The Great Hall of Oakhaven was a mausoleum of cold glass and ancient, decay. It didn't just lack sound; it possessed a pressurized, heavy silence that seemed to push against the eardrums like deep water.
Elara Vance stood on the obsidian floor, the soles of her boots feeling thin against the biting chill of the stone. Beside her, her father was a frantic blur of nervous energy. Silas cold sweat from his upper lip, his fingers twitching toward the flask in his inner pocket. The scent of him sharp, chemical gin mixed with alkaline ozone of the estate.
"Keep your head down," Silas hissed, his voice a jagged whisper that carried too far in the hollow space. "And for god's sake, don't look at the statuary. It isn't polite to stare at the ancestors."
Elara ignored him. She was too busy looking at the man "the thing" at the far end of the hall.
Julian Vane sat upon a throne of jagged black glass, but there was no life in his posture. He was a monolithic study in white and gray. From the waist down, he was a solid block of translucent marble, the "Stonework Curse" having climbed his torso to turn his ribs into structural pillars of calcified bone. His left arm was fused to the armrest, a permanent extension of the chair, shimmering with a faint, pearlescent frost. Only his face and his right hand remained flesh, though they were the color of a winter moon, carved with an aristocratic cruelty that made her blood run cold.
He didn't acknowledge them. He was staring fixedly at a point somewhere above the heavy oak doors, his mercury-coloured eyes unblinking.
"Lord Vane," Silas began, his voice cracking. He took a staggering step forward. "I... I don't have the Dragon's Eye. The shipment was intercepted by the Macau syndicates. But I have the interest. I have the anchor we discussed."
"I did not invite you here to listen to the whimpering of a thief, Silas," Julian said.
The voice didn't come from a throat. It was a low-frequency vibration that hummed through the floorboards and up through the marrow of Elara's bones. It was the sound of a mountain groaning under the weight of an era.
"I know! But look at her!" Silas grabbed Elara's arm, shoving her forward. The friction of his hand felt like a burn. "I've spent twelve years priming her. The resonance infusions, the bio-tuning, the high-frequency conditioning... she's a pure-grade conduit. She'll hold the stone back. She'll give you decades of movement. Clear the debt, Julian. She's worth more than the relic."
Elara's jaw tightened until her teeth ached. Priming. Every needle, every cold metal table she'd been strapped to, every "vitamin" that made her skin hum with a restless, itchy energy....it hadn't been a father's care. It had been an investment. She was a battery he'd been charging for a rainy day.
Julian's gaze shifted. It was a slow, agonizing movement, his neck audibly creaking with the sound of grinding mineral. His eyes landed on Elara with the clinical indifference of a man inspecting a piece of livestock.
"She is small," Julian remarked, the tectonic rasp of his voice filling the room. "The stone will consume a creature this fragile within a month. You bring me a candle to hold back a blizzard."
"She's stronger than she looks!" Silas promised, his voice rising to a frantic pitch. "Just keep her. She's the anchor. Clear my name."
From the shadows behind the throne, a figure detached itself from the gloom. Kaleen, Julian's castellan, stepped into the sliver of moonlight filtering through the high, narrow windows. He was a man of sharp angles and even sharper eyes, dressed in a charcoal suit that seemed to absorb the light. He carried a ledger as if it were a weapon.
"The girl's vitals are... unusual, My Lord," Kaleen said, his voice a smooth, icy contrast to Julian's rasp. He didn't look at Elara; he looked at a tablet in his hand, reading the bio-data being emitted from her proximity. "Her thermal output is three degrees above the human norm. Her resonance is stable. She is, as the rat claims, a functional anchor."
Julian didn't look at Kaleen. He didn't look at Silas. He remained a statue of frozen mercury. "Leave her," Julian commanded. "And if I ever see your face in Oakhaven again, Silas, I will ensure your death is as slow as my transformation."
Silas didn't wait for a second dismissal. He turned and bolted, his footsteps retreating in a frantic, uneven rhythm until the heavy iron-bound doors slammed shut.
Elara stood alone. The silence rushed back in, heavy and suffocating. She slowly reached into the pocket of her jacket, her thumb pressing a hidden button on a small, black device stitched into the seam.
"Mina, I'm in," she thought, the silent transmission vibrating through her jaw. "The trade is done. I'm in the Great Hall with the Prince and his lapdog. The Prince is a block of marble and the castellan is a vulture. Start the scan on the estate's internal locks."
"Elara? I see you," Mina's voice crackled in her ear, barely a ghost of a sound. "But something is wrong. I'm seeing a spike in the dark-web auction boards. Silas didn't just dump you—he listed your 'live anchor' status on the open market an hour ago. He's running a bidding war on your coordinates."
"You are an intrusion," Julian said, his eyes still fixed on the far wall. "A noise in a quiet room. Kaleen, take her to the east wing. Secure her. I do not wish to see her, nor do I wish to hear her. Her only purpose is to exist within these walls so the stone does not claim my heart before the sun rises."
"Of course, My Lord," Kaleen said, bowing slightly. He turned to Elara, his expression one of polite disdain. "This way, Miss Vance. Try not to bleed on the rugs. The stone is quite porous."
Elara didn't move. She stared at Julian, her pulse thrumming with a heat she didn't understand.
Then, the air in the room seemed to fracture.
A spiderweb crack appeared on Julian's marble chest. A single flake of stone drifted to the floor, white and silent. Julian's pupils dilated. A sharp, ragged breath escaped his lips...the first real intake of air he had taken in hours.
The scent hit him like a physical blow.
It was Night-Blooming Cereus,a thick, honeyed floral that smelled of midnight and electricity. It radiated from Elara in waves, a biological anomaly that hit the cold ozone of the room like a match dropped in a gas leak.
Julian's jaw worked, the stone skin on his neck audibly splintering. He looked repulsed, his mercury eyes clouding with a sudden, violent irritation.
"She is... too loud," Julian rasped, his flesh-bound hand clenching into a white-knuckled fist on the armrest. "Take her away, Kaleen. The scent of her is a violence."
"At once," Kaleen said, his brow furrowing as he noticed the cracks on Julian's chest. He stepped toward Elara, his hand reaching for her shoulder to steer her away.
"Elara! Run!" Mina's voice screamed in her ear, nearly shattering her eardrum. "The tracker! Silas didn't just auction you,he left a live beacon in the lining of your jacket. The Fenris Pack isn't waiting for the auction to end. They're at the perimeter. They're coming to claim the prize themselves!"
A heavy, guttural howl ripped through the night outside, vibrating the glass windows until they rattled in their leaden frames.
Julian's eyes flared with a predatory silver light, even as a gray film began to creep over his irises, stealing his sight. He couldn't see her anymore, but he could feel her....a sun standing in his graveyard.
"The gates," Julian whispered, the floorboards vibrating with his sudden, cold realization. "Kaleen, the gates are breached."
The massive oak doors of the Great Hall didn't just open; they were blasted inward by a force that shattered the iron hinges. A wolf the size of a carriage skidded across the obsidian floor, its claws gouging deep furrows into the stone.
Kaleen drew a thin, silver blade from his cane in one fluid motion, but he was already being eclipsed by the shadows of more beasts entering the hall.
"Prince!" Elara shouted, reaching for the concealed knife in her boot.
"I told you," Julian's voice was a tired, hollow echo as he sat blind and immobile in his throne. "Do not speak to me."
"The wolves are in your house, Julian! And they're here for me!"
Outside, the forest began to scream, and the Dead Prince sat in the dark, his sight gone, as his new "anchor" was surrounded by the jaws of the underworld