"Some doors are not opened by hands, but by scars."
Lucas didn't remember falling asleep.
He only remembered waking up — standing in the middle of the room, notebook still open, eyes fixed on the new Stone atop the table. The third one. Three glowing marks. Three grades.
But he still didn't know what it meant to advance.
He closed the curtain. Sealed the new fragment in a container and hid it beneath the floorboards of his bedroom. This time, it wasn't enough to hide it from ordinary eyes. He needed to hide it from... ears.
Ever since the dream with the masked elder, Lucas had been feeling a kind of lingering echo. As if his thoughts were reverberating beyond his body. Certain noises sounded deeper. Phrases spoken by strangers in the street seemed like answers to questions he hadn't yet asked.
And then the call came.
It was Tavares.
— Lucas, I need you at a strange scene. Too much blood... and no key. Literally.— Where?— An old townhouse in Bom Retiro. Address is on the way. Just one thing: there's no body. But there's... something on the walls. You'll want to see it for yourself.
Lucas grabbed his coat. He could feel this wasn't just another case.
It was the next fragment.
The townhouse was on a narrow street in Bom Retiro, between an abandoned warehouse and an old shoemaker's shop converted into a storage unit. The iron gate was open. Two patrol cars parked out front, with yellow tape blocking the entrance. As he stepped through the gate, Lucas noticed how the place seemed frozen in time.
Weeds grew along the sides of the walkway. The windows were boarded shut from the inside. The facade's paint peeled away in uneven chunks, revealing older layers — as if the house had been painted over itself, again and again, trying to hide what it was.
Tavares waited at the base of the stairs.
— You came fast — said the chief, his expression grim. — You ready?
Lucas just nodded.
Tavares continued without preamble.
— What you're going to see in there has no logical explanation. We called a medical examiner, a forensic tech, even a university pathologist. No one can explain it. The amount of blood... it doesn't match the absence of a body.
Lucas raised an eyebrow.
— Blood, but no corpse?
— Exactly. No tissue, fragments, hair, or bone. But there's a mark. Something that... you'll understand better than we do.
They went up together.
The front door was forced open. Inside, the hallway floor had been covered with a white tarp, already soaked. The smell was heavy, metallic. Dried blood on the walls, floor, stair rail. But the strangest thing was the pattern.
It wasn't scattered.
It wasn't chaotic.
It was geometric.
It formed curves, ellipses, small circuits connecting symbols on the walls.
Lucas followed the flow with his eyes. The finer lines formed letters. Phrases.
And then he stopped in front of one.
Painted on the living room wall, in near-calligraphic strokes:
Lucas Yamazaki.
His heart thudded once — heavy.
Then again — harder.
He looked around.
— Someone wrote that with their own blood?
— We don't know. Preliminary tests show it's human blood. But we can't trace the DNA. The sample decomposes as soon as it's removed from the environment.
Lucas approached a symbol drawn in the corner of the room. It wasn't identical to the ones he had seen before, but... related. A split eye. An incomplete spiral. Below it, an object.
A key.
Tavares pointed.
— That was there, on the floor. No one touched it. Figured it was your kind of thing.
Lucas picked it up with gloves. It was old, bronze, worn at the edges. At the center of the base, a shallow carving: the same broken symbol from the wall.
But a piece was missing.
As if the key had been snapped in half.
Lucas knelt, inspecting it closely.
On the side of the key, letters were finely etched:
"Door 12 – Western Vigil"
His skin tingled.
"Vigil."
The same word spoken by the masked elder in the dream.
The same word carved on the Grade Stone.
Lucas pocketed the key.
Then said simply:
— Don't let anyone touch this. I need a copy of the townhouse's blueprints. And access to the basement. Now.
Tavares stared for a moment, then gave in.
— It's down there. But... you're not going to like what you see.
Lucas descended with his flashlight.
And what he saw made time stop.
At the center of the basement was a shattered mirror — its cracks forming... the Path's symbol.
And around it, nine markings carved into the floor.
As if someone — or something — had tried to open a door.
With blood.
Seated at the back of a patrol car, Lucas unfolded the blueprints across the hood. Morning light filtered through the clouds, but the world around him felt suspended. Every line on the paper seemed to scream a forgotten detail.
The original construction from 1924 showed two simple floors, five main rooms, a narrow attic, and a small basement used only for storage. But what Lucas saw, comparing the current structure with his own notes, didn't match.
— Tavares — he called, firmly. — That room where the symbol appeared... doesn't exist on the original plans.
The chief stepped closer.
— What do you mean?
— Look. Here, there should only be the basement space. No side room. But in the actual structure, there's a door to the left, behind a false wall. Which means someone renovated or... it appeared later.
