Chapter 77 Chapter Twenty Four
Salem’s POV
It had been twenty-seven days since I last heard Lucian’s voice.
He never came back, and the silence became unbearable. So I came back here. Back to the mansion. It was stupid, maybe even dangerous. But I couldn’t stay away.
Every night I dreamed of him, bound, bleeding, reaching for me through smoke. Every time I woke, my heart felt heavier, as if I’d actually been the one who’d failed him.
That night, I opened the front door, and the security lights flickered weakly to life. The mansion felt frozen in time. Everything was exactly where he left it: the coat hanging near the stairs, the half-read book on the coffee table, the faint layer of dust on the piano keys.
I walked through the hall, my steps echoing too loudly. “Lucian?” I whispered once, even though I knew there’d be no answer. My voice cracked anyway.
It wasn’t until I reached the western part of the house, the one I was never supposed to enter that I stopped.
That hallway was always colder. The walls are darker. Even the lights seemed weaker there, like the house itself didn’t want me going that way.
And maybe, that was why I turned toward it now.
The air thickened with every step. The silence here was heavy, a kind of silence that pressed on the chest. However, I was in such a hurry that I didn't notice the difference between the door Lucian led me into and this door in front of me.
The door to this vault was tall, black steel, seamless except for a faint insignia engraved into its surface — a circle of thorns surrounding a single mark that looked like an eye.
I pressed my palm against it.
Cold. Dead cold.
But when I pushed harder, it shifted, releasing a faint hiss as the lock disengaged.
The sound echoed down the hall, and I froze.
Inside was darkness. I flicked on my phone’s flashlight. The beam cut through the black, revealing shelves filled with strange artifacts, glass vials, ancient pages, and fragments of metal etched with symbols I didn’t recognize.
I reached for one of the shelves— a small jar, half-shattered. When my fingers touched it, the liquid inside moved like it was alive. It formed vague shapes, maybe eyes, before turning back into ink. I dropped it fast, the sound of shattering glass echoing like thunder in a cave.
And then the hum stopped.
A single slow creak followed, the sound of something shifting at the far end of the room. My light trembled as I turned toward it. Cold sweat dripped from my forehead onto the floor as I trembled all over.
And then past rows of shadowed shelves and fallen relics, was something supernatural.
A faint glow, blue-white, bleeding softly through the dark.
I moved toward it, pulse racing. My shoes brushed over pages scattered across the floor. The ink crawled alive, trying to escape the paper.
And then I saw it.
The pedestal stood alone, circular and smooth, carved from the same black stone as the vault walls.
On it lay a book — no dust, no cobwebs. Its cover shimmered faintly under the flashlight, like oil catching light, and every line of its spine pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
I froze halfway there, but something pulled me closer without my consent.
By the time I reached it, my hands were shaking. The book wasn’t old the way normal things were old — it looked preserved, almost sacred. The edges of its pages curled faintly, as though breathing. I opened it.
The pages weren’t written in any language I knew. The letters moved when I tried to focus, rearranging like they were alive, like they didn’t want to be read. Each line pulsed in slow rhythm, glowing faintly gold when my eyes lingered too long.
For a moment, I thought the symbols were forming words — my name, maybe.
I blinked. They changed again.
It was then I noticed something else — on the floor beneath the pedestal, faint etchings formed a circle. A sigil, made of interlocking lines that looked like thorned vines. And in its center, an eye.
The same symbol is engraved on the vault door.
>The Seven were born of sin and science. Each molded by the hand of their Maker—Dr. Elias Harrow. He sought not rebellion, but obedience and perfection.
The next few pages were darker — sketches of human figures bound in iron, diagrams of veins, hearts, and hands inscribed with strange markings. Notes written in an elegant, slanted script.
> Their rebellion cost them their lives. Their Maker sleeps no longer. And his Orchard hungers for their death.
I wanted to stop reading — but my hands wouldn’t move. It was like the pages themselves were holding me there. The ink pulsed faintly beneath my fingertips, the air humming low and deep, vibrating through my bones.
Then came the pain.
It started as a whisper — a low frequency in my skull, like the world exhaling. Then, suddenly, a flash.
White. Blinding.
The moment my fingers brushed the page, the air snapped.
Not wind — force.
Like lightning had just kissed the ground, and I was standing in its mouth.
I staggered back, but my hand wouldn’t release. The page clung to my skin, heat searing through my fingertips, crawling up my arm like a living brand.
“Stop—” I gasped, trying to yank away.
The book didn’t stop.
It closed and then opened itself.
Pages flipped on their own, faster and faster, the air howling with the sound of tearing paper and whispers that didn’t belong to this world. The glow turned from gold to red to white until it filled the room like a storm.
And then I wasn’t standing anymore.
