The journey to the city's industrial outskirts was a descent through time. The gleaming chrome and holographic advertisements of the city center gave way to the brutalist concrete architecture of the mid-districts, which in turn dissolved into the rust-eaten, forgotten industrial zone known as the Iron Gut. Here, buildings were not torn down but simply left to be consumed by time and neglect. The air grew thick with the ghosts of industry—the phantom smells of coal smoke and chemical runoff.
Ronan drove their nondescript vehicle, navigating the cratered roads with a preternatural skill, seeming to know which potholes were axle-breakers and which were merely jarring. "The River's Cradle Paper Mill," he said, reading the name off a faded, peeling sign. "According to the archives, it was the heart of this district. Then the Pumping Station blew, the river was declared toxic, and the whole area died overnight."
The mill itself was a colossal carcass of brick and steel, surrounded by a high, chain-link fence topped with rusted barbed wire. A heavy, corroded chain held the main gates shut. Ronan approached it, his lockpicks in hand, but then paused. He laid his palm flat against the thickest part of the chain.
"Every story has a breaking point," he murmured, closing his eyes. He wasn't using force. He was using his power to find the precise point in the chain's long history where entropy had done its most thorough work. He felt it—a single link, hidden beneath a crust of rust, where a microscopic fracture had formed years ago. He focused his will, not creating bad luck, but simply gathering all the latent misfortune the chain had accumulated over a decade and directing it to that single point. With a gentle push, the link gave way with a sound like a gunshot in the oppressive silence.
The atmosphere inside the mill was thick enough to taste. Dust hung in the air like a permanent fog, dancing in the few beams of sickly light that penetrated the grimy, cracked windows. The great paper-making machines were silent behemoths, draped in cobwebs as thick as cotton shrouds. The place was a monument to failure, a tomb where the ambition of industry had come to die.
"Where do we even start?" Ronan whispered, the sound swallowed by the cavernous space.
Liam, his Focusing Lenses already on, didn't answer. He was an antenna, tuning himself to the whispers of the place. The main floor was a mess of overlapping echoes—the shouts of foremen, the roar of machinery, the pain of countless minor injuries. It was too noisy. "The heart of a business isn't on the factory floor," he said, his voice distant. "It's where the money is counted."
Ronan rolled his dice, asking a simple question: "Where is the secret?" The dice led them away from the main hall, toward a small, two-story office building that sagged as if weary of standing. Inside, the decay was more personal. Furniture was overturned, ledgers were scattered and swollen with mold. It smelled of mildew and despair.
Liam found the main office. A heavy ledger sat on the desk, its presence commanding. This was it. He placed his hands upon it, bracing himself.
He was not disappointed. The psychometric vision was overwhelming. He wasn't just an observer; he was Silas, the mill owner, in the final, frantic days. He felt Silas's heart-pounding terror, his hands slick with sweat as he received a coded message. They know. Burn it all. He experienced the sickening lurch of panic as Silas tore through his own office, destroying records. And then, the vision cleared, focusing on a single, desperate act of preservation. Silas, sobbing quietly, peeled back the leather of the main ledger and tucked a thin, secondary book into a hidden compartment. It wasn't evidence he was saving; it was insurance.
Liam's eyes snapped open, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was back in the dusty office, Ronan looking at him with concern. "It's here," Liam choked out, his fingers fumbling with the ledger's cover. He worked his knife into the binding and pried it back. There, nestled in its secret resting place, was the second ledger. Its pages were filled not with names, but with symbols.
And at the very top of the list, next to a series of dates and delivery locations, was the stark, unmistakable sigil of an open book with a blank page. Below it, the delivery address: The Doomsday Chronicle, Central Archives.