The library's silence was a lie. It pressed against Selene's eardrums, a thick, dusty blanket trying to smother the phantom roar of flames that still echoed in her skull. Every blink brought back the image of that thing—that spectral, screaming thing—and the man wreathed in black fire who had unraveled it with a mere gesture. Her hands trembled as she re-shelved a thick volume on pre-industrial metallurgy, the motion robotic. She was late for her shift, her clothes still smudged with grave dirt, and every shadow stretching between the towering bookshelves seemed to hold a deeper, shifting darkness.
She jumped at a sudden noise, her heart leaping into her throat. It was just the ancient heating system groaning to life. Get a grip, Ardent, she chastised herself, leaning her forehead against the cool wooden shelf. It was a panic attack. A hallucination. Stress from finals, from the anniversary of the fire creeping up on her. It had to be.
But the weight in her jacket pocket argued otherwise. The locket. It was still warm. A persistent, low-grade fever against her thigh that defied all logic.
"There you are!" Marisa's whisper-cut through the quiet, and Selene nearly yelped. Her best friend rounded the corner, her camera bag slung over one shoulder, her expression a mix of worry and excitement. "I've been texting you for an hour. You just took off after your little… episode. Spill. Was it the heat? Did you see a ghost? Please tell me you kept the creepy jewelry."
Selene forced a shaky laugh that sounded painfully false. "Just… felt sick. Must be coming down with something." She couldn't tell her. Marisa would either call a psychiatrist or try to stage a photoshoot with the paranormal entity. "And yeah, I kept it." She patted her pocket instinctively.
Marisa's eyes widened. "Let me see it again! In better light. That thing is going to get so many likes on my artifact aesthetics page." She reached for Selene's pocket.
"No!" Selene's reaction was too sharp, too sudden. She took a half-step back, clutching her jacket. Marisa froze, her hand still outstretched, confusion wiping the excitement from her face. "I'm sorry," Selene mumbled, the fight draining out of her. "I just… I don't feel well. I think I need to go home."
"Okay," Marisa said slowly, her photographer's eyes missing nothing—the tremor in Selene's hands, the pallor of her skin, the way her gaze kept darting to the shadows. "Okay, no problem. I'll cover the rest of your shift. Professor Evans already left. But you're telling me everything tomorrow. The real everything. Deal?"
"Deal," Selene whispered, gratitude and guilt twisting together in her gut.
She practically fled the library, the weight of the locket feeling heavier with every step. The walk home was a blur of neon signs and crowded sidewalks, every stranger's face a potential threat, every reflection in a dark window a glimpse of a man with eyes of night. Her apartment, a small studio on the edge of the historic district, had never felt less like a sanctuary. She locked the door, bolted it, and slid down to the floor, her back against the wood, as if she could physically barricade herself against the memory.
Finally, alone, she pulled the locket out.
It glinted dully in the low light from her desk lamp. The silver was intricately worked, the swirling patterns now looking less like decoration and more like script. Like a language of spirals and sharp angles. And it was still, unmistakably, warm. Not like something left in the sun, but like something with a slow, steady heartbeat.
Hesitantly, her fingers numb with a dread she couldn't name, she pressed the small catch on its side. It clicked open.
There was no photo inside. No lock of hair. Instead, nestled against the tarnished silver, was a single, dried petal. It was black, or perhaps a purple so deep it appeared black, and it was perfectly preserved. As she stared at it, a faint, hauntingly familiar scent wafted up—ash and ozone and something sweet, like rotten roses.
The vision hit her, but it was different this time. Not a full sensory overload, but a whisper. A feeling.
…safe…keep it safe…from him…
The thought wasn't her own. It was a desperate, foreign impulse implanted directly into her mind. It carried with it a flash of a face—the man from the dig site. His features were contorted not in fury, but in a pain so profound it was agony to witness. Then it was gone.
Selene snapped the locket shut, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. She shoved it away from her on the floor, scrambling backward until her shoulders hit her bedframe. This wasn't stress. This wasn't a hallucination. The locket was… communicating. And it was afraid of the man who had saved her.
Or had he? What if he hadn't been saving her? What if he'd been trying to claim the locket for himself, and the spirit had been in the way?
Her phone buzzed on the floor beside her, making her jump. It was an unknown number. The screen lit up with a single line of text.
Unknown: They felt the disturbance. They're looking for the source. You need to get rid of it. Now.
Ice water flooded her veins. She stared at the screen, her mind racing. Who was this? The fire man? How did they get her number? What disturbance? The spirit? The feeling of being watched intensified, the walls of her small apartment seeming to close in. She typed back, her thumbs clumsy with fear.
Who is this?
The response was immediate.
Unknown: There's no time. They're already close. It sings to them. Can't you hear it?
She couldn't hear anything. Just the frantic pounding of her own heart. But as she stared at the locket on the floor, a new sensation began to prickle at the edge of her awareness. A pressure. A wrongness in the air, like the static charge before a lightning strike. It was coming from the street below.
She crawled to her window, staying low, and peered through the slats of the blinds.
Down on the rain-slicked pavement, three figures stood motionless, looking up at her building. They were dressed in long, dark coats, their faces obscured in shadow. They weren't speaking. They weren't moving. They were just… waiting. And one of them held a device—a complex brass compass that glowed with a sickly green light, its needle spinning wildly before jerking to a stop, pointing unerringly at her window.
The locket wasn't just whispering to her.
It was screaming into the dark.
And something had finally answered.