The evening shift at Soar Museum was not especially highly prized.

True, you were significantly less likely to fall foul of a Grackle Nuroon tantrum if you started work after he went home, but on the other hand, there was something about the atmosphere of the place after the sun went down that tested the temperaments of all but the most courageous Curator.

Too many long-dead bones. Too many unheard secrets. And far, far too many cursed artefacts.

And on the night of the second death, a furious storm was blowing a tempest across Soar, making those late-night workers even less happy about their lot in life.

The guard on gate duty was particularly unhappy about things, especially as the automatic Illume spell on the outer wall had failed, and he had been ordered to set himself up outside to keep an eye on any comings and goings.

Lacking any Skills to protect himself from the storm, Porthern Barth - Level 11 Unaffiliated Security - had swaddled himself in a borrowed Sou'wester and plonked himself down, with as much bad grace as he was capable, on a chair just outside the gatehouse.

It was just as one day surrendered to the next that Porthern was startled awake by the crackling hum of the Portal Stone opposite the museum flaring to life. The sound echoed through the stillness of the night, pulling him from his uneasy doze.

He frowned, leaning forward slightly to peer through the rain-slicked darkness. At this hour? And in this weather? Whoever it was, they’d have to be either desperate or mad. Most likely both.

When no figure materialised from the glowing gateway, his curiosity overcame his reluctance. With a muttered curse about the cold, he grabbed another jacket and trudged across the slick cobblestones toward the stone. The harsh light it emitted threw spikey shadows onto the museum’s façade, making the otherwise quiet scene feel faintly menacing.

Porthern stood in front of the portal, hands shoved deep into his pockets, watching the flickering energy ripple across its surface. Minutes dragged by, each one stretching longer than the last, but still, no one emerged. The air seemed to hum with poised tension, but otherwise, there was nothing—no sound, no movement.

Just him, the rain, and the strange, silent glow of the Portal Stone.

He racked his brain, trying to remember the protocols for a dormant activation.

He was sure there had been some tedious training on this, back when he’d started, but for minimum wage and no hazard pay, Porthern couldn’t be expected to keep track of every little regulation. He sighed, running a hand through his damp hair.

Maybe he should just head back inside and wake someone more senior? Let them deal with it.

He had just turned on his heel, rain dripping from his hood, when he froze. A faint sound—barely more than a whisper—reached his ears. He spun back toward the portal, half expecting to see some drenched and bedraggled traveler stepping through at last.

But it wasn’t the portal.

It was Martha Culloden."What are you doing?" she asked. Her appearance had been so sudden that it nearly sent him sprawling.

Culloden’s tone carried just enough irritation to remind him that she wasn’t the sort of person who tolerated dithering from subordinates. Porthern straightened, brushing off his jacket as if the rain had somehow soaked through more thoroughly because of her disapproval.

"I thought someone had activated the portal, Senior Preservationist," he said. "But... nothing’s come through. Thought I’d... check, you know, in case it was something important."

Culloden’s gaze flicked to the shimmering stone.. "And did you find anything?"

"Not yet, ma’am," Porthern replied, his voice faltering slightly under her scrutiny. He hesitated, then added, "I was about to call for backup when you came along."

The Senior Preservationist had obviously invested considerably in some 'quality of life' Skills, as there was a wide cone around her through which no wind or rain was being permitted to cross. Porthern surreptitiously tried to stand as close to her as he could whilst she addressed him.

"Ah," she said. "I thought I heard the Portal Stone activate and came to investigate."

Even Porthern, lacking as he was in brains, smarts or any ability in deductive reasoning whatsoever, could smell bullshit when it was shovelled his way.

He had only noticed the stone coming to life because he was sitting less than ten feet away from the thing when it bloomed into being. Even without the storm trying to blow the museum's doors off, there was no way this woman had heard anything on this side of the street from inside her office.

Seeing scepticism on the man's face, Culloden gathered her coat around her and made to pass through the summoned portal. "Well, if no one is coming through, I might as well make use of it to get off home." However, she had taken no more than a few steps forward when, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to her, she turned, smiling at the guard.

