Black Sigil - The Moonbound Series

An Unexpected Guest

The path to the Burn Room began with a false stairwell at the back of a condemned administrative building—once the offices of Velcrith’s civil planning ministry. Decades ago, it had collapsed inward during a leyline quake, burying dozens of city clerks alive, and claiming the lives of many others.

The triplets had carved it out, turned it into their personal headquarters. The ruined stairwell was an illusion and each brother walked through it without a thought. Once inside the space opened up to a dimly lit hallway with a metal door.

Past the steel-reinforced door, through three locked sigil hatches and a spiral descent, was the space no one outside the brothers, besides a select few, had ever seen.

The Burn Room wasn’t home. It was the bone beneath the skin of their operation.

It was built for function, not comfort—steel rafters hung low, the walls etched in personal warding runes passed down through lycan bloodlines and reinforced by Salef’s own blood-crafted additions. There were no windows. No natural light. Only soft gold glows from embedded witchfire orbs and the ever-crackling hearth at the room’s center.

Three beds lined the back wall—each spartan, the only variation being the weapons mounted over them.

Munez’s side bore precision gear: rifles, fine pistols, and a ceremonial execution dagger shaped like a wolf’s fang.

Reik’s was chaos incarnate. Blades of varying length. A spiked chain. A shattered bottle someone had melted into a shiv and, apparently, kept for sentiment.

Salef’s wall was nearly bare—just a polished ritual knife, a bundle of dried crimson herbs tied with black thread, and a scroll rack meticulously organized by symbol, language, and scent.

Salef was already at his cot, shrugging off his coat and rolling up his sleeves. His exposed arms bore faint tattooed markings—sigils inked in his own blood, designed to glow under moonlight and pulse when magic surged nearby. Even in the silence, they whispered like living things. Quickly, Salef moved to the edge of the hearth, and sat in front of a rune-etched desk made of dark alder. His hands moved with surgical calm, unsealing a vial of ash-gray residue and tilting it gently into a wide, shallow bowl of silver-etched stone.

The remnants of the third vampire—the one who’d tried to phase out with a desperate glyph before Salef crushed his windpipe. He uncorked a second vial—blood. Not his own. The vampire’s. Salef whispered a sigil-word under his breath and used a thin iron stylus to drag the blood through the ash in careful, circular patterns. The ash hissed. Flared red. Then they settled into lines.

A glyph appeared, burned into the bowl’s surface. But it was wrong. Salef starred. Not because the symbol was unfamiliar—but because it was incomplete. A broken design, like half a sentence carved mid-breath. The shape implied teleportation, but the core structure was ancient—not vampiric, not lycan, not bloodmage.

It pulsed once, a faint echo beneath the skin of his mind. Salef’s expression didn’t change. But his pupils dilated. He scraped the pattern clean with a sweep of his hand, locked the residue into a black wax capsule, and scrawled a brief label: PHASE-SPLICE GLYPH (UNKNOWN VARIANT) VEX. GRAVE MARKET. UNTRACED SOURCE.

He sealed the scroll, slotted it into the rack on his wall, and finally stood. His hand lingered just a moment longer on the hilt of his ritual knife. Then he stood and went to report his findings to his brothers. Reik dropped onto his bed with a satisfied groan, kicking off his boots and immediately rummaging for something to drink. He settled on a flask labeled only with a tooth mark and took a long pull.Munez didn’t sit. Instead he removed his coat, folded it once, and hung it with exactness. Then he moved to the central table.

From a sealed drawer beneath the surface, he pulled out a bound scroll—the next contract on rotation. The seal was unbroken. The name on the envelope read:

CRIMSON VINTNERS – PRIVATE BOND

“Thought we were done with bloodwine contracts,” Reik said, squinting at the seal. “Didn’t we just kill three of theirs?”

“Different brood,” Munez said. “These are highbloods. The kind that whisper instead of scream.”

Reik muttered something obscene about vampire hierarchies and poured another drink.

Salef stepped up beside Munez. “You think they’re testing us?”

