Isabella crossed to the bookshelf and found the mechanism she’d discovered earlier that evening. The hidden door swung open with a soft click, revealing a dark mouth in the wall where no door should be.
Isabella led the way, Laila a step behind. Lambert followed, his expression unreadable. Along the way, Laila had collected the others. Wylan from the parlour, where he’d been examining the remnants of Divina’s contraption. Alexisoix from wherever he’d been skulking since his… educational evening. Maximilian remained with Aurora. Someone had to stay with the child, and whatever this was, it didn’t require the Duke. Not yet. If there was something dangerous in the house, she wanted all available hands where she could see them.
Alexisoix had said nothing since joining them. He moved carefully, pretending the last hour hadn’t happened. No one mentioned it. There would be time for that conversation later.
The chamber breathed cold air into the library, carrying something that made her skin prickle and her ears flatten; every eye went to the dark obsidian disk that dominated the space.
The mirror’s inky surface distorted: twisted, flickering images leered back at them, their movements slightly out of sync with reality. The mirror was an ill-tempered gateway to an entirely different set of priorities.
Lambert stepped forward before she could stop him. The mirror pulled at him, his hand already reaching towards the obsidian surface.
“Careful.” Isabella caught his arm, pulling him back. “Divina thinks it’s a Dungeon portal. We don’t know what might activate it.”
Lambert blinked, awareness returning. He stepped back, though his eyes remained fixed on the dark glass.
Wylan was staring at the mirror too, but his expression was different. The analytical focus that preceded either brilliance or explosion. “A Dungeon portal,” he said slowly. “Here. In the house.”
“Yes,” Laila said. “Apparently your father decided we needed one. Three doors down from the breakfast room.”
“But what does that mean?” Wylan looked at the others. “I’ve read about Dungeons. Pocket realms, monstrous forces, all the theory. I’ve never actually been in one.”
Isabella shrugged. “It means we don’t touch anything until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Isabella is right to be cautious.” Laila still hadn't looked away from the mirror. “Dungeons are inherently dangerous, filled with monsters. Only the brave or the foolish go in willingly.”
“And ordinary people who do go in,” Lambert added, “come out Heroes, corpses, or madmen. Sometimes all three.”
Wylan frowned. “But I didn’t need a Dungeon. I’ve never faced a monster. I had my breakthrough alone in my laboratory.”
“Luminaries are a bit odd, sweetie.” Laila stumbled over the implication. “Most Heroes answer a call. They choose bravery in a moment of crisis.”
“Kill or be killed,” Isabella said flatly. “That’s how it was for me. The Hunter found me in the Bramblewoods, half-dead, about to be eaten by a thornkin. I stopped running and started fighting.” She shrugged. “And then I was different.”
“It’s not always so visceral,” Laila said. “But rangers do tend to have dramatic brentings.”
“That’s not exactly true, Madame.” Lambert’s voice was quiet.
Laila turned. “What do you mean?”
“I never had a call to adventure. I’ve felt the touch of Invictus as long as I can remember. It took years of training before I could do much with it, but the connection was always there.”
“And Max,” Isabella added slowly. “I don’t remember much of his Emberlight, but I remember the fire reacting to his presence. He was, what, two years old?”
“Yes.” Lambert nodded. “And he’s had to rein in his emotions ever since. Forced into disciplined control. Fire comes far too easily to him.”
Laila went still.
They were right.
Lambert. Maximilian. Wylan. All Heroes born without the call to adventure. She looked at her children, then back at the mirror. All sons of Alexios.
“That doesn’t explain why there’s a Dungeon in the middle of a noble house,” Wylan said.
Laila opened her mouth to answer and stopped.
Sixteen years old. The Widderslainte, deep in the Autumn Court. Her family had armed her with little more than a weapon and a hope before sending her into the dark. She remembered the cold. The fear. The moment when she found magic bending to her will, and she’d walked out changed.
This wouldn’t be the first noble household to deliberately test their children in hopes of forcing the change.
She looked at the chamber again: the worn stonework, the careful construction. Her eyes found the stone plinth beside the mirror, where an indentation had been carved in the shape of the de Vaillant crest.
The signet ring. A lock without a key.