I fell through light, through fire, through screaming. The sound wasn’t around me — it was in me, like every nerve in my body was remembering someone else’s pain.
\---
A voice tore through the void — smooth, cultured, and cruelly amused.
“Curiosity,” it said, almost fondly. “The first sin that damns them all.”
I froze. The sound didn’t echo. It moved — inside me, behind me, beneath my skin. I turned, and the dark shifted like smoke. A silhouette formed from light and shadow, the faint outline of a man in a long coat, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes burned white, too bright to look at.
“You were never meant to touch what he sealed,” the voice continued — lower now, each word thrumming through the floor, the air, the walls. “But then, you are not what he made you to be, are you, little thief?”
My breath caught. “Who are you?”
The figure tilted his head, studying me the way a collector might study a strange insect.
“You may call me what he once did,” he said finally. “Harrow.”
The name dropped into me like a stone in deep water. The images that followed weren’t mine. A flash of surgical tables. A man screaming while golden veins crawled beneath his skin. A sigil carved into a chest — Lucian’s chest. My throat burned.
“You did this to him.”
A slow smile curved across that almost-face. “To them, my dear. He was only one of seven. But he was the strongest and unfortunately, the most disobedient.”
Something inside me snapped. “Where is he?” I demanded. “Tell me where you’ve taken him!”
Harrow’s voice softened to a whisper, and somehow that was worse. “You think I took him? No. I merely built the cage. He chose to step inside.”
The room trembled — shelves rattling, pages tearing free and spiraling like ash. The pedestal cracked beneath the book, the script now alive with shifting light. My vision blurred, and I felt my veins light up — the same golden flare I’d seen in Lucian that first night he lost control.
“Stop—” I choked, clawing at my temples. “Make it stop!”
Harrow’s laughter — low and elegant — wove through the chaos. “You wanted to find him, didn’t you? Then open your eyes, little sin.”
And the world shattered.
White light tore through the vault, slamming into my chest. Pain bloomed like fire, not burning but consuming. My body convulsed — flashes, one after another — the Bone Orchard, blood-soaked snow, a black river cutting through marble ruins. I saw Lucian — half-kneeling, chains threaded through his wrists, his eyes wild with red-gold light. His voice — hoarse, broken — calling a name he couldn’t remember.
\---
I slammed back into my body with a scream.
My phone flew from my hand, the flashlight cutting out as it hit the floor. The room went black again, except for the faint red glow coming from the book. My skin burned where I’d touched it — faint sigils now glowed along my palm, matching the circle on the ground.
My breath came in gasps.
I couldn’t move for a moment. The hum in the room wasn’t just around me anymore — it was inside me.
Images flickered behind my eyes even when I shut them, Lucian’s face, the chains, the strange lab, Harrow’s eyes. And under all of it, a sound like a heartbeat, deep, endless, and terrifying.
I pressed a hand against my chest.
It wasn’t my heartbeat.
I crawled backward, my vision swimming, head pounding with flashes I couldn’t control. Every time I blinked, I saw another piece — a dark orchard of bones and roots, a shadowed gate dripping with crimson light.
And him. Always him.
Lucian.
Bleeding, bound, silent.
“Stop,” I whispered. My own voice cracked. “Please, stop.”
But the visions wouldn’t. They pushed harder, like someone was feeding them to me.
Light exploded again — not from my phone this time, but from the walls. The symbols carved into the stone began to glow once again, and I realized they were reacting to me.
The vault shook once, dust raining from the ceiling.
Then silence.
Total silence.
The book lay open before me again, calm now, its glow fading like an exhale.
My whole body trembled. I couldn’t tell how long I sat there, clutching my branded hand to my chest, my breath uneven.
The book lay closed on the floor, its pages scorched black. The shelves had fallen, glass littering the ground. My phone’s light flickered weakly beside me.
I was on my back, gasping. My throat ached, my skin slick with sweat.
For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. My ears were ringing. My nose was bleeding.
And then, slowly, I became conscious.
The visions, the images, the voices — all of it.
Lucian.
He was alive. Hurt. Bound. Buried somewhere beneath that place — the Bone Orchard.
I crawled to my knees, trembling, my voice barely more than a whisper.
“I saw you… I saw where you are.”
My reflection in the shattered glass looked pale, haunted. My eyes — they glowed faintly, like faint threads of gold shimmered just beneath the surface.
Something inside me had changed. I could feel it humming in my skull — like a new sense had been unlocked, thrumming and raw. Every shadow in the room seemed alive now. Every sound carried a weight it hadn’t before.
I pushed myself up, stumbled to the door, and leaned against it to steady my breath.
My hands shook violently, but my mind was clear — clearer than it had been in weeks.
Lucian was alive. And I wasn’t crazy.
The last thing I remembered before blacking out again was whispering his name into the dark.