Chapter Three - The Smile of the Crow.
1545 Words
Havana lay in bed long after the sun had risen, a heavy silence blanketing the room. She’d been staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours. She hadn’t slept, couldn’t sleep. Her body felt weighted, like every bone in her frame had been replaced with stone. Her heart was a hollowed-out cave, echoing with silence rather than pain. The kind of emptiness that didn’t scream or cry, but settled inside like fog—damp, cold, and unmoving.
She’d tried everything to feel something. Music so loud it shook the floor. Every kind of medication psychiatrists had prescribed over the years, and enough illegal drugs to kill a small village--
Nothing. Nothing made her feel anything.
Her phone vibrated beside her pillow. She tried to ignore it, but curiosity eventually won. She turned the screen toward her face. It was a message from Cian.
“I’m sorry for what I said last night, Hav. I was a bit drunk, which is no excuse, but yeah… just thought I’d say sorry. :/”
Havana stared at the words for a long second before something hot sparked through her chest—not pain, not hate, just raw irritation. She launched the phone at the wall with such force that the impact echoed like a gunshot.
A few seconds later, soft footsteps padded down the hallway, and Clara’s bleary voice called out, “What the hell was that?”
Havana didn’t answer. She just flopped onto her back and pulled a pillow over her face.
Clara appeared at the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Havana?”
“The wall hit my phone,” Havana muttered from beneath the pillow.
Clara let out a dry laugh and stepped inside. “Classic wall. Always throwing punches.”
Havana didn’t respond. Clara walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, pushing lightly on the pillow covering Havana’s face.
“Come on, dude. What happened?”
Havana hissed like a feral cat and pulled the pillow tighter over her head.
Clara grinned. “So, I’m guessing last night didn’t go well. But at least you didn’t end up dead, so that’s a win for me.”
Havana groaned and kicked her gently in the hip. “Go away and make me coffee, gremlin.”
Clara stood, stretching dramatically. “What’s the magic word?”
“Pleaseeeee,” Havana mumbled.
“Better,” Clara said with a grin. “Get your butt out of bed and come downstairs.”
The kitchen was the most intricate room in the mansion: Cathedral-like, Gothic arches framing matte-black cabinetry and gleaming marble surfaces. Havana sat on the counter, cradling the steaming mug Clara had just handed her. The bitterness of the coffee clung to her tongue and helped soothe Havana's headache, which was forming due to a lack of sleep.
Clara buzzed around the room, loading the dishwasher and wiping down surfaces like a tiny whirlwind.
Havana smirked. “It’s funny. You moved in as my best friend, and you’ve been demoted to housemaid.”
Clara turned with a dramatic gasp. “Excuse me, I do NOT remember reading that in the lease!”
“You get free rent, gourmet food, and spoonings when you're sad. A bit of cleaning is the least you can do for me.”
Clara rolled her eyes, chuckling. “Okay, maybe you’re right. Maid Clara at your service. Want me to mop the blood off your soul too, Your Darkness?”
“I’ve already got a guy for that,” Havana said with a grin, taking another sip.
For a fleeting moment, it almost felt like normalcy had returned.
Later, Havana sat at her desk, her fingers clicking across her keyboard as she caught up on neglected emails. Most of them were spam, promotional junk, or university reminders she didn’t want to read. But one subject line caught her eye:
Reminder: Philosophy Paper – 3 Weeks Remaining
Her heart dropped.
The email was from Professor Whitmore. It was polite but unmistakably firm: he hadn’t even received a proposal from her yet. Given her performance this semester, he wrote, he needed at least an outline within the next few days.
“s**t,” she whispered.
How had she forgotten?
A fresh wave of anxiety hit her like a tide. Her stomach tightened. Her pulse quickened. Panic settled in her lungs like concrete.
Within minutes, she was dressed, boots laced, and out the door. She barely remembered to grab her student ID as she rushed toward the university library.
The library was silent. It was nearly empty, the semester slowly winding toward its inevitable end. Havana wandered the towering rows of books with her laptop in hand, muttering to herself.
“Ethics?” she muttered, flipping through a dusty copy of Mill’s Utilitarianism. “Too basic.”
She browsed through Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction, then onto a battered copy of The Social Contract by Rousseau. Still nothing. Her brain was foggy and unfocused.
She sat on the floor for a while, piles of books around her like fortresses, but nothing inspired her. Every idea seemed either too grand or too stale. She needed something different—something that might reignite her interest. Or at least save her grade.
Eventually, Havana grew bored reading the same subject matter over and over again. She stood and began wandering to the farthest corner of the library, a part no one really went to. The library's oldest books were housed here, some so worn that their spines were barely legible and falling apart at the seams.
As she walked past the five enormous windows that overlooked the west garden, a crow appeared on the window ledge of the fifth window. Its eyes fixated on Havana as she strolled unknowingly past it.
Havana continued, reaching the back of the library and began walking along the furthest aisle—until something dropped onto her head.
“Ah—f**k!” she hissed, stumbling back. A book had fallen from the top shelf and struck her squarely on the head.
Rubbing the sore spot, she looked down at the object. It was thick and oddly bound, the leather cracked but almost… pulsating beneath her fingers. There were no library stickers on it. No barcodes. No author listed.
The title was etched in ornate, archaic script:
Dæmonologia – Novus Mundus et Vetus
Havana whispered it aloud, brushing dust from the embossed surface. Her voice trembled as she said the words, as if the syllables carried a weight she didn’t understand.
She sat down right there on the cold floor, the rest of the library forgotten.
Back in her room, night cloaking the world outside, Havana sat cross-legged on her bed with the book in her lap. She couldn’t stop staring at it. The leather was darker now, almost black. It had changed—or maybe she was just seeing it differently.
She ran her fingers over the title again, whispering, “Dæmonologia – Novus Mundus et Vetus.”
She hadn’t even opened the book yet, but she already felt drawn to it irrationally. It was like a magnetic pull, like she’d been meant to find it.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
Then—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She glanced toward the window.
The same crow from the graveyard stood perched on the ledge, its beady eyes locked on her through the glass. It c****d its head, feathers ruffling in the wind.
Havana didn’t move. She stared back, her heart pounding for the first time in days, not from anxiety, but from curiosity.
She turned her gaze back to the book.
With careful fingers, she opened the first page.
A single line sat in the centre of the parchment-like sheet, handwritten in ink that shimmered ever so slightly.
“To open the gates of the old world, one must first close the doors within.”
The crow cawed once—low and sharp—then went still.
Havana smiled faintly, captivated.
She flipped to the next page, and the world around her seemed to hush.
Something was beginning.
She didn’t know what, and for the first time in what felt like years, she didn’t care.
The crow began tapping relentlessly, almost signaling it wanted Havana to read more, and she obliged without hesitation.
She flicked through the first few pages impatiently, skimming dense passages about protective circles and the history of infernal hierarchies. Most of it was nonsense. She wanted something real.
Then she saw it.
Voluptas ex Tenebris.
The heading was scorched across the page in ink so dark it bled into the paper. Her breath slowed as she read.
“Voluptas ex Tenebris can use his powers to arouse men and women, to make them lust and crave for s****l interaction, as well as being able to energise or sustain himself by feeding off of sexuality or s****l energy. He can drain a person to death from this method.”
Havana's eyes lingered on the final sentence.
She leaned back, dragging her nails lightly across the edge of the page. The air in the room began to feel warmer. Unsure if it was anxiety or the poorly ventilated area she was in, she kept reading regardless. Fixated on the information swarming her mind--
- Writer