“Wylan, I don’t think your father built this.” Her voice came out strange. “I think this is a de Vaillant testing ground. For aspirants to the Household.”
Silence. Then Wylan: “A testing ground? You mean the family has been… what, throwing children into a Dungeon to see if they survive?”
“To see if they answer the call.” Laila’s mind was working now, the spymaster’s instinct cutting through the grief and the rage and everything she would feel later. “The ones who do become heirs. The ones who don’t…”
“I suppose they don’t inherit much,” Lambert said drily.
“Lambert!”
“So who knew about this?” Alexisoix had gone pale. “Uncle Alexios, surely. But did Mother? What about Grandfather, or Grandmother?”
“Your grandfather almost certainly would have known. Saffron may have. I suspect she’s a Hero, but she’s never been clear about that.” Laila paused. “Seraphina…”
Of course she knew. It would explain so much. Why she was such a shut-in, why she seemed only to rouse in the evening, why she was always guarded with secrets. The old woman had been guarding this for decades.
Twenty-six years of marriage. Six years a widow. I’ve built intelligence networks to uncover his secrets, and yet you held this one from me.
She ran her fingers along the old stone of the doorframe. I would have noticed construction. This predates me. This predates my marriage. She hated how this confirmed her suspicions.
I was never trusted with the real family legacy.
Isabella was watching her. “Mother?”
“How dare you.” The words came out before she could stop them. Quiet, but edged. The room went still. “How dare you keep this from me. In our own home.”
No one answered. There was nothing to say.
For a moment, something cracked. Not visibly. She was too well-trained for that. But inside, something fractured along lines she hadn’t known existed. Not just anger at deception. Not just grief for the man she thought she knew. Something older. The girl who’d arrived in Gallia at sixteen, who’d been traded between nations like a chess piece, who’d thought she’d finally earned her place.
She forced her breathing to steady. Straightened her spine. Smoothed her expression with deliberate, mechanical care.
Not now. Not here.
The list formed automatically: house to safeguard, children to protect, cult to dismantle, Church conspiracy to unravel, Seraphina to confront, this thing to understand. There would be time for grief and rage when there wasn’t a generational secret staring her in the face.
? Laila had, over the course of twenty-six years of Gallian marriage, become fluent in the language of carrying on. She had learned early that the world might be ending, but dinner service waited for no one.
She turned back to face her children. Whatever they saw in her expression made them straighten.
“Search the room,” she instructed sharply. “But do not touch anything unless you’re certain it won’t bite back.”
Alexisoix stationed himself at the edge of the room, aiming for quiet disaffection. The effect was undercut by his feet, which kept shifting, restless without a role.
The others spread out. Laila moved along one wall, examining artefacts. Wylan circled the obsidian mirror at a respectful distance. Lambert stood near the doorway, eyes never leaving the mirror. Isabella’s gaze swept the shadows, methodical.
? There existed, in certain circles, a professional distinction between ‘searching a room’ and ‘surviving a search.’ The distinction was considered overly pedantic until it wasn’t.
Isabella’s head turned toward the corner. She crossed to it, fingers finding the spine of an old leather-bound journal wedged between a collection of cursed daggers and what might have been a petrified hand.
“Mother,” she called quietly. “Look at this.”
Alexisoix watched as Laila crossed to her. Isabella handed over the journal, open to the first page.
“It’s a record,” Isabella said. “A chronicle of operations spanning over twenty-five years.”
“This predates the Merovian Accords.” Her voice had gone flat.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“The Merovian Accords?” Wylan echoed. “Isn’t that when you and Father…” He trailed off.
“Yes.” The word landed like a door closing. “Your father was running operations before I ever arrived in Gallia.”
Isabella continued flipping through pages. “Most of these entries are in cipher. It’ll take time to decode, but…” She paused. “There are names here—markers—and I know them from somewhere.”
“Some of those names were among those arrested after Aeloria’s attack on the city,” Lambert said. “If we dig deeper, I suspect we’ll find a list of suspected dragon cultists.”
“So Uncle Alexios was investigating the dragon cultists,” Alexisoix said, his laugh coming too loud in the quiet chamber. “Surely there are no more than a handful of cultists left in the city. They were all expunged years ago. Remember the Inquisition?”
