It started with the lights—flickering, sputtering, dying.
Every time Elior Vale entered a room, something short-circuited. Bulbs burst, streetlamps blinked out, and even phones glitched in his presence. People called him cursed. Some whispered he was haunted. He had stopped caring years ago.
Now, standing alone on the rooftop of the aging apartment complex he called home, he welcomed the silence. Below, the city pulsed with the illusion of life—neon signs flashing, horns blaring, the ever-present hum of machinery. Up here, the world was still.
The wind tugged at his coat as he lit a cigarette, the flame struggling against the chill. His fingers trembled slightly—not from cold, but from the dream.
Again.
That same dream had come to him for the past six nights: a voice whispering in a language he didn't know, a door carved with symbols glowing faintly blue, and eyes watching him from beyond the veil.
He exhaled, smoke curling into the void. He didn't believe in fate. But something was shifting. He could feel it in his bones.
Behind him, the old rooftop door creaked open. He didn't turn. Only one person ever came looking for him anymore.
"Still brooding like a movie character?" came a gravelly voice.
Elior sighed. "Evening, Marcus."
Marcus was the building's janitor—a war veteran with a limp, a love for conspiracy theories, and surprisingly sharp eyes. He offered Elior a folded envelope.
"This was taped to your door. No name. No stamp. Just… you."
Elior took it.
The paper was thick, old, rough under his fingers. On the front, in perfect calligraphy: Elior Vale.
No one wrote like that anymore.
He tore it open.
Inside was a single line, handwritten in dark ink:
"Seek the vault beneath St. Hollow's. Your inheritance awaits."
Beneath the writing was a symbol—three interlocking circles surrounding a single eye.
Elior's fingers began to burn.
He dropped the letter. The symbol on his palm—the one he had been born with—was glowing faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The mark… it had never responded to anything before.
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "You good?"
Elior didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, where the city's lights shimmered unnaturally.
Something was calling him.
Not a voice.Not a dream.Something older.
And this time, he would answer.