Ashbourne wasn't on any map you'd find in bookstores.
That wasn't an accident.
The train didn't stop there unless you knew how to ask. And even then, it didn't really stop—it slowed, just enough for passengers like Note to disappear between breaths and shadows.
The fog greeted him before the station lights could, clinging to his coat like cobwebs, as if the city itself was testing whether he belonged.
He always belonged to places like this—where the air felt thinner, and time stuttered around corners.
A whisper followed him off the platform:
> "They say he speaks with the dead… but never listens."
Note didn't turn around. Rumors were like dust. They stuck to him, and eventually, he used them.
---
The city of Ashbourne lay like a corpse—motionless by day, twitching by night. The architecture was a gothic fever dream: rusted gargoyles, stained glass windows boarded from the inside, and alleys that bent wrong.
It had once been a prosperous industrial hub, powered by steam and strange inventions. Now, the only thing it manufactured was fear.
Ashbourne was haunted. But that wasn't why Note came.
It was infected—and that was worse.
The locals called it Deadlight. Not a disease of the body, but of the mind and soul. People started seeing the dead. Hearing things they shouldn't. Then, one day, they vanished—without scream or trace.
He had seen it happen before.
He walked toward the heart of town: Hollow Street, where the last three disappearances occurred. His boots echoed on cobblestone like clock hands ticking toward something grim.
Note wore a coat heavy with secrets. Its inside was lined with objects most would burn or bury: blackened coins, a shattered pocket watch, a locket with no photo, a vial of dirt from a grave that never stayed closed.
He moved like someone used to being hunted—because he was.
---
The factory stood at the end of Hollow Street, a silhouette against the pale, trembling sky. It had been closed for fifteen years, but lights flickered behind the boarded windows. Cold, unnatural light.
He didn't knock.
The door groaned open by itself.
Inside, the air was thick with rust and sorrow. Machinery loomed like dying beasts. Chains swayed from the ceiling—though there was no wind.
He stopped in the center of the floor, where blood had once soaked the stone. Not recent. Not old either.
Note reached into his coat and pulled out a glass shard no larger than a child's palm. The surface shimmered—not with reflection, but with memory.
He knelt and pressed the shard to the floor.
The room shifted. The color bled out. Sound grew distant.
He was inside the echo now.
A boy stood alone in the center of the room, mouth sewn shut with thread made of smoke. His eyes were wide, and he pointed at something in the corner.
Note turned slowly.
There, writhing between shadow and steel, was a figure without skin—black as ink and moving wrong. A twisted echo of someone who had died angry. A soul caught mid-scream.
The boy tried to speak, but could only gesture frantically. Finally, he collapsed.
Note touched the child's forehead.
The vision snapped.
Back in the real world, the room was still. The chains no longer swayed.
But he heard a voice.
> "You said you'd protect her, Sandy."
His hand froze.
Only one person called him by that name anymore—and she had died when he was ten.
---
(To be continued in Part 2)