Lambert shook his head. “We found those who acted openly. The audacious ones. Not the clever ones. The circumspect remain.”
“There are still cultists hiding in the city,” Alexisoix said, the bravado fading from his voice.
“We think…” Laila paused, something strained flickering across her expression. She wasn’t looking at Alexisoix. “We have reason to believe there is at least one.”
She didn’t elaborate. Alexisoix had the uncomfortable sense he was missing something.
Isabella had the journal open again, Laila leaning over her shoulder as they debated the coded entries. Their voices carried in the small chamber, low and urgent, fingers tracing patterns across the yellowed pages. Isabella turned a page too forcefully. The brittle parchment, aged beyond patience, tore from its binding and drifted lazily towards the floor.
Neither woman noticed; they were too absorbed in their discussion.
The page landed directly at Alexisoix’s feet.
His eyes flicked downward. Faded ink, routes marked in precise strokes, the edge of what might be warehouse schematics. Nothing particularly notable at first glance, just another piece of Uncle Alexios’ endless investigations.
Then Laila shifted, and her lamp swung slightly. The light caught the parchment at a new angle.
There. In the corner. Barely visible, half-worn by time and handling, but unmistakable to anyone who’d grown up seeing it on manifests and ledgers: the stylised ship-anchor of Freight Expectations.
His father’s company logo.
No.
Something lurched in Alexisoix’s chest. He knew that logo better than his own reflection. Had traced it as a child, played at being a merchant prince, dreamed of the day he’d inherit the fleet. Father’s pride and legacy, built over decades of honest trade.
Why would Uncle Alexios have this? Why would it be here, in a journal full of dragon cultist investigations?
His gaze snapped up to check if anyone else had noticed. Isabella was pointing at something in the journal, her voice urgent. Laila’s attention was locked on whatever she was indicating. Wylan had moved towards the obsidian mirror, examining its frame, taking conspicuous care not to touch it. Lambert stood near the doorway.
No one’s looking. More importantly, no one’s looking at him or the page.
There had to be an explanation. Father wasn’t—Father couldn’t be —
But if Laila saw this, she wouldn’t wait for explanations. She’d assume the worst. She always did of him.
Alexisoix’s foot came down on the parchment. Not a stomp, nothing so obvious. Just a casual shift of weight, as though he were simply adjusting his stance. The page, and Father’s logo, disappeared beneath his boot.
He waited. Isabella turned another page in the journal. Laila muttered something about operational patterns. The page stayed under his boot.
When Laila stepped away to examine something on a nearby shelf, Isabella still absorbed in the journal, Alexisoix crouched. His hand went to his boot laces. Footwear difficulties remained, across all social ranks, a respectable reason to crouch. The page slid into his inner coat pocket far too easily.
He straightened, arranged his face into polite boredom, and returned to his position at the room’s edge. Just another family member waiting for instruction. Nothing to see here.
And now, whatever secrets that parchment held, Laila won’t see them. Not until Alexisoix understood what he was protecting Father from.
Lambert stood near the doorway, watching the others.
They were all avoiding the mirror. Laila examined artefacts along the far wall. Isabella had her nose in the journal. Alexisoix lurked near the exit. Even Wylan, who’d been circling the obsidian frame and muttering about umbral residue, had stopped to drink something from a vial and was now stretching his arm in elastic ways.
“Wylie! You’ll knock things over.”
“I’m just being precautious, Mother.”
None of them were looking at the thing that mattered. Lambert was.
Something profane is happening here. This was no longer a matter where homilies and wisdom would suffice.
He closed his eyes and uttered a prayer to Invictus, invoking the divine power his god had chosen to lend him. When he opened them, his vision was limned with supernal light, tracing insight over the dread of the room.
He drifted towards the mirror, pulled by a strange gravity. He stood before the obsidian surface, close enough to touch, his reflection warped and writhing in the dark glass. The Umbra gnawed at his faith, dark curiosity coiling around forbidden questions. So this is what Calderon was seeking. But why?
Or for whom?
His hand began to rise, fingers reaching towards the surface.
“Lambert.” Laila’s voice cut through the chamber, sharp and immediate. “Step away from that. Now.”