“I think they want to see if we can follow orders,” Munez said. “With something we don’t want to touch.”

Salef looked toward the seal. “Why?”

Munez opened the case. Inside was a black scroll sat pulsing faintly with some internal light.

He turned to his brothers. “We’ll find out.”

The scroll was warmer to the touch than it should have been.

Munez turned it slowly in his hands, the blood-seal gleaming with a deep internal pulse—not like a heartbeat, but like something breathing. It was a rare kind of contract, even in Velcrith. Not paper or parchment, but bound in human skin, woven by their clan deathdealers no doubt. Meant to be unread until accepted. Meant to be dangerous. Munez laid it gently on the obsidian slab that served as their altar.

Salef stood to the left of the table, already pulling a ritual knife from a belt sheath. He cleaned the blade without being asked, silent as always. Reik leaned back in his cot, one leg over the other, drink in hand.

“You sure that thing isn’t cursed?” Munez didn’t look up. “Most things in this room are.” Reik sipped. “Then I hope it’s interesting.” The scroll twitched. A chime sounded—a soft, low vibration from the outer rune-lock. Salef and Munez turned together. Reik didn’t move. “Guessing that’s our delivery boy.”

Munez nodded. “Activate visual ward.”

Salef crossed to the vault wall, brushed his fingers across the seal. A vertical strip of metal blinked once, and then a projection shimmered to life beside the vault. A tall figure stood beyond the threshold. Polished. Unbothered. A black umbrella rested perfectly parallel to his spine.

“Nethis,” Munez murmured. Salef was already opening the door. The vault unlatched with a hiss of steam and a slow rotation of inner rings, revealing the vampire emissary behind it. Nethis stepped forward like someone arriving at a tea house, not a den of mercenaries. He looked just as he always had—pristine, pressed, and poised to make someone else’s life miserable with a sentence.

“Faralai triplets,” he said smoothly. “May I come in?”

“No,” Reik called from across the room. Nethis ignored him and walked in anyway. He paused by the hearth, glancing once at the residual sigil-glow from their last job.

“I see you’ve kept busy.”

Munez didn’t offer a seat. “Say what you came to say.”

“I bring opportunity.”

“That’s what you always say before offering some kind of suicide mission,” Reik muttered.

Nethis turned his head slowly. “Not suicidal. Merely selective.”

He opened the slim case he carried and produced a scroll—smaller than the skin-bound one, sealed in red wax. And a sealed manilla envelope that he placed beside the larger contract.

“This,” he said, “is a confirmation bond. My masters have identified a fugitive of special interest. Someone who even I was not privy to knowing any details about.”

Munez shifted. “Must be someone they want to disappear.”

“On the Contrary,” Nethis replied. “I did manage to overhear that this someone holds remnants of the Empyrean Line in their blood.” At that, Salef finally looked up from the blade he was polishing. Even Reik’s smirk flickered. Munez stepped forward, extending a hand. Nethis placed the second scroll into it with careful precision.

“What's the order?” Munez asked.

“They are to be captured alive. Untouched. No feeding. No branding.”

“And if they resist?”

“Restrain them. Safely. We wouldn’t any harm to come to our cargo.”

Reik scoffed. “How thoughtful of the blood suckers. What does the harm come after?”

Nethis licked one of his fangs but turned back toward Munez. “The contract pays triple your standard.”

A pause.

“Unless you three are unfit for the job?”

The air thickened. Reik’s boot slipped off the edge of the cot. His posture changed—just slightly, just enough to make Nethis nervous. Salef didn’t move, but his blue eyes sharpened. Munez’s fingers tightened around the scroll.

“You’ll have our answer at sundown,” Munez said, his voice a low growl.

Nethis inclined his head, and turned to leave. At the door, he paused.

“One more thing,” he said, "In that envelope are more details about your target. Good luck gentlemen.” He looked directly at Reik now and winked. The door shut behind him. The room was silent for several beats. Then Reik stood, walked over to the drink shelf, and threw the flask he was still holding at the wall.