The moment Damon and Henry stepped inside, the front door groaned shut behind them. Floorboards answered each step with slow, wavering creaks, as though the house resented their presence.
"Creepy," Henry murmured, his voice barely a whisper.
Damon glanced around the dim entryway, then shot Henry a smirk over his shoulder. "What's the matter? Afraid of a little shadow?" He kept his tone light, a feeble attempt to ward off the gloomy atmosphere that was already coiling around them.
"I'd rather encounter Lanka again in broad daylight than tiptoe around some shadow," Henry replied without shifting his gaze from the living room to their left. "At least you can punch a monster."
"Point taken," Damon conceded, his grin fading.
Sticking close, they moved through the lower level. The living room was orderly yet strangely frozen in time, with a half-finished cup of tea sitting on a side table and an incomplete knitted purple scarf resting on an armchair. Nothing seemed out of place, yet everything carried an eerie intent of gloom. A silent reminder of the missing joy the house might have once held.
While scanning the room, Damon noticed several picture frames hung along the living room wall, but two of them drew his attention more than the rest.
The first was an old portrait of a young couple. On the left stood a man with curly black hair and clear jade eyes. He was dressed in a grey morning coat with striped trousers and a pale waistcoat over a white high-collared shirt, and beside him sat a woman with blue eyes and softly curled blonde hair framing her face. She had arched brows and a small doll-like nose and wore a frilly white gown and gloves.
Based on their attire and broad smiles, Damon discerned the portrait was likely taken to commemorate the day of their marriage.
The second portrait was slightly newer than the previous yet portrayed a similar warmth. In it Mr. and Mrs. Watson both happily stood together, but now sitting in between them was a new addition to the family.
It was a girl about Damon's age.
She had blond hair reminiscent of her mother's and clear jade eyes like that of her father. She wore a frilly blue and white dress with puffy sleeves, white socks, and white shoes. In her arms, she clutched a small violin tightly to her chest as if it was the most precious thing to her and smiled gleefully.
'So that's Cecil… The portrait's a bit old; she'd have to be a fully grown adult to be attending music college...' After staring at the portrait in thought, Damon muttered to himself, "Is it common to give girls boy names here?"
Intentionally ignoring Damon's muttering, Henry maintained his focus. Guarding their rear, he swerved his head left to right as his spiritual senses stretched thin, searching for any ripples of spiritual energy or lingering intent.
Soon they passed through a formal dining room and a small, tidy kitchen, yet the normalcy was even more unnerving. Doubling back, they found a hallway branching off the main foyer. Two doors stood on either side, and at the far end, a staircase ascended into the attic.
Suddenly, Damon halted at the mouth of the hallway as a sharp pain lanced through his temple.
"Ugh—!" His vision blurred, twisting at the edges. Confusion tightened every muscle in his body, and he winced, clutching his forehead as the pain refused to let him breathe.
"Hahahah."
He heard laughter, a girl's laughter.
The sound was high-pitched and rang out from the right side of the hall. Damon's head snapped up. A wisp of a small white shadow darted from the doorway of the right-front room and vanished into the left-front room.
His heart quaked as he felt goosebumps all over his skin. In one fluid motion, he reached into his hidden inventory, and the weight of his katana materialized in his hand; the familiar grip was a small comfort against the unknown.
'Is it trying to lure us? Or was it trying to communicate?' He shook his head helplessly before taking a deep breath and slowly breathing out, slowing his spiritual energy flow to restore his calm and his mind.
"Henry, did you see—" As he turned around, Damon realized Henry was nowhere to be found.
The hallway behind him was empty.
"Henry?" The name left his lips as a whisper, then grew into a demand.
A cold dread, sharper than any blade, pierced Damon's chest. He spun around, his boots thudding against the floorboards as he sprinted back the way they came. "Henry! Where are you?"
He scanned the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen, all empty, all silent save for the frantic beat of his own heart. His calls were met with nothing but the hollow, listening silence of the house.
****
Henry's back hit the earth with a jarring thud, the air driven from his lungs in a pained gasp. Overhead, Damon's voice called frantically, muffled through the dusty lattice of floorboards.
"Henry!... Henry!! Where are you?!"
"Ugh… I'm down here!" He shouted, but his voice was swallowed by the dense, damp earth and the oppressive silence of the crawlspace. The air was thick with the smell of wet soil, decay, and something else, a coppery tang, like old blood.
Still disoriented, Henry pushed himself up as he tried to recall what just happened. As he followed Damon towards the hallway, he had suddenly felt a tug on his legs. He only had a second to catch a glimpse of cold, shadowy hands that had erupted through the floor around his ankles, yanking him downward in a single, fluid motion. The wood offered no resistance, as if the very surface had become water.
'Was that some type of technique or just a skill...!?' Henry pondered in irritation. A silent Specter ability that ignored physical barriers was an overwhelming nuisance in his opinion.
His trembling hands scrambled in the filth, searching for the familiar hilts of his daggers. His spiritual energy was already circulating, a defensive shroud tightening around him, sharpening his vision in the near-total darkness. The space was a forest of rough-hewn support pillars.
And there, tucked against the foundation wall, was a sight that froze the blood in his veins. Not just one spine, but five, each one damaged and scattered, lying beside five cracked and broken skulls.
The very bones they had been sent to find!
Tk...! Tk…! Tk…!
Just as he reached for the bones, the sound of eerily low clicks reached his ears. It was soft yet precise. Like two stones being tapped together.
Henry dropped the bone, his breath catching in his throat. He slowly rose into a crouch position. His eyes strained to pierce the gloom, locking onto a shadowy form flitting between the pillars.
Tk...! Tk…! Tk…!
His heart tightened as he watched the figure in the darkness.
The shadow was slowly getting closer as if sizing up its prey, approaching from behind a thick wooden pillar to his left.
Then suddenly it surged forward.
A limb lashed out towards his face, appearing mere inches away from his nose.
With no time to summon his daggers and hardly any to think, Henry acted on instinct.
A faint, almost inaudible tick-tock echoed in his mind as his eyes flashed with a temporal clock. He didn't hesitate to use his technique, Temporis Ratio [The Reckoning of Time].
In that instant the shadows' attack seemed to slow to a halt.
Seizing his moment, Henry threw himself backward with frantic breaths, stumbling over the uneven ground as the shadowy hand slammed into the earth right where his head had been, spraying dirt and bone fragments.