We left the High Hand chamber in silence, climbing down the stairs back to the start.

  The library yawned open again before us - endless shelves vanishing into the dark, dust heavy in the air like a shroud. Skeletons still strewed across the library, lost forever to time.

  I stopped at the corner of the room. A pile of charred books lay heaped in ash, melted spines still fused together. The stink of old smoke clung to it even now.

  I crouched, sifting through brittle fragments of pages that dissolved between my fingers.

  Mary stepped beside me, eyes heavy. “This is where the information was disposed of.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “They erased the words, but not the act itself. Guess even silence leaves a stain.”

  Her lips pressed tight as her eyes scanned the ash. “…How deep does the rabbit hole go?”

  I met her gaze, faint bitterness in my tone. “Guess we'll find out soon enough.”

  We pressed on.

  At the far end of the library loomed a heavy wooden door. The word carved above it made my gut twist.

  Laboratory.

  The hinges groaned as I pushed the door open.

  A pressure hit us before the smell even could - an invisible weight slamming through the air like a physical force. My breath caught, my stomach twisted. The world spun.

  It felt like my blood was vibrating.

  Mary staggered beside me, clutching the doorframe, her skin drained pale. “Wh-what is this?”

  I swallowed hard, the taste of metal thick on my tongue. “Divine energy. Concentrated. Probably the Bishops doing.”

  She winced, pressing a hand to her temple. “It’s making me sick…”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, forcing my boots forward. “Means we’re getting close. Come on.”

  The corridor stretched ahead, long and narrow, shrouded in a golden haze that flickered like heat mirage. Every breath scraped my throat raw. The air itself hummed - not just sound, but voices. Faint, whispering things just outside understanding.

  We took another step.

  Then came laughter.

  High-pitched, distant, echoing off the metal walls like it was trapped between centuries. Children. Playing. Their laughter carried through the corridor like bells through fog.

  Mary froze, her eyes shaking slightly. “Do you… hear that?”

  I nodded grimly. “Yeah.”

  We walked. The laughter grew louder - dozens of voices now, gleeful, overlapping, circling us. It should’ve sounded innocent. It didn’t.

  Halfway through the corridor, the laughter changed.

  Screams.

  The sound twisted, warped - laughter breaking apart mid-breath into shrieks that tore through the air. I stopped cold, my pulse pounding against my skull. Mary gasped, both hands flying to her ears.

  And then we saw them.

  Rows of glass cylinders lining the walls, taller than either of us. Inside, what at first looked like faint shapes. Then bones.

  Small. Fragile.

  Countless skeletons curled against the glass like children who’d fallen asleep and never woken.

  Mary stumbled forward, her eyes welled with tears as her hand trembled against the glass. “No… they were children... why would the Emperor-?”

  I reached out, steadying her by the shoulder, even as bile rose in my throat. “Keep moving. Don’t look too long.”

  But my eyes wouldn’t leave the glass.

  Something was wrong about the way the light hit them - like the reflections shifted, even when we stood still. Then, one of the skeletons turned its skull. Just slightly. Toward me.

  At least, I think it did.

  A sharp spike of pain hit the base of my skull. My knees buckled.

  “Damian?” Mary’s voice cracked. “What’s wrong?”

  The world folded.

  I blinked, and the corridor vanished.

  Now I stood in a stone room, dim and cold. The smell of mold and iron filled my lungs. A bed. A wall covered in chalk drawings. And two children.

  A girl, thin and sickly, maybe eight years old. Dark hair, hollow cheeks. She hummed as she drew a bird in a cage.

  And a boy lying on the bed, his back to her, unmoving.

  Her voice was small, hopeful. “Damy… wanna draw?”

  The boy didn’t respond.

  She turned, stepping closer - but before she could reach him, the door clanked open.

  Figures entered, cloaked in black. Their faces were wrong - blurred, swirling, like they didn’t belong in this reality. The space around them bent like heat waves. Even through the haze of memory, I recognized them.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  The Nameless Ones...

  The girl froze. The chalk fell from her hand.

  The boy moved then - slowly, quietly - standing, his movements too calm for his age. He looked back once.

  My breath hitched.

  That face.

  That hair.

  Those eyes, dead and empty..

  It was all too recognizable.

  I saw the book on the bed - my old journal, the same one sitting on my desk in the present. He left it there as he stepped toward the figures, his expression hollow, obedient.

  The girl screamed his name.

  “Damy! Damy!”

  Over and over.

  "Dami...! Damia...!"

  Each time louder. Shriller. Until it became a single echo in my skull.

  The vision shattered.

  I gasped, air rushing back into my lungs. Mary was shaking me by the shoulders, terror in her eyes.

  “Damian! You have to move! The glass - look!”

  I turned.

  The chambers were alive. Shadows writhed inside, slamming against the glass with wet, thunderous cracks. Each impact left spiderwebs of fractures, inhuman whispers leaking out with every strike.

  “Run!” I barked.

  We sprinted down the corridor, the sounds behind us growing deafening - bang, crack, scream, over and over until it felt like the entire hallway was collapsing. Mary’s breathing came in sharp gasps beside me, my coat soaked and clinging as she ran.

  A thousand voices pierced my head, all crying the same word - Damian - in tones that weren’t human anymore.

  We reached the door.

  I slammed my hand against it. The divine pressure exploded once more - then instantly cut off.

  Silence.

  The shadows stopped. The whispers died. The weight lifted, leaving only the sound of our ragged breaths echoing through the corridor.

