Episode 3: The First Death
486 Words
Lyric’s phone rang at 6:14 AM.
He answered immediately. He was always awake before six.
“There’s a body.” Evelyn’s voice was stripped of all inflection, pure report. “Aldous Fenn, sixty-two, private collector. Police are calling it cardiac arrest. Caspian wants you on scene before they move the corpse.”
Lyric sat up. “Why me?”
“Before he died, Fenn left a three-minute voicemail. He kept repeating the same thing: I see the boy. He’s running. He’s so afraid.”
The room went quiet. “Send the address.”
Fenn’s fourth-floor walkup reeked of pipe tobacco and stale, isolated living. The housekeeper sat in the kitchen with an untouched cup of tea, flanked by a uniformed officer.
Caspian stood in the study doorway, staring at the body with a stillness that betrayed nothing—and everything.
Aldous Fenn had died in his desk chair, eyes open, face locked in a terrible, hollow stillness. Before him on the desk lay a set of ancient bone dice.
“He bought a replica,” Lyric said quietly.
“He bought the real thing, mislabeled as a forgery.” Caspian’s voice was low. “The thief offloaded it immediately. Fenn owned it for thirty-six hours.”
“Thirty-six hours,” Lyric repeated, a cold tightness coiling in his chest.
“The dice hold a bound soul—a ninth-century boy who died running.” Caspian’s gaze didn’t leave the body. “When the relic was removed from the vault, the anchor broke. The soul destabilizes without the other six artifacts to contain it. It leaks memories, terror, old death. Sensitive people see it. Ordinary people’s nervous systems burn out trying to process it.”
Lyric pulled on gloves and leaned over the desk. He touched the wood first, reading decades of ordinary life: late nights reading, coffee rings, quiet solitude. Then he moved his hand toward the dice.
Cold crashed into him—not physical cold, but a cold that lived inside his skull: a fleeting glimpse of a running figure, raw, primal terror, a desperate flight that ended in death centuries ago.
He snatched his hand back, breathing harder.
“Don’t touch it again.” Caspian stood directly behind him, close enough that Lyric felt the quiet tension in his frame.
“I’m fine.”
“You went pale. What did you feel?”
“Ancient terror. A trapped soul trying to reach out.” Lyric’s voice steadied. “It wasn’t random. It was begging.”
Evelyn appeared in the doorway, her tone clinical. “The relics don’t just hold objects. They hold prisoners. Separate one from the circle, and it kills whoever is closest. The thief knew this would happen.”
Lyric stared at the dice, innocent and deadly under the desk lamp. “They knew someone would die. And they took it anyway.”
Caspian’s answer was quiet, unflinching. “They did.”
- Writer
