Part Fourteen – The Hidden Blueprints
Jonathan tugged gently at the slip of parchment. The books above it shifted with a whisper of dust, as though reluctant to yield their secret. What emerged was not a single page but a bundle, bound with twine, the paper yellowed at the edges yet covered in crisp, deliberate ink.
Blueprints.
Not the kind he was used to—the skeletal diagrams of machines, furnaces, and steel constructs his father adored. These were stranger, darker. Symbols coiled across the margins, roses intertwined with barbed vines, wings that could be mistaken for bats—or angels twisted into something else. In the center of one page, a circle of runes, precise and geometric, resembled something of the arcane arts.
His breath caught.
Raymond Hann had owned dozens of such books of arcane arts, yes—part of his obsessive need to collect knowledge—but he had never touched them. He had often dismissed alchemists and occultists alike as "tricksters in robes chasing shadows." Jonathan remembered the tone vividly, amused and disdainful. His father had believed in science, iron, in steel, in the tangible craft of industry and technology.
So why had he not only opened these papers—but written on them?
The margins bore his father's handwriting. The neat engineer's script that had designed the IronClover bridges and the factory gears. Numbers, scientific formulas were scrawled alongside sigils, measurements paired with strange glyphs. He wasn't merely cataloguing these designs—he was working them. Integrating something arcane into the language of machinery.
Jonathan's chest tightened. He thought of those last weeks before the tragedy. Raymond skipping meals, his eyes sunken, his mind elsewhere. Muttering "work… important work," but refusing to explain. Work that had drawn him away from Eleanor, from Michael, from even Jonathan himself. Work that had made him a stranger in his own home.
The weight of the papers seemed heavier than they should have been, as though they carried not just ink but consequence. Jonathan rolled them tightly, his hands trembling. His father had been hiding something.
"Ah—young master."
Heller's voice startled him. The butler stood at the door, face flushed with the embarrassment of interrupting. "Forgive me. I will see that this place is properly cleaned before your next visit."
Jonathan hesitated, then handed the rolled bundle to him. "Have these placed in my study."
Heller accepted with a small bow, though his eyes lingered curiously on the scroll. Jonathan turned away before the butler could ask questions. The less said, the better.
But as he walked out, his mind gnawed at the truth: Raymond Hann had been building something—and whatever it was, it had required the language of the arcane arts.
And perhaps, Jonathan thought with a shiver, that was why he was dead.