"While I remember, I think the lock to the door of the canteen might be broken. I've cast a temporary You Shall Not Pass on it, but that will only hold until the morning. Be a dear and let Mr Levick know, will you?"

Porthen nodded, and for a moment, the two stood awkwardly facing each other before the Unaffiliated Security realised the blasted woman expected him to go and get on the Sending Stone immediately.

Seriously?

It was the middle of the night, the whole museum was locked down, and she'd already secured the door by the sound of it. But, no. That wasn't enough. She wanted him to traipse back inside, wake up the famously grizzly Estate Caretaker and have him come and take a look.

Porthern gave a sarcastic salute - if she didn't know his name, she could hardly report him, could she? - and ambled back across the road and into the guard house.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It was just at the end of a robust conversation with Trei Levick that Porthern realised Culloden wouldn't need to know his name to check the rota to see which rude fucker was on duty this night. Yanking his mana out of the stone, abruptly cutting off the spew of bile from Levick coming his way, he quickly went back outside to make amends.

However, not only was the Portal Stone now switched off, but there was no sign of the Senior Preservationist.

"Weird," Porthern murmured before pulling his drenched coat around himself and sitting back down.

*

It was a little after the second bell of the morning that Preece finally finished cataloguing a pile of [Rare] Gauntlets that he knew he had done once before. However, short of admitting he hadn't performed the requested memory wipe, he could not easily argue the point.

He was pretty sure his immediate supervisor, Deputy Chief Curator Thenon, had guessed he was still in full possession of his memories and was giving him a string of pointless tasks to elicit that admission.

Well, this wasn't Preece's first rodeo of dealing with petty tyrants, and he was willing to play the long game. Also, unlike the rest of his Curator peers, he didn't have a string of exciting and athletic social engagements awaiting him and was more than happy to rack up the overtime.

Stretching out his back, he stood and began to return to the staffroom for a quick brew before starting the next of his mundane tasks. He wasn't sure what had come over the Director lately, but the quality and quantity of refreshments had gone through the roof. Even at this time of night—or in the morning, he guessed—there would still be 10% concentration-enhancing green tea available.

He was just at the bottom of the stairway when one of the myriad shadows surrounding him solidified into a hooded figure and tapped him on the shoulder. "Fucking hell, Kelvin. You gave me a start!"

Kregg lowered his hood and glanced somewhat furtively about. "Preece, what are you doing here?"

"Late shift. Thenon has me doing all sorts of crappy tasks, and I could do with the cash. What's your excuse?"

Did the Public Relations Bard blush at that? Surely not, Preece thought. "I'm just making sure everything is as it should be. I was a little worried the storm might have shaken some of the tiles off the Exhibit Hall. But it turns out there was nothing to worry about. Please excuse me. I should check the top of the Chapel."

Preece frowned as the man pulled his hood back up and slipped away down the corridor. Only after his third sip of tea did the oddity of the man responsible for PR checking on roof slates make him frown.

*

Less than half a bell later, in the dark hours when the city held its breath, one of the towering stained-glass windows in the Chapel of Rest shattered inward with a deafening roar.

No one heard it.

The wind had battered against it relentlessly, night after night, as though trying to force its way inside. Tonight, it finally succeeded.

The gale tore through the chapel like a vengeful spirit, howling and feral. Hundreds of books were hurled from their shelves, their pages flapping wildly like the wings of startled birds. Sheaves of paper caught in the maelstrom, spinning upwards in a violent, chaotic dance before scattering like leaves on the cold stone floor.

The door to a cupboard, left ajar by its last, hurried visitor, slammed shut with a resounding thud, the noise reverberating through the empty, cavernous space. It echoed briefly before being swallowed whole by the relentless roar of the wind.

And yet, no alarm was raised. No hurried footsteps came running to investigate. The gale, the shattered glass, the scattered remnants of knowledge—it all went unnoticed.

