Dawn bled into the sky, chasing away the night’s phantoms, but the unease stuck—a stubborn stain on the fabric of my thoughts. More sleep wasn’t in the cards, and I knew it. I dragged myself out of bed, resigned to the day ahead. There were places I needed to be, people who might help me untangle the mess of blood and glass that haunted my waking hours. I needed answers, and maybe a clue about this damn key. But just my luck, it seemed the world was already up and running, and I got caught in the morning grind.
The drive into the city was a slow death march, the morning traffic pushing me down, inch by tedious inch. Nearly two hours of red lights and exhaust fumes finally spat me out into the crumbling heart of the Downtown Business District. The buildings around here were little more than decaying corpses, their former grandeur long devoured by time. I parked next to a dilapidated flower shop, its windows as dead as the flowers it once sold, and an abandoned record store—a mausoleum for forgotten tunes.
But amid this desolation, something caught my eye—a crimson door. It stood out against the faded surroundings like a bloodstain on old parchment. The sign above it read Beautiful Chaos - Demonology, Smithing, and Alchemy, the letters curling like tendrils of smoke. The door promised secrets, the kind only the desperate or the damned would seek out. Naturally, I headed in.
A delicate chime tinkled as I stepped inside, the sound swallowed by the shadows clinging to the walls. The interior was a warren of tall, black-wood bookshelves and glass display cases, each one brimming with relics and oddities that seemed to drink in the dim light rather than reflect it. This place was a collector’s cavern, every inch of it crowded with forbidden knowledge and dangerous artifacts.
Behind the counter, a man stood, his face pale as bone with dark circles under his eyes like bruises. He was a wraith, barely human, and his gaze sent a shiver down my spine.
In the world of demonologists, there were two kinds: the ones in lab coats, sterile and clinical, who harnessed demonic energies for progress, and those like him—creatures of the night who wove dark magic for obscure and often perilous purposes.
But both kinds were just as likely to reject Enhancements entirely, letting Corruption seep through their veins until it coiled around their minds like a venomous snake. Skirting the edge of sanity was just another part of the job—a dangerous line they walked willingly, or sometimes unknowingly, until the line disappeared altogether.
The trade danced on the edge of legality, wrapped in a shroud of murky morality.
Despite the shop’s dilapidated appearance, hope flickered within me as I scanned the room. There was promise here, buried beneath the dust and grime. His voice grated like a rusted hinge swinging open, filling the silence with tension.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I’m searching for someone. Their blood is the only lead I have.” The words hung in the air, and I watched as his lazy disinterest sharpened into something dangerous. His eyes narrowed like a predator sizing up prey.
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“You’re not a detective, are you?” His eyes darted to a small, polished stone in his hand—an artifact of truth, once favored by the cops, but now usually kept out of sight. The stone wasn’t exactly unreliable; it was just that truth had a nasty habit of twisting itself in the eye of the beholder. What one person swore on could be another’s blasphemy.
“Do I look like a detective?” I asked, lifting my hat to reveal the grayish hue of my face, the skin stretched too tight over the bones.
“Couldn’t say. Are you?” he repeated.
“Not anymore,” I replied honestly.
The stone remained still, confirming my truth. He relaxed slightly, the suspicion in his eyes giving way to something more calculating.
“I see. Are you here for trouble, then?”
“Only if it comes looking for me.”
The man nodded, apparently satisfied, and reached under the counter to flick a switch. The door behind me locked with a definitive click.
He led me through a hidden passage into a room that felt more like a sanctum than part of the shop. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment and beeswax, the walls bare save for a small table cluttered with arcane instruments. Each item hummed with latent energy, secrets hidden within their intricate designs.
The man muttered to himself as he rifled through the assorted objects, his fingers brushing against trinkets and talismans until he found what he was looking for. “You have the blood?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly.
From my pocket, I drew a small of glass, its edges raw and jagged, as if torn from something that didn’t want to let it go. Dried blood, taken from the shadowed figure I’d chased through McGuffey’s estate, smeared across the shard’s surface, catching the light and gleaming like tiny rubies embedded in glass—dark, tempting, and thrumming with secrets.
He took it from me, turning it over in his hand before gesturing to a large silver cauldron that he’d unearthed from the chaos. “Drop it in,” he ordered, his eyes never leaving the shard.
I let the shard fall, and the blood mingled with the water in the cauldron, turning it a deep, otherworldly crimson. The air around us thickened with a pulse of dark energy as the man unfurled an ancient parchment, laying it flat on the table. He began whispering incantations, each word sending shivers down my spine. The parchment reacted, sketching out a cityscape unfamiliar to me. But as quickly as it formed, the ink began to swirl into chaos, the lines twisting into a frenzied storm of shapes and colors. The sight was mesmerizing and deeply unsettling.
The man’s eyes bulged with terror, his face twisting into a mask of horror as he stared at the convulsing display. The air around us crackled with malevolent energy, the ink in the cauldron erupting like molten lava. The cauldron itself caught fire, an inferno fueled by an unseen force. A howl filled the room, not just a sound, but a force that tore at the edges of reality, pulling at the corners of the world as if the very pages of existence were being turned by some ancient, malevolent hand.
Amidst the chaos, the shop turned into a whirlwind of destruction. Books hurled themselves off shelves, pages torn from their bindings, while furniture crashed to the ground with the finality of a guillotine. But the old man stood firm, eerily composed amidst the turmoil, his eyes glinting with a calm resolve. He snatched a bar of copper from the clutter and thrust it into the heart of the storm, his voice bellowing incantations that were nearly swallowed by the roaring wind and fire.
And then, as abruptly as it began, the storm ceased. The room plunged into an unsettling quiet, the echoes of the tempest lingering in our ringing ears. We stood in the near-darkness, our breaths ragged, adrenaline still coursing through our veins. The only sound was the frantic beating of my undead heart, struggling to remember what it was supposed to do in the face of such raw power.
The man’s demeanor didn’t falter, unfazed by the chaos that had just erupted around us. His voice remained steady, a stark contrast to my racing thoughts and the tremor in my hands that I couldn’t quite control.