  Mary collapsed to her knees, trembling, her voice barely a whisper. “What was that?”

  I stared at my shaking hand against the door. “The Bishop must have set that trap, using concentrated Divine Energy to do... whatever the hell that was.”

  Three words lay above the door, as ominous as the path behind us.

  The Crimson Hand.

  The door groaned open.

  And inside…

  A laboratory.

  But not like the one we’d just walked through. No glass coffins of children. No bones clinging to shattered glass.

  This place was too clean.

  The walls were cracked with age, the air smelled of dust and mildew, but the equipment-

  The equipment looked recent. Stainless tables. Cabinets with steel handles. Machines that hummed faintly, as if they’d been turned off only yesterday.

  No bodies. No blood. Just a silence that felt wrong. A silence that screamed.

  I stepped forward slowly, eyes scanning the room - books stacked along the counters, maps and blueprints pinned to the wall, pages scattered across the floor like a storm had torn through.

  Behind me, I heard a choked sound.

  Mary.

  She’d turned away, one hand braced on the wall as she doubled over. Her whole body trembled before the retching started - sharp, wet, and broken by gasps.

  “Mary-” I stepped toward her, but she raised a hand weakly, stopping me.

  “Don’t,” she managed between breaths. Her voice cracked, but there was iron in it.

  She wiped her mouth, then her eyes, smearing tears and rain across her sleeve. Her breathing steadied, just barely. “It’s exactly as you said,” she whispered hoarsely. “The world will show me the pain of being human whether I like it or not.”

  Her gaze lifted to me - red-rimmed, trembling, but steady. “So I need to grow up.”

  For a long moment, the room was silent except for the faint hum of dead machines.

  Then I nodded once. “…Alright.”

  Something inside me shifted - something between pride and dread.

  She’s growing and fast.

  I just hope she doesn’t abandon what makes her human in the process.

  I turned back to the table, picking up one of the scattered pages. “Then let’s see what kind of monsters we’re dealing with.”

  Mary stood beside me again, her expression hardening, the Saintess mask finally beginning to form. Her hands still shook slightly, but she had regained her composure.

  Neither of us turned off our eyes. Our vision still burned gold and crimson, dragging secrets into the open. My gaze caught a folded letter on the center table, glowing faintly with that divine pressure that had pulled us all this way.

  “There,” I said, pointing. “That’s the source.”

  Mary nodded, stepping closer. But when I picked it up, my stomach knotted.

  It wasn’t ancient Empiric. Not faded ink or coded cipher. No - this was modern. Handwritten like something dashed off only days ago.

  I read it aloud.

  “The angels have finally decided to open their eyes. Soon, their wings will unfurl. But be careful, little ones. Those with the largest wings are the first to be cut down.”

  The words hung in the air, playful, almost singsong. I could hear his damn voice in them.

  I lowered the page, scanning the tables. Schematics sprawled across them - lines of the city, annotations, strange diagrams of eyes drawn in repetition. Letters marked with stains, some half-burned, others fresh. My pulse quickened.

  “There’s a lot to read, hopefully enough worth my life.” I muttered. “It’s all here. Plans. Research. Every step of whatever the hell the Bishop is trying to-”

  Silence.

  I turned, frowning. Mary wasn’t looking at the papers. She was staring past me.

  Toward the door.

  A low rumble vibrated through the floor.

  I followed her gaze - and froze.

  Pinned to the wood by a jagged black stake was a floating mechanical eye. The same kind the Cardinal always carried with him, the ones that followed me in silence like parasites. Its lens was shattered, blood leaking down its brass casing like tears.

  And below it, smeared in crimson, words scrawled in jagged strokes:

  The piggie squeals caress the Veil in delight. Soon, his shrieks will awaken that which sleeps. And when it rises, the city will be swallowed whole. Meet me in the burnt forest, where your story began.

  The floor shook harder. Dust rained from the cracked ceiling.

  My stomach dropped. “Shit. It’s a trap. He’s trying to destroy the evidence.”

  The beams groaned. The roof split, rubble crashing down as the first shelves toppled.

  “Mary!” I snapped, grabbing her shoulder. Her eyes were wide, frozen in shock. “Snap out of it. Run!”

  We bolted.

  The base roared alive around us, centuries of silence breaking at once. Towers of books collapsed in avalanches, slamming against the floor. The shelves burned with sparks as torches crashed, flames devouring paper that had slept for generations.

  Stone cracked above. The great statues of Apostles split and toppled, shattering as they hit the floor. Their broken faces scattered across the tiles, staring blankly as we sprinted past.

  The rumble turned to thunder. The corridor quaked, glass chambers exploding one by one, shards spraying across the hall as water burst in through ruptured pipes.

  We reached the final door as the ceiling caved in behind us.

  I shoved it open-

  -and froze at the sight.

  The tunnels were nearly gone. Water churned against the ceiling, the current screaming like a beast unleashed. Only a sliver of air remained at the top, vanishing fast.

  I looked back. The rubble was closing in, blocks of stone smashing against the floor, the sound deafening.

  “Hold on!” I grabbed Mary, pulling her against me. My arm wrapped tight around her waist. “Don’t let go.”

  Her eyes widened, but she clung to me, arms wrapping tight as her hood slipped back.

  “Breathe deep!” I shouted. “Then hold it!”

  The rumble was a roar now. Stone split. Water surged.

  We leapt into the flood.

  The world drowned in black.