Tavares frowned.
— And the owner?
— Dead. No direct heirs. The house was listed under something called "Círculo Patrimonial R. M." — which, by the way, has no active registration with the Federal Revenue.
Lucas had heard of this setup before. Phantom entities. Circles or orders that bought properties to hide what time refused to keep.
He descended to the basement again.
The mirror was still there, now covered with a tarp. But there was a sound... now there was a sound.
Low.
Vibrating behind the wall.
Lucas moved to the left corner of the basement, where the old plaster covered masonry of unusual thickness. He touched it with his fingertips.
The sound was... internal.
A kind of hollow pulse, like the echo of a drop in a sealed well.
He took a tool from his backpack. Carefully peeled away the plaster.
And there it was.
A cast iron door, old, with rusted bolts. No handle. No visible keyhole.
But at its center...
A carving.
Identical to the one on the key he carried.
Lucas pulled it from his bag. Stepped closer.
The key trembled slightly in his hand. Warm. Vibrant.
He inserted it into the carving.
It didn't turn.
But it reacted.
The door exhaled a faint white mist through its seams, as if it breathed. A deep hum filled the room for a few seconds — audible only to him.
And then, all went silent.
The door didn't open.
The key dimmed.
But the message was clear.
The key belonged to that door.
Lucas stepped back.
On the wall beside him, new cracks had formed — where a thin line of fresh blood began to trickle.
And in it, a handwritten word began to form, drop by drop:
"Fragment Four."
Lucas pointed his phone's camera at the wall where the blood had written "Fragment Four." The liquid still flowed — thick, alive, as if freshly created.
He took the first photo.
The image turned black.
Tried again.
This time, the photo showed only the wall — no blood, no cracks, no carving. Nothing.
He tested with another forensic camera.
Same result.
It was as if the space rejected being recorded. As if it only existed while being seen — but couldn't be carried away by the eye.
Lucas touched the wall. The blood was real. It coated his glove.
But slowly, it began to evaporate.
Vanishing.
As if it had never been there.
Back at the precinct, Lucas secluded himself in the digital archives room. Using the false documentation from the townhouse, he launched a detailed search for the entity "Círculo Patrimonial R. M."
What he found was... disjointed.
There were records of properties in various states across Brazil: Bahia, Paraná, Goiás, Espírito Santo. Always old buildings. Always abandoned for years. All involved in unresolved lawsuits.
But there was a pattern.
All properties were acquired between 1999 and 2004 — and registered by different lawyers who later died or disappeared.
In the lower margins of some digitized documents, Lucas found an identical signature. Small. In blue.
A hidden symbol like a stamp: a circle with nine dots around it.
The same diagram worn by the masked elder on his chest.
"Western Vigil."
He organized the data into a hidden file. Created a local-access-only encrypted folder titled:
"ANCHOR POINTS – GRADES OF VIGILANCE"
And began listing the locations:
Santa Inês Station – SP (Grade 1)
Estrela do Sul Hotel – SP (Grade 2)
Room 217 – Interior (Grade 3)
Townhouse in Bom Retiro – SP (Grade 4 – Incomplete)
He still didn't know if the advancement of grades was internal or tied to places. But he felt each site did something to him. As if it opened, extracted, amplified.
Then came the first sign.
Walking back to his office, Lucas stopped.
A sound.
From the deactivated bathroom at the end of the corridor.
A faucet left on?
No.
A voice.
Whispering.
His name.
Not the one he used now.
But the other.
"Kai... Kai... Kai..."
He pushed open the bathroom door. Darkness.
Phone light on.
As he pointed it at the mirror...
For a second, he saw his reflection facing away.
But he — the real one — was facing forward.
He stepped back. The image vanished.
Later, alone at home, while rewriting his notes, the sounds returned. A ticking that didn't come from any clock. A light footstep on the balcony, even though it was locked.
And then, a phrase written in charcoal on the back of his door:
"When sound becomes form, the Fourth Grade will hear you back."
Lucas was no longer investigating.
He was being prepared.
Lucas returned to the townhouse near midnight. Dressed in dark clothes, no police insignia. He carried only the wrapped key, a small flashlight, and his notebook — now more like a cryptic journal than anything procedural.
The city felt suspended. The silence between buildings was dense, almost sacred.
Crossing the rusty gate, he shivered. The house seemed different. Older. More alive.
He descended into the basement with the flashlight off.
The iron door was there.
But now... it pulsed.
Softly, like a heartbeat behind the metal. A red glow seeped from its edges, forming shifting patterns on the dirt floor.
Lucas pulled out the key.
It was already hot.
As he brought it near the carving, the door groaned — not opening, but listening.
