash. You cannot trust what you see.
His breath caught. The letter was dated months before the man's death.Ash sank onto the edge of the bed, eyes scanning the words again and again, searching for a flaw, a forgery something sane.
A practical joke from beyond the grave how considerate. Ash almost laughed, the sound bitter and sharp. As if the universe hadn't piled enough mysteries at his feet, now it was flinging ghosts into the mix.
He considered burning the letter, if only to spite the dead. But his fingers wouldn't release it. Rationality insisted it was a lie some elaborate trap, meant to drive him to paranoia. But the ink was real, the paper coarse and worn.
That night, sleep was a mercy denied.Ash drifted into darkness only to find himself in a city drowned in fog, streets twisting into unfamiliar patterns. The cathedral rose in the distance, warped and broken, bells tolling with no wind to stir them.
Open the door, a voice hissed no direction, no source. Open it, or everything ends.
He jolted awake, breath ragged, the darkness too deep for dawn. The manuscript lay open on his desk, pages rifling in a wind that did not exist. Symbols bled between the lines, shifting and reassembling into new patterns.
Ash stared, chest tight, fingers numb. Rationalize it, you idiot. But reason felt like a brittle mask now, thin and cracking.Perhaps the worst part was how quickly his mind tried to comply, shoving explanations at him like a dealer with cheap wares sleepwalking, subconscious suggestion, stress-induced hallucination. None stuck.
At the cathedral's entrance, a monk barred his path hood drawn, voice soft but firm."Leave this place," the man intoned, gaunt face shadowed. "You tread a path to ruin."Ash's smile was all edges. "Ruin's already here. I intend to ask it a few questions."
But the monk's eyes gray and hollow flickered with something like pity."The thirteenth key is a prison," he warned. "Open it, and what lies beneath will be free."
Ash hesitated. Just for a breath. Just long enough to wonder if Hargrove's riddles were lies, or if he was playing a deeper game.Then his jaw set, boots scuffing stone as he moved past. Fear was a leash for the weak, and he had cut his long ago.
The door to the lower levels groaned open, cold air biting at his skin. Candles burned low along the staircase, the dark swallowing their light.Ash's fingers brushed the pendant in his pocket, tracing the edges. A safeguard or a curse he would find out soon enough.
Of course, descending into dark tunnels based on cryptic advice from a probable madman was a stellar idea. Ash's lips twisted in a humorless grin. If he died, at least he could laugh at the irony in whatever afterlife awaited.
The stone passage yawned before him, carved with sigils that glimmered faintly. He moved forward, steps measured but sure, leaving the daylight and its lies behind.
And in the silence, something breathed.