The city still smoked.
It wasn't from fire. no flames had caught. but from the unnatural rot that lingered, clinging to the stone like soot that refused to wash away. The district of Penumbra Cross was cordoned off by the Crown's Covenant, their black carriages lining the street like coffin-lids. The organization, famed for its cold efficiency against supernatural threats, had converged in full force. Agents moved like phantoms through the rubles, scanning, collecting, and burning remains that twitched long after death.
They had slain the creature, but not easily. An Inquisitor had been deployed. It had taken all of them to bring the monster down, and even then, the final blow had been... uncertain.
No name had been found for the thing. Only its shape remained in scattered reports. towering, eyeless, mouths wailing backward speech, a body that didn't bleed but wept tar, twitching in unholy rhythms.
No origin.
No motive.
No reason.
Only horror. Pure Horror.
And the city whispered of it now. Low and reverent.
...
Malric Vane sat beneath the amber light of a candelabra, the newspaper spread across the table beside a half-eaten pomegranate. His fingers traced the headline without touching it.
"UNHOLY TERROR SLAUGHTERS DOZENS – PENUMBRA CLOSED INDEFINITELY"
The article mentioned details he already knew. How the creature had erupted from a tenement wall. How it had torn through civilians and officers before the Crown's Covenant arrived. How it had been taken care of the Inquisitor.
Malric, leader of the Cult of the Hallowed Sun, read in silence.
He did not speak, but he smiled. The kind of smile that flickered beneath a hood.
Not rage.
Not fear.
But Recognition.
He folded the paper slowly, placed it in a drawer beneath a bundle of ceremonial bindings, and turned to his congregation. "He has awakened," he murmured. "Or... someone wishes us to believe he has."
A woman beside him, robed and maskless, shivered. "Do we act?"
"No," said Malric. "We wait. You do not prod a storm. You observe it. and build your temple beneath its lightning."
...
In a sunlit parlor of floral wallpaper and uncomfortable elegance, Baroness Evelyne Merrow, stirred sugar into her tea with faint disapproval.
"They always exaggerate these stories," she said, though no one else was in the room.
The newspaper was spread before her, but she read it diagonally, lips pursed in polite skepticism.
"Slaughter. Terror. Unholy. Really, such vulgar language." She sipped.
Still, something made her eyes narrow. That particular street. Penumbra Cross. was just two alleys down from that little antique shop.
Her fingers, manicured and powdered, tapped the headline. The word "unholy" bothered her more than she'd admit.
She stood abruptly, crossed to her wardrobe, and began picking up the white glove. fine, elegant.
Perhaps it was time to return to The Curator. After all she needed another item for the next gala.
Something protective.
Something... tasteful.
...
Mr. Sallow, meanwhile, was not reading the newspaper. He was devouring it. His eyes scanned each word as if meaning would drip from the ink itself.
"It's him," he hissed, pacing his private study. "It has to be."
A dozen clippings surrounded him, all from previous weeks. strange phenomena, ghost sightings, ancient languages appearing in dreams. Now this. This rampage.
A coincidence?
Sallow didn't believe in coincidences anymore. Not after the encounter. Not after what his hired men had seen. Not after that horror muttering in tongues.
"He's not a man," he said aloud. "He's something else. And this is just the beginning."
He stared at the paper, then at a small pocket watch sitting beside it. The same one he'd bought from Dorian weeks ago. the one whose hands never moved except the second whiched point in the direction of that blasted shop.
And now... it was spinning.
...
Far from the city, in the Sanctum of the The Somnium Cathedral, a young woman tossed in fevered sleep.
Saintess Calienne, the chosen, dreamed.
But this was no sacred vision.
It began with ash. Falling in slow, like upside-down snowflakes. The sky was red. not with sunset, but blood. and the buildings burned without flame, structures warping into abstract.
She walked barefoot on a path of screaming mouths.
And in the distance, rising between collapsing cathedrals, was a figure. Not a man. Not a god. Just... wrong.
He had no face. Just a painted mask of mirrored glass, reflecting a thousand screaming people.
She tried to turn away.
But the sky blinked.
The mouths laughed.
And then the figure whispered.
Calienne awoke screaming, covered in sweat, her hands bleeding as her nails digged in her skin.
Outside her room, clerics whispered. The Saintess never screamed before.
Never.
...
The Crown's Covenant worked quietly, but relentlessly. Reports from the Penumbra Cross incident had already reached the High Chamber. Two Inquisitors stood before a long marble table where the Council sat in silence.
"There is no origin for the creature," one of them said, voice masked and cold. "No summoning circle. No sigil. No arcane residue. It manifested from madness."
"That is not possible," replied a woman behind the table. "Madness does not mutate into flesh."
The Inquisitor paused. "It did this time."
The second Inquisitor laid down a burnt scrap of paper.
Upon it was a sketch. barely discernible. A shop front.
Shutters crooked. Paint flaking.
Dorian's Curiosities.
"Unconfirmed," the second Inquisitor said.
But no one in the room believed that.
...
Meanwhile, at Dorian's shop.
The sky was clear that morning.
Dorian yawned, stretched, and opened the curtains. A lovely day. No screaming. No tentacles. No customers banging on the door demanding refunds. He felt... oddly refreshed.
A stack of newspapers sat on the desk, and he'd finished reading all of them the night before.
"Poor sods," he muttered, walking to the window.
Penumbra Cross. Absolutely wrecked. Some hideous creature from nowhere. Tragic. Horrific. A real mess. And...
Well, an opportunity.
He lifted a crate of old charms. iron nails bent into loops, "holy" pendants made from melted chandelier bits, and necklace he thought might be good for laughs.
A fresh little sign now hung in the window.
"PROTECTION CHARMS – WARD OFF EVIL"
Dorian adjusted it just so.
He then stepped back and admired the display. Perfect. Capitalizing on disaster without seeming too obvious. He even lit a little incense cone that smelled vaguely like cinnamon and grave moss.
"Let's see how that sells," he muttered, adjusting a crooked talisman. "Hope no one asks me what it actually does."
He gave the place one final nod, then flipped the sign to.
OPEN.
...
..
.
- Arc 1 End: Open For Business -