A deep sound echoed through the walls. Not of opening. But of a question.
"What do you offer to the next grade?"
The voice didn't come from outside.
It was inside him.
Lucas swallowed hard. No witnesses. No recorder. No ally.
He pulled a blade from his pocket.
Sliced his palm.
Blood dripped to the floor, touching the red patterns.
The door trembled.
Drops rose from the floor, suspended, spiraling in the air.
The key turned on its own.
And the door... opened.
Inside, there were no walls like before.
The house's structure was gone.
Lucas now stood in a circular room of living stone. The rocks pulsed beneath his feet, as if breathing. Nine archways extended around him, each marked with a different inscription.
At the center, a twisted iron chair.
And on it...
A being.
Humanoid. But far too tall.
Wearing a white mask marked with four vertical lines.
Its garments were veils of black, stitched with silver threads.
It didn't speak with its mouth.
But its voice filled the air.
"You advanced three times without dying. That already says something."
Lucas' hands trembled.
"But advancement is not conquest. It is surrender.Each grade requires a piece of what you least want to lose."
From the ground, a stone altar rose.
Upon it... a memory.
Lucas' mother, smiling.
The same moment he always recalled for peace.
The voice continued:
"The Fourth Grade demands that your hearing be greater than your desire for comfort.This memory... will be sealed.You will see it, but not feel it.You will remember it, but it will no longer heal you."
Lucas collapsed to his knees.
— This is torture — he whispered.
"It is sacrifice. The same others made before you.Listening is the most dangerous door."
He looked at the altar. Tears streamed down his face.
But the Third Grade Stone burned in his chest.
He stood up.
And said:
— I accept.
The ground trembled.
All nine archways lit up for a second.
And the Stone with four marks appeared in his hand, spinning in the air like a tiny satellite of light.
The masked being vanished without a sound.
And the room... began to collapse.
Lucas ran to the now-open door and leapt outside before everything crumbled into dust.
When he looked back...
The townhouse was gone.
In its place, a vacant lot.
And a single word written on the ground:
"Listen."
Lucas woke on his own couch.
The clock read 5:48 a.m.
The city still slept.
There was dirt on his clothes. Fine dust under his nails. And a fresh scar running across the palm of his left hand, stitched with fine lines — as if treated by a mute surgeon during the night.
He tried to remember.
Nothing.
He knew he had gone to the townhouse. Knew of the door. The blood. The being with the mask marked by four lines.
But everything after that... was fog.
That's when he saw the envelope on the table.
No sender. Just his name: Kai.
Inside, a flash drive.
He plugged it into his laptop, hesitant.
The video was only thirty seconds long.
It showed him — Lucas — standing before the iron door, key in hand.
But something was wrong.
He wasn't alone.
Behind him, in the video, a shadow floated. Something humanoid, but elongated. Faceless. Only eyes — many — like mirror shards sewn into black cloth.
The background sound in the video was a continuous whisper.
A single word repeated.
"Fragment... fragment... fragment..."
Lucas paused the video.
— This can't be real.
But it was.
The door. The key. The exact moment the red light enveloped his body.
And the eyes... the eyes that weren't his.
Later, still processing what he had seen, Lucas was called to the precinct.
Erick was waiting.
But there was something strange in his eyes. As if he knew something.
— We need to talk — said Erick bluntly. — About last night.
Lucas frowned.
— Last night?
Erick handed over his phone.
A different video.
It showed Lucas walking out of an empty lot at 1:12 a.m.
But in police records, that lot still listed as "occupied by residence."
— Where did you get this?
— Street camera. I was investigating on my own. Seemed like too much coincidence. Deactivated station. Isolated hotel. Room with voices. And now... a townhouse that no longer exists?
Lucas said nothing.
Erick crossed his arms.
— You know what's going on, Lucas. Or at least part of it. And now... someone's tracking you. Sending videos. Erasing houses. You really think you're going to handle this alone?
Silence.
Lucas hadn't meant to involve Erick.
But it was too late.
That night, at home, he dreamed again.
But this time, not of Stones. Nor circular halls.
It was of a woman.
Tall. Silver-haired. Skin dark as obsidian.
She wore ceremonial robes. Her eyes were closed.
But she spoke.
"The Vigil is not the only one.There are other Orders.And one of them wants to break you."
Lucas tried to ask who she was.
But he couldn't speak.
She extended her hand.
And in it... a black Stone.
"They don't want to stop your ascent.They want to steal your fragments.And to do that, they'll come through your friends.Your dreams.Your mind."
When he awoke, a new symbol was drawn in charcoal on the bathroom mirror.
A spiral crossed by four vertical lines.
And beneath it, the phrase:
"The Fifth is lurking. And it has already found you."