Imogen stood frozen.
Before her, hunched in the dark, was a figure—tall, thin, trembling in the flickering red light. It looked like Julian. Or at least, something wearing his shape.
Its head twitched.
Its shoulders rose with a shallow, ragged breath.
Imogen's throat tightened. She took a step back—
The figure took one forward.
She stopped. So did it.
The silence between them was loud, oppressive, like the hallway itself was holding its breath.
"...Who are you?" she whispered, her voice shaking.
"Where's Julian?"
The figure didn't answer. It tilted its head, slowly, almost curiously—like it hadn't heard a question in years.
Or worse—
Like it remembered the answer too well.
The figure took another step, and this time its foot scraped unnaturally against the floor—too slow, too deliberate.
Something told her to run. But her feet wouldn't listen.
The figure raised its head.
No eyes.
No face.
Just a smear—a vague suggestion of Julian's features, stretched and unfocused, as if he'd been remembered wrong by a broken mirror.
Then it spoke.
Not aloud.
Inside her.
"I am what he left behind."
The voice was cold.
Not cruel.
Worse—empty. Like it didn't care if it hurt her or comforted her.
Imogen felt the words root into her skull, curling like frostbite in her thoughts.
"I don't understand," she said, though she already felt she did.
"You shouldn't have come."
The figure twitched violently, then steadied.
And from beneath its chest, a faint, metallic ticking began—familiar, fractured, Julian's watch—tick… tick… tick… in reverse.
"You came for him… but what if he came here for you?"
The lights flickered.
A dozen whispers poured from the walls like smoke, whispering her name—
Imogen… Imogen… Imogen…
And the figure smiled.
Though it had no mouth.
Imogen, without thinking, reached for her journal.
The creature—until now disturbingly calm—hesitated.
It flinched.
A single step backward. Subtle, but instinctive.
Its eyeless face somehow narrowed, as if squinting despite the absence of eyes. A tension filled the air, like static caught between two mirrors trying not to reflect one another.
The journal—her mother's journal, now singed with flame and marked by the Veil—felt heavier in her hands. Warmer. Almost alive.
Something inside it stirred.
And the creature tilted its head, just slightly, as if it recognized that movement too.
As she pulled the singed journal from her coat, a strange, pulsing heat radiated from the ashen pages. Not searing—but deep, rhythmic, like a second heartbeat in her palms.
The air between her and the creature thickened. The heat climbed. The world around them seemed to pulse, like something ancient inhaling for the first time in centuries.
And within her—something broke.
A buried chain. A sealed door. The soft cracking of something that had been held down for too long.
Rage.
Not screaming rage, but slow, dense, consuming. Her thoughts, once fluid and clear, clouded like water tainted with red dye—thickening, darkening.
The fear she'd felt for Julian, the helpless panic of not knowing what this place was or what this thing had done… it all collapsed into a single, molten need:
Answers.
She took a step forward, journal clenched in both hands like a blade.
"I don't care what you are," she said. "You're going to tell me where he is."
The being tilted its head again, slow and deliberate, as if weighing invisible options in the dark.
Then it spoke—quiet, almost curious.
"Do you even know?"
"Do you even know what you're holding?"
"Do you even know how to use it?"
Its voice thinned, stretched like wire—mocking, but also… cautious.
Then, slowly, it began to straighten from its hunched posture. Vertebrae cracked like brittle glass. It didn't flinch. Didn't care. It broke itself on purpose.
First the arms—
CRACK.
They bent, contorted, elongating with grotesque pops, the joints shifting to impossible angles. Then the torso twisted, bones snapping audibly beneath stretching flesh. The legs followed, shuddering backward, bending like the hind limbs of some predatory beast.
From barely over a meter tall, it grew.
One and a half.
Then two.
Then taller.
What stood before her now only resembled something human. Barely.
A towering figure of distortion and mock memory. A monster made not of flesh, but of impressions—what a person might look like if remembered only through fear and guilt.
As if reacting to the creature's twisted form, the journal in Imogen's hands snapped open. Pages fluttered in a frenzy, rifling like they were caught in a storm no one else could feel.
A glow bled from the paper—flickering orange, deep red, the color of coals stirred in the dark.
Heat licked her fingers. Not from the journal, but from inside her. That rage—that buried, corrosive fury—began to boil. Slowly. Violently. Seeking a way out like pressure behind glass.
Her breath caught. Her thoughts twisted.
It felt like claws were scraping along the inside of her skull—trying to break through.
Then, beneath the roar of blood in her ears, she heard it.
A voice.
Not loud. Not even clear. Just deep. Ancient.
Let go.
Whispered once.
Then again.
Let go… let go… let go…
Repeating—over and over—like a broken tape recorder skipping on the same damaged groove. Each repetition sank deeper into her, like it knew the corners of her mind better than she did.
The creature stood watching—silent now, still in its monstrous form.
Almost like it recognized what was happening.
And feared it.
And then—
She let go.
Not of the journal.
Not of her fear.
But of the grip she'd kept on herself for so long.
That iron vice on her emotions—the years of swallowing anger, of bottling screams, of pretending her mother's death didn't hollow her—snapped. And what poured out wasn't a scream or a cry.
It was fire.
The journal ignited in her hands—not burning, not consuming, but becoming. Flames coiled around her arms like ribbons, like serpents made of smoke and memory. The heat didn't hurt—it belonged.
Her eyes snapped open. She wasn't just looking anymore—she was seeing. Through the shadows. Past the Veil she didn't yet understand. Into something deeper, something ancient that recognized her fury and called it by name.
A voice—this one hers, but also not—spoke from her lips, low and rough like the crackling of embers:
"I accept."
The creature reared back.
Its grin vanished.
And the air split.
From the journal, a shape rose—burning bright and shapeless at first, then coalescing into a sigil formed of ash and fire. A brand older than language. It hovered over her heart, then sank in, searing its mark inside her soul.
And just like that—
She was no longer unarmed.