11:59 PM
They found the observatory dome.
The ceiling had broken in three places, letting moonlight flood in like a celestial spotlight. The telescope had been shifted, pointed low—not to the stars, but to a corner of the room that was darkened. A single chair had been left there.
On it was a laptop.
And beside it—an envelope. It was smeared with blood.
Avery inched forward, fingers tracing the edge of the paper first. It was sealed with wax.
She broke the seal and unfolded the note inside.
Her heart thudded against her ribs.
"This is your move. The Devil's Lens is open. Sit, and he will speak."
She glared at Reed. "He's watching."
Reed looked around the corners of the dome, scanning. "I don't like this."
Avery hesitated. Then sat down in the chair.
The laptop came to life. Loading screen.
Then—nothing.
Then—a voice.
Low. Distorted. Edited digitally.
"You're just like her. Stubborn. Brilliant. Arrogant."
Avery moved forward. "Where's my sister?"
"Gone. Just like your certainty. Your control. Bit by bit, I will rip away everything you think you know."
Reed rose, but she pushed her hand across to keep him back.
"Why me?"
"Because riddles are only beautiful when someone is foolish enough to believe they can solve them. And you, Avery, are the most beautiful fool I've ever seen."
She clenched her fists. "You killed her."
Silence. Then:
"Did I?"
The screen flashed. An image—blurred, shadowed. A woman's face. Then another. And another.
Faces. Not just Alina. Dozens.
"Who are they?" she demanded.
"Victims? Or players who failed?"
And then the screen went blank. Another envelope printed out from a hidden slot at the base of the desk. Reed picked it up.
Coordinates. Once more.
But this time, toward a cemetery. Below the coordinates, one word:
"Dig."
***
The graveyard was older than memory, set between a collapsed chapel and the bony desolation of trees that hadn't bloomed in years. The kind of place where silence wasn't just present—clung there, adhering to the tombstones like lichen.
Avery hung back from the weathered gate, the wind playing tag with the bottom of her jacket as if trying to warn her off. She held the latest note. No mystery this time—just coordinates, and one last word, scrawled in blood-scarred script.
"Dig."
She said nothing. Didn't blink. The word vibrated at the back of her brain like her head had been made of a bell and the killer had rung the note.
Reed trailed behind her, carrying two spades he had taken from the trunk of the car.
"You sure about this?" he asked.
"No," Avery answered in a toneless voice. "But I was never given the option of sureness."
Reed let out a slow breath. "Then let's find out what this son of a bitch stashed."
They wandered over to the cemetery's rear where the coordinates had led them—a neglected corner, where gravestones leaned tilted away and lettering half-faded by snow and rain. Here it was colder. Still.
Avery kneeled at the edge of a long, shallow burial space, following the dust and lichen back from the lettering incised onto a cracked marker:
ALINA LOCKE
1996 – 2021
"She left questioning behind and vacuity in its stead."
She gasped for air.
"This can't be possible," she whispered.
Reed spun around, his face a mask of confusion. "This is her grave?"
Avery shook her head, her eyes wide. "She was never buried. No body. No funeral. The authorities declared it a disappearance."
"And yet someone provided her with a headstone."
Avery's eyebrows had furrowed into fists. "Someone wanted me to discover this."
Reed stood and handed her a shovel. "Then we dig."
***
The metal of the shovels digging against dirt became an insistent counterpoint to the din building inside Avery's head. Every push into dirt was heavier than before—no, not from exhaustion, but from the weight of expectation. Of terror.
The grave was too shallow. She saw that instantly.
Six feet never felt so short.
As the fourth foot of dirt caved under their fingers, Reed's shovel struck something hard.
Clang.
Both froze.
Avery knelt down, brushing away the loose dirt with trembling hands. Whatever was under it wasn't a casket.
It was a wooden box. Chest-sized. Weathered-looking. And bound with three rusty clasps.
She looked over at Reed. "This isn't a grave. It's a delivery."
Reed nodded once. "Let's open it."
The first latch creaked. The second snapped off with a grunt of effort. The third. stuck.
Avery pushed forward and, with the flick of her wrist and the blade of her spade, worked it free from the earth. The lid groaned up as if awakening from decades' slumber.
Underneath was a black, velvety lining, old photographs, parched pages—and in the center of the music box, a tiny, ornate one.
Avery inserted her hand. The photographs were old. Sepia photos. But the first face took her breath away.
Alina. Younger. Smiling, and standing next to her?
The masked man.
No mask.
Just. a man.
Dark hair. A scar above the brow. Unassuming. Forgettable in any crowd.
But not to Avery.
"Do you know him?" Reed asked.
"No," Her voice trembled. "But I'm sure he wants me to."
***
She touched the music box.
It was silver and etched with constellations—Orion, Cassiopeia, and one unknown pattern resembling a spiral.
"Don't," Reed said softly.
But she had already turned the key.
The box came on.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
A slow lullaby. Gentle, creepy. On the edge of love.
And a voice, Alina's.
"Avery, if you hear this, then I'm already gone."
She stumbled back a step. Her voice unmistakable—Alina's beat, her kindness, the tiny quiver that always appeared on her when afraid.
"I didn't know how far this would go. I thought I could beat him at his own game. But I was wrong. He's not just a man. He's a system. A design, he is death himself."
Reed knelt beside her, shocked.
"Everything you think you know about riddles—about puzzles—it's not just about logic. It's about pattern control. He uses the need to solve as a trap. And once you're in… he never lets go."
The melody slowed.
"He's got a name. I left it in the Spiral. Only the Spiral knows the truth. But how to get to it, you gotta survive what's happening."
Then—Silence.
A final chime from the music box, and it stopped.
Avery's eyes were wide with increasing horror.
"She knew. She knew it all."
"What's the Spiral?" Reed asked, grasping her shoulder. "What the fuck is that?"
Avery turned the photo over. On the back, in her sister's neat script:
"Spiral House. April 19. Midnight."
Reed drew in a breath. "That's three days from tonight."
"She planned this out before she vanished," Avery whispered. "She dropped breadcrumbs in case she lost her way."
Reed stood watching her. "But if she knew his name—if she had him—why not call the police?"
"Because it wouldn't have mattered," Avery said bitterly. "He doesn't live in the legal world. He lives inside riddles. He is the riddle."
She looked down into the box again.
And beneath the velvet lining, another envelope.
She opened it with trembling fingers.
Inside was a final message:
"There is a room inside the Spiral where the truth forgets itself. You'll know it when the stars go black."
And one more line:
"If you go by yourself, you'll die."
***
April 18th. One day until midnight.
Avery stood before the steamed mirror of her apartment, toothbrush dangling loosely from her hand. The bristles had ceased their motion. Cold water ran in the sink unremarked, pooling and bubbling, mimicking the chaotic whirlpool of her mind.
The Spiral House.
What was it? Where was it? The name didn't yield answers on the surface—but it felt like a cipher, a trap layered in metaphor. Alina wouldn't have used it lightly. Her sister had been many things, but careless was never one of them.
She wiped the mirror clean with the side of her palm and met her own eyes.
They were tired. Older. Haunted.
"You're unraveling," she whispered.
The reflection didn't deny it.