Tatras Mountains, Slovakia
Vešnica Castle does not appear in any official kingdom records. Its name only appeared once in a letter from a monk in 1711: "A place where music inaudible to the ear leads the soul out of its body."
I came not because I wanted to. A photo was sent to the editorial office where I worked—an old painting from the 1600s, where a noble figure sits in a stone chair. Behind him, a window overlooks the valley... and the sky is filled with strange symbols that vaguely resemble the Open Eye. In the corner of the canvas, it reads: "He hears through the silence."
Ludmila, the castle caretaker, warned me. "There are seven rooms. But the seventh room... never opens." She didn't explain why, but every night I heard a clanging sound—a chaotic tone, like a piano note played in a nightmare.
Father Alexei tried to exorcise the 'influence' of the castle, but every night, he himself would visit the seventh room, holding a bell and mumbling in incomplete Latin.
The night the snow began to fall, I opened the door to the seventh room. Inside, there was no furniture, only a vaulted ceiling full of carvings of eyes, and a floor that was wet like the skin of a living creature. In the center of the room stood a child—Pavel, an orphan from the village below.
His eyes were vacant, and from his mouth came a symphony. But not human. The music felt like the sound of a dead star.
Ludmila then showed me an ancient archive: a recording from an old cult called Silentum. They worshiped an entity named Azathoth, "the blind, the idiot, and the one who sleeps amidst the chaos of music." And among their worship symbols, one stood out...
The Open Eye.
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