Chapter 25 Empty Map
I stepped between them immediately, shielding her. “Stop! We can’t fight, not this early.”
“She’s acting weird, she’s not cooperating, Lexie,” he complained.
“Enough, Vincent. We don’t need to fight. Let her breathe.”
He brushed my hands off his chest and withdrew to the fountain, muttering under his breath.
I stood between them with one hand on my waist and the other running through my hair. I exhaled sharply.
“Fine. Let’s settle down and work this out, together. Please.”
Silence.
“Guys?” Still no answer. “Come on, we can only win as a group.”
“The answers are 75 and 8,” Melanie said reluctantly.
I sighed. Vincent stepped closer again.
“Sometimes you need to control your anger,” I whispered to him.
“Let’s get to it. She says the answers are 75 and 8, so what’s next?” he asked.
“According to the sentence, it’s when 75 meets 8. But…” I frowned at the clue. “I still don’t know how they meet. Melanie?”
Vincent shot her an irritated look. She swallowed.
“Well… I…” She cleared her throat. “When 75 meets 8, according to the engraved compass dial. Since we’re dealing with location. At the center of the courtyard, the marble floor has longitude and latitude lines carved into it. So, 75 degrees west and 8 degrees north. That’s their intersection point.”
Vincent blinked. “Is she a robot? What language are you speaking, lass?” he muttered.
I almost understood her. She was brilliant, no doubt.
I looked back at the clue. “I think I see your point. But you missed something: When the clock and the compass agree. There’s only one visible clock on Gravenmoor Academy.”
“Yeah,” Melanie said. “The northern clock tower, the shadow falls directly over Aurelius Nox’s statue. It’s not about the sundials. The clock has been pointing to the location all along.”
“So what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” Vincent said, already moving.
We took off toward the statue. As soon as we reached it, my eyes caught the inscription on the marble base:
Numbers sleep in the marble veins.
Vincent stepped closer, disbelief sharpening his expression. “Are you kidding me?” he hissed, striking the marble base with the side of his fist. He straightened sharply, jaw clenched. “This clue has already been given.”
His frustration echoed through the courtyard, but something else caught my eye, a faint, almost imperceptible seam carved into the statue’s plinth. The line was so thin it could have been mistaken for a natural crack in the stone, but it ran with too much precision to be accidental.
“Wait…” I crouched, brushing my fingers along the seam. Beneath the accumulated dust, something shifted. My heart thudded. “I think I found something.”
Both of them rushed closer immediately, the tension between them forgotten as curiosity overtook frustration.
Carefully, I hooked my fingers into the narrow opening and pulled. A rolled parchment slid out from the hidden compartment, coated in decades of dust. I held it up, and their eyes widened with renewed anticipation.
I unrolled it slowly, bracing myself for a detailed diagram, an intricate set of coordinates, something that would finally lead us forward.
But the parchment was empty.
Blank. Stark. Mocking.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Vincent exhaled, voice cracking between outrage and despair.
“Great, an empty map?” I muttered under my breath, the parchment hung between my fingers, fragile, weightless, and utterly infuriating. Vincent had already turned away, pacing in tight circles with both hands buried in his hair. “I guess the sand will run on the hour glass before we discover this clue,” Melanie said, simply staring at the blank sheet as though it were a mirror reflecting her greatest fear.
“It’s completely useless,” Vincent groaned. It should’ve felt like defeat.
It almost did.
But my gaze shifted back to the inscription on the marble base.
Numbers sleep in the marble veins.
The phrase echoed like distant bells in an abandoned cathedral. I lowered my gaze to the plinth again, running my fingertips across the cold stone. The marble’s surface was smooth at first, but then my fingers dipped.
A tiny groove.
Another.
And another.
I froze.
“Hold on,” I murmured.
Vincent ignored me, still muttering curses under his breath. Melanie had wrapped her arms around herself, retreating into that shell she slipped into whenever anyone looked too closely.
But I crouched.
Those grooves weren’t random, they formed a pattern. The marble was carved with what looked like faint, branching lines. At first glance, they resembled cracks, but… the spacing was too intentional. Too rhythmic.
Veins. Marble veins. Numbers sleeping within.
The parchment wasn’t the only clue.
It was the surface waiting for whatever hid here.
“Vincent,” I called.
Nothing.
“Vincent,” I snapped this time, loud enough to slice through his tantrum.
He turned sharply. “What now? Want to check if the statue shadow sleeps too?”
“Come here.”
He stomped toward me, irritation radiating off him.
I pressed my fingertips along the carved lines. “These veins… they run like… like paths.”
Melanie stepped closer. Her eyes narrowed, her breath hitching in a soft, stunned way. “Those aren’t natural stone fractures. Someone carved those in.”
“And the parchment is blank,” I said, “because the map isn’t written on it.”
Vincent blinked. “Then what’s the point of the damn paper?”
“Hold it over the marble,” I said.
They exchanged looks. Melanie took the parchment from me, hesitant, as though afraid it might crumble, and held it over the plinth. At first, nothing happened.
Vincent scoffed. “Great. Amazing. Incredible. All that build-up for…”
Then the ink bled.
It began as the barest shimmer, thin golden threads blooming beneath the parchment surface, twisting into shapes. Melanie gasped and nearly dropped it. Vincent caught it just in time.
Lines formed, dense, coiling, ghostly like veins of lightning trapped under glass. Then the shapes sharpened, corridors, stairwells, the circular courtyard, the bell tower.
A map.
The map of Gravenmoor Academy.
And at its center, an icon like a tiny inked quill, crossed by a sunbeam.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “It’s a solar map.”
“The clue said when the clock and compass agree,” Melanie murmured. “The sundials, the shadow, the numbers, they all point to… here.”
She traced a trembling finger over the symbol.
“Lexie,” she said softly. “The chapel.”