Her words reached him from somewhere far away, distant and unimportant. The mirror was closer. The mirror mattered.
“Lambert!” Sharper now, commanding. The tone she used when lives were at stake.
That reached him. Lambert blinked, awareness flickering back into his expression. But instead of stepping away, he straightened. I am an Inquisitor of the Church. Hardly a child to be scolded. This is my territory, not hers. If there was something dangerous here, something that called to him, he’d face it directly and understand it properly. He stretched that supernal awareness outward, seeking whatever lurked in the mirror’s depths.
He had not fully considered the danger of attuning to a room thick with umbral taint: chaotic, ill-advised, and almost certainly disastrous.
“Lambert, don’t—” Laila started forward, but too late.
The impact was a door slamming in his mind. Lambert staggered back, reeling as the oppressive weight of the Umbra overwhelmed his senses. His divine awareness, stretched too thin, collided with something vast, patient, and cosmically annoyed at being disturbed.
He stumbled backwards, arms windmilling. His elbow caught something on a shelf, insubstantial and fragile, lighter even than glass.
There was a thud as it fell. A sharp crack that resonated with ominous finality. And then a hiss.
Everyone froze.
“Please tell me,” Laila said, her eyes fixed on the spreading darkness, “that wasn’t something important.”
“Maybe not important,” Alexisoix offered from his position near the door, “but almost certainly valuable.”
From the shattered orb, three shadowy creatures emerged, their forms shifting like ink dropped into water. They brought a sound with them, low and malevolent.
For a moment, no one moved. The creatures held position. The family held theirs.
Isabella’s hand found her blade. She scanned the chamber, instinctively mapping the space: Lambert by the broken shelf, still dazed from his contact with the mirror. Wylan near the obsidian disk, close to where the orb had shattered. Mother by the journal, caught between the door and the creatures. Alexisoix at the threshold, sensibly positioned for retreat.
Five people. Three creatures. A room roughly the size of a wine cellar, packed with shelves of cursed artefacts that probably shouldn’t be jostled during combat.
This is going to be ugly.
The creatures didn’t share their spatial concerns. They expanded, filling the available space with writhing darkness, forcing the family to compress into the corners. One surged toward Laila.
Her hands came up, splashing colour into the air between them, a shimmer of disorienting pigment.
The creature passed through it without slowing. Laila stumbled back, her face pale.
“They don’t have minds,” Laila said, her voice tight. “My magic is limited here.”
Wonderful.
Isabella moved, blade clearing its sheath in a tight arc. The steel caught the creature mid-lunge, splitting its form. It recoiled from Laila, reforming even as it twisted toward this new threat.
Wylan acted next, his transmutation kicking in. His arm snapped out, sinew stretching beyond normal limits, and struck one of the creatures square across its amorphous mass. The impact was wet and yielding. The creature had not prepared for the audacity of bones.
The thing keened. The sound was thick, grating, far too close. It clawed at their senses, setting teeth on edge. The creature recoiled, slamming into one of its companions. Both splattered against the wall, sending a shower of obsidian fragments from a nearby shelf crashing to the floor.
Something on the shelf began to hiss. Isabella kicked it away before anyone could identify whether that was a good or bad development.
Lambert grabbed a heavy tome from the nearest shelf. A tendril of darkness lashed toward his face. He raised the book reflexively, catching the blow with an impact that made him stagger.
He swung back. The creature had nowhere to dodge. The tome connected with a squelch, driving the shadow-thing back into the doorframe hard enough to crack stone.
? The Church had strong opinions about using holy texts as weapons. None of those opinions had been written by people currently being attacked by shadows in rooms roughly the size of a wine cellar.
“Close the door!” Isabella shouted. The creatures couldn’t be allowed into the house.
Wylan’s elongated arm lashed out, wrapping around the bookshelf door. His face contorted with effort as he pulled. The door swung, grinding against stone. Two openings in one night, after six years of disuse, hadn’t improved its attitude.
A creature lunged at the closing gap. Poor choice.
The bookshelf slammed into place with brute finality. The creature caught in the doorframe burst like overripe fruit, leaving a formless smear down the ancient wood. Alexisoix yelped, catching the worst of the splatter. Wylan recoiled his arm, breathing heavily.
