The Blood Seal
Elara's lantern painted frantic, jumping shadows on the stone walls. The air in the lower vault was cold and tasted of damp clay and something else.
something faintly sweet, like forgotten incense. She was cataloguing the final sections of the Ravenswood estate for the historical trust, a job that usually involved dust, mouse nests, and crumbling ledgers. Not this.
A wrought-iron gate, rusted but still strong, had barred the way. It took her twenty minutes with the lockpick set she wasn't technically supposed to have. Beyond it, steps spiraled down into a deeper dark. Her professional curiosity had a stubborn, stupid streak.
The chamber was circular, a stone throat. And in its center, resting on a dais, was the coffin.
It called to her, not with a voice, but with a gravity. She set the lantern on the ground, the light licking the carved lid. She wasn't a fanciful person; her life was built on verifiable facts, dates, and material analysis. But as she reached out, her fingers hovering over the intricate woodwork, a shiver climbed her spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
She traced a looping symbol, brushing away a blanket of grey dust. The wood was unnaturally smooth, cold as river stone. A second symbol, a jagged spiral, drew her thumb. She pressed slightly, feeling for a join, a latch.
Pain, sharp and sudden, bit into the pad of her thumb. She jerked back with a hiss. A long, wicked splinter, dark as the wood itself, had embedded deep. Blood welled instantly, a perfect, fat bead of crimson.
"Damn it," she muttered, her voice swallowed by the room.
She fumbled for a tissue in her pocket, but before she could wrap it, the blood droplet fell. It landed on the coffin lid, directly on the center of the jagged spiral.
It did not pool. It sank. The dark wood drank it in without a trace.
A low sound shuddered through the chamber. A dry, deep groan, like a great tree bending in a wind that wasn't there. It came from the coffin.
Elara stumbled back, her boots scraping on stone. The lantern flame guttered wildly.
From within the box came a soft, slow, dragging scrape. Scriiiitch. Scraaaaape. Something was moving. Shifting position after a long, long stillness.
Then, silence again. Deeper than before. A waiting silence.
Her blood hammered in her ears, loud enough to drown thought. She didn't scream. She didn't wait. She grabbed the lantern and ran, the light becoming a frantic dance of panic up the spiral stairs. She didn't look back. But she felt it—a new presence in the air behind her, a focus, an attention that had been absent for centuries, now sharpening to a point.
And it was pointed at her.