Psychological
The silence in Blackwood Manor was not the absence of sound, but a heavy, velvet weight that pressed against the eardrums. Julian Vane stood in the grand gallery, his breath hitching as he stared at the floor-to-ceiling mirror that guarded the entrance to the ballroom.
The mirror was a Baroque monstrosity, its frame a gilded tangle of weeping cherubs and thorny vines. But it was the glass that commanded attention. A single, jagged crack bifurcated the surface, running from the top left corner down to the center, like a lightning bolt frozen in silver. In the ballroom behind Julian, the air smelled of spilled vintage Moët, expensive lilies, and the sharp, copper tang of blood.
The vaulted library breathes around me.
Its arches—blackened by centuries of candle soot—rise like the ribs of some slumbering titan, and every wall is inked with crimson sigils that pulse faintly, as if stirred by the cadence of my heartbeat. Dust drifts in the air like fallen ashes. The scent of old vellum clings to the back of my throat, chalk‑dry and metallic.
Third hour before moonrise. The Pact Hall is awake.