Chapter Five: Blood and Ash (Part B, continuing from Part A)
873 Words
Victor Jackson stood inside the church that had once been Elias Kane’s evidence archive, the retired detective still missing, but not before leaving a hidden steel safe behind. Inside it: case files going back decades, and on top of them, a leather journal.
THE BLACKRIDGE m******e — 1541.
Blackridge hadn’t officially existed in 1541. Victor turned the page anyway and found sketches of men with crimson eyes, bodies drained of blood, and at the bottom of one page, the same symbol carved into the man found under the bridge.
A photograph slipped loose — a castle among mountains, three words beneath it: Kingdom of Noctharis.
Every candle in the church went out at once.
“You should have left the dead buried,” a voice said from the dark.
Victor drew his pistol on empty air. Footsteps approached, slow and measured, then stopped.
A match flared. An old man stood there, scarred, a blackened silver cross at his throat. “You shouldn’t point that at me.”
“Who are you?”
“A survivor.”
“Of what?”
The old man’s eyes went to the journal. “Of them. I helped write part of it.”
“Those entries are centuries old.”
“So am I.”
The stained-glass windows exploded inward before either could say more, and a black shape came through the wreckage too fast to track. Victor fired twice; the bullets passed clean through its cloak and buried themselves in stone.
“Run,” the old man shouted. Victor didn’t.
The creature lunged and stopped mid-motion, as if it had hit a wall no one else could see. A single word cut through the church, calm and absolute.
“Leave.”
A man in white stepped from the dark — coat untouched by dust, silver hair loose on his shoulders — and looked at the creature the way a man looks at something he’s disappointed in.
“I gave you one order.” “My lord. Forgive me.”
He raised a finger. “No.” The creature screamed once and came apart into black ash. The man in white turned his pale eyes on Victor.
“You’re searching for answers.”
“Who are you?”
“When you learn my name,” he said, almost kindly, “your world will already have ended.”
The lantern guttered out. When light returned, he was gone — only a single white feather where he’d stood, and the old man staring at Victor with the expression of someone who’d just watched a debt come due.
“You’ll want to hear the rest of what’s in that journal,” the old man said quietly. “There’s a chapter about a queen who hid her own sons rather than let a dead king’s court raise them. Before your daughter gets any closer to the man who saved her life, you should know which one he might be.”
Beneath the ruined cathedral, Dennis descended into the chamber a third time and found, waiting for him, a hooded stranger and a black box on the altar.
“You came back,” the stranger said.
“I came for power.”
“No. You came for what you believe was stolen from you.”
Inside the box, a ring — dark crimson metal, a gemstone that pulsed like a living heart. “Be careful,” the stranger warned as Dennis reached for it. “It chooses its bearer.”
Dennis put it on anyway.
Pain tore through him, and with it came a flood of voices — kings, warriors, children, all
speaking at once, until one rose above the rest. A woman’s. Soft. Grieving.
“Dennis.”
He went to one knee. “Mother?”
The voice cut off. The pain stopped. As Dennis fought to catch his breath, the stranger’s hood slipped back half an inch — just long enough for a flash of eyes like molten gold to catch the candlelight before the hood settled again.
Dennis’s blood went cold in a way the Blood Seal hadn’t managed. “You—”
“I told you once,” the stranger said, unbothered, “that I am the last king, not the first. I never said I stayed where you left me.”
“How are you here? I saw you chained.”
“Chains hold a body. They’ve never once held a plan.” The stranger’s smile showed beneath the hood. “So. You heard her.”
Dennis forced the question out anyway. “Where is she?” “Would you cross the world to find her?”
“Yes.”
“Would you betray your brother?”
Dennis hesitated — one heartbeat, no more. “...Yes.”
“Then your journey has truly begun.” Malach — because there was no longer any pretending it was anyone else — turned back into the dark. “Your mother tried to bury me under her own throne, Dennis. She used her sons to do it, whether either of you ever knew your part. I only need one of you to finish undoing what she started.”
He was gone before Dennis could ask which son he meant.
End of Part B
- Writer