The chamber felt even smaller now, sealed tight with two remaining threats and no exit.
“A spell would be helpful, Alex!” Isabella called out, parrying a tendril that came too close to her face.
Alexisoix, seemingly roused out of shock, fumbled his lute into position and launched into a melody, fingers flying across the strings. The sound erupted through the chamber, rippling outward. Nowhere for it to go but through the creatures. Their forms shuddered, convulsing. Shadow creatures, it emerged, had aesthetic sensibilities.
Isabella pressed her advantage, blade flashing. The creature before her recoiled from the combined assault of steel and sound. She drove it back, back.
The creature’s tendrils lunged. She sidestepped, or tried to. Her elbow caught Wylan in the ribs. He grunted, stumbled sideways into Lambert.
Everything in this thrice-damned room is only two steps away.
Her articulated blade sliced through darkness. The creature recoiled, then reformed with the persistence of something that didn’t have vital organs to damage. It coiled around her arm, cold seeping through her sleeve, spreading toward her shoulder.
Isabella yelled and slammed it into the wall. The impact jarred her teeth. A dagger tumbled off a shelf and clattered to the floor, presumably cursed. The creature peeled away, apparently fine, and surged toward Wylan instead.
Lambert thrust his hand forward, a prayer to Invictus on his lips.
Nothing happened. Or rather, something flickered between his fingers and died. Lambert stared at his hands.
What was that supposed to—
Wylan tried to raise his stretched arms in defence, but the shadow was faster. It engulfed him, its inky form wrapping around his chest and dragging him down. He grabbed at it, fingers sinking into darkness that offered no purchase.
Isabella pivoted, blade swinging, but the space was too tight. Her backswing caught Lambert across the forearm. He hissed, recoiling, and she couldn’t follow through without hitting him again.
Wylan collapsed. His knees hit the stone floor with a crack that made everyone wince. The darkness tore at him, leaving ragged wounds across his chest and arms. Blood spread across the stone. His movements slowed, then stopped entirely as the creature’s essence seeped into him, snuffing out consciousness.
“Wylan!” Lambert shoved past Isabella, tome raised, but the remaining creature filled the space between them. A writhing mass of animated darkness that expanded to block any rescue attempt.
Alexisoix’s fingers faltered on the strings. Just for a moment. Then the notes flew faster, harder, the melody turning sharp and vicious.
The creature shuddered under the sonic assault, shuddered again, and burst, spraying dark ichor across the chamber. One left.
It had been trying to flee toward the sealed door. Now it turned, cornered, and surged at the nearest target: Laila.
Laila had retrieved the cursed dagger from the floor. Not her weapon and not her magic, but her son was down and she would be damned before she stood idle.
Lambert moved without thinking. Isabella flanked. The creature couldn’t watch all of them, couldn’t expand fast enough to block attacks from three directions while Alexisoix’s music still rang in the air.
Lambert’s tome. Isabella’s blade. Laila’s dagger, thrown with more desperation than skill.
It burst. Cold spray splattered across all of them.
Silence. The kind that follows violence in enclosed spaces, where everyone’s breathing sounds too loud and you can’t quite believe you’re still alive.
Lambert was already moving, shoving past Isabella to reach Wylan. He dropped to his knees beside his brother, hands pressing against the worst of the wounds, lips moving in prayer.
She watched as light bloomed between his fingers. This time it held. Golden warmth spread across Wylan’s chest, knitting flesh, slowing the blood.
The wounds began to close. Wylan’s breathing steadied from ragged gasps to something more even. The blood stopped spreading.
But Wylan didn’t wake.
Lambert sat back on his heels, breathing hard. His cheek was bleeding where the creature had caught him. His forearm throbbed from Isabella’s blade. His hands were shaking.
That was my fault. She pushed the thought aside. Later.
The chamber was ruined. The orb lay in pieces. Dark stains marked the walls and floor. Various cursed artefacts had been knocked askew, and at least three things on the shelves were making noises that suggested they’d been disturbed and weren’t happy about it.
They gathered around Wylan, lying still and pale in the centre of the floor, unconscious but breathing.