Within the labyrinthine corridors of Soar Museum, life carried on as though the Chapel of Rest remained untouched, its sanctity unbroken.

But something had shifted, a tremor in the unseen fabric of the place.

It lingered, heavy and unseen, as if the wind had left more than chaos in its wake. A subtle yet palpable sense of foreboding settled over the museum, though none within its walls yet realized it.

*

The sun hung low, a molten coin rising out of the horizon, as Grackle Nuroon strode past the slumped figure of the sleeping Unaffiliated Security guard.

His eyes barely flicked to the man, registering his presence only as one might notice a piece of misplaced furniture. Challenges were for lesser mortals, and Nuroon had long grown accustomed to the unspoken rule that his arrival required no fanfare. No interruptions.

If the guard's stillness and heavy layers conveyed anything, it was the appropriate deference of silence—no idle chatter, no prying questions, just mute acknowledgment of the important figure who walked these grounds.

He swept through the gates without a word, his steps as light as his mood was sour. Waiting just inside, of course, was Estate Caretaker Levick.

Levick, that perennial thorn in his side.

For a moment, Nuroon allowed himself the indulgence of imagining the caretaker reduced to a smouldering pile of ash, a neat little bonfire lighting the grounds he so obsessively maintained.

"I warned you about that fucking door!" the squat man bellowed, barely waiting for Nuroon to take off his coat.

"I’m sure you did, Trei. I’m sure you did,” Nuroon said. “If only there were someone like, oh, I don’t know, an Estate Caretaker who could address such things. Imagine it—someone with access to a veritable arsenal of Skills, finely honed for the maintenance of aberrant doors and cracked windows. Why, if they’d crossed their Level 50 threshold, that’d be even better, wouldn’t it? Truly, a gift from the gods. Now,” he added, leaning in ever so slightly, “where do you think we might find someone like that?”

"Fuck you, Grackle!"

"Was there anything in particular, Estate Caretaker?”

"You need to tell that woman of yours to stop putting her fucking cantrips on maintenance issues. It took me longer to dispel You Shall Not Pass than it would have done to just fix a fucking broken lock."

"I have no idea of what you speak, Trei. But it sounds fascinating. I shall be certain to give it my full attention at some stage in the near future."

Levick had thrown a report at him as he'd left, and it was a good few hours before Nuroon deigned to glance at it.

"What on earth was Martha up to?" he murmured to himself when he'd finished reading it. It went without saying that senior staff did whatever they could not to wind up the Estate Caretaker. Casting a rather sticky spell on a door was almost calculated to raise his ire.

Deciding to take this up with her—he always liked ensuring the shit rolled firmly downhill—Nuroon slid his chair back under his desk and strode briskly toward the Senior Preservationists office. The prospect of delivering a sharp reprimand always brought a certain vigor to his step.

When he reached her door, it was unlocked. That much didn’t surprise him. Culloden often left it ajar, a misplaced display of openness or perhaps arrogance. But what did surprise him was the fact that she wasn’t there when he pushed it open.

Not nearly as much, however, as the sight of the cooling corpse sprawled across the floor.

Curator Harker’s body was a tableau of horror. His face, unshielded by its usual green spectacles, bore an expression of sheer agony, his wide-open eyes frozen in a silent, pleading scream. The rest of him—what remained of it—was unrecognisable. The flesh seemed to have melted away, leaving glistening patches of exposed bone and a viscous sludge that soaked into the carpet.

Nuroon took a step closer, his lip curling as the stench of decay and something far fouler struck him. The sight, though nauseating, tickled at the edges of his memory. He’d seen something like this before—hadn’t he? A thought scratched at the back of his mind but refused to fully surface.

“Well,” he murmured, stepping back and pulling the door shut with a measured calm that belied the scene inside. He twisted the lock, the soft click breaking the heavy silence.

"This," he said to no one in particular, brushing invisible dust from his hands as he turned on his heel, "might be a touch trickier to make go away."