Veins of Eterrnal Dusk

Chapter 1 – The Last Postcard The fog arrived the way grief arrives: not with warning, not with drama, but with the certainty that it had always been waiting just outside the door. Liora Vey noticed it on the morning of January 7th, 2026, when she opened the shutters of the upstairs studio and found the world gone the colour of old mourning lace. The cathedral spire, the same one she had painted six winters in a row, was still there, but it looked further away than it had any right to be. The iron cross at the top had turned the dull silver of fish left too long on ice. A single raven sat on the crossbar, wings half-spread, as though deciding whether to take flight or simply wait for her to finish dying. She hadn’t painted the raven. She never painted ravens. Her hands, stained with the ghost of yesterday’s ultramarine, paused above the palette. The tube of crimson lake she had sworn never to open again lay uncapped on the table, weeping a slow, deliberate tear onto the scarred wood. She had not touched it. Downstairs, the bell above the gallery door rang once, a single, perfect note even though no wind moved through the streets of Dunmere, and no customer had crossed the threshold in three weeks Liora did not go down to look. She already knew what she would find. Or rather, who. Instead, she crossed to the easel, lifted the unfinished canvas away, and set a fresh one in its place. The linen was so tightly primed that it sang under her fingertips. She squeezed bone black straight from the tube, no thinner, no medium, just the colour of absence. Then she began. The first stroke was the spire taller than memory, thinner than hope. The second was the fog, rolling in thick, boneless coils that seemed to breathe against the canvas. The third was the raven, larger than it had been outside the window, wings now fully spread, head c****d as though listening for the precise moment her heart would remember how to stop. She worked without pause until the winter light failed completely, which in Dunmere meant sometime around three in the afternoon. When she finally stepped back, the painting was finished. Or rather, it had finished itself. In the lower right corner, where the fog met the cobblestones, there was a figure. Tall. Black coat to the ankles. Face turned away. He had not been there when she began. She stared at the silhouette until her eyes burned, waiting for the paint to remember it was only paint. It did not obey. Behind her, the floorboard nearest the staircase creaked once the soft, deliberate sound of weight shifting from one foot to the other. Liora did not turn around. She had learned, over the course of too many winters, that turning around never helped. Instead, she reached for the jar of turpentine, unscrewed the lid with shaking fingers, and poured the entire contents over the canvas. The paint did not run. It drank. The figure in the corner seemed to grow taller, shoulders widening as though stretching after a very long sleep. Then the raven on the spire lifted its head and looked directly at her. Its eyes were not black. They were the colour of old mercury, the exact shade of the scar that ran along the inside of her left wrist — the one she had never shown another living person. Liora dropped the empty jar. It shattered on the boards with a sound like bones breaking far away. Downstairs, the bell rang again. Twice. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the canvas was clean. No spire. No fog. No raven. No man. Only a single crimson fingerprint in the exact centre, still wet, still warm. Not hers. She had not bled today. The fingerprint pulsed once twice, then sank into the weave of the linen and was gone. Liora stood very still for a long time. Then she walked downstairs. The gallery was empty. Of course it was. But the door stood ajar. A thin blade of fog lay across the threshold like a tongue tasting the air inside. On the welcome mat, the one she had bought second-hand from a woman who had since disappeared lay a single postcard. No stamp. No address. Only her name, written in copperplate, so perfect it might have been engraved: Liora Vey She turned it over. On the other side, in the same flawless hand: You always begin with the spire. You always end with me. Below the words was a tiny sketch — no larger than a thumbnail — of a woman on her knees before a burning man. The man was smiling. The woman’s hands were on fire up to the wrists. Liora recognised the scene. She had never painted it. She had dreamed it, though. Every winter, for seven years. The same dream. The same fire. The same smile. She carried the postcard upstairs and placed it face-down on the table beside the now-blank canvas. Then she went to the window, pushed the shutters wide, and stared into the fog. Somewhere out there, perhaps only a street away, perhaps closer, a man was walking. He wore black to the ankles. He did not look back. He never needed to. Because he already knew she was watching. And because he knew the way predators know the exact moment prey accepts, it is prey that she would paint him again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Until the canvas remembered. Until the paint remembered. Until she remembered. Liora closed the shutters. The raven outside tapped once against the glass polite, patient, inevitable. She did not open the window to let it in. She didn’t need to. It was already inside.