May 20th, 2025
Hugo Hollands, Age 24
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The glass door of Christo's Deli reflected the street behind me—blurred faces, slow traffic, the gleam of bottle-green buses crawling through the heat. I stood on the curb, hands buried in my pockets, watching the faint pulse of the city move like breath under a fever. The air was thick with spice and diesel, heavy enough to taste. Somewhere inside the deli, a fan buzzed like a dying insect, stirring the smell of meat and vinegar.
My shirt clung to the back of my neck. It was black, the fabric worn thin at the seams. The same thrifted jacket I'd owned for years hung open, sleeves rolled to the forearms. Faded jeans, creased at the knees. Boots that still carried the gray dust of the scrapyard. My hair—dark, uneven, too long in front—shifted every time the wind teased it, brushing against the silver glint of my lip piercing. I caught my reflection in the window once more and barely recognized it: tired, pale, eyes rimmed red from sleepless nights, but somehow steadier than before. Maybe this was what determination looked like when stripped of grace.
The clock on the deli wall read 5:09 when I heard it. The distant growl of a motor, rising, cutting through the traffic's drone. My pulse leapt before my body did. The sound came closer—fast, confident, unapologetic. Then I saw him.
Rook split the street on that iron beast, sunlight flashing off the chrome. He slowed just enough for the engine to rumble low, like some caged thing refusing full silence. His bearded jaw caught the gold of the hour, his eyes hidden beneath the brim of a dark beanie. He looked like a man carved from the road itself—rough, permanent, smelling of oil and smoke.
He stopped right in front of me, boots grinding the pavement. "Hop on, kid," he said, voice coarse as gravel.
No helmet. No second thought.
I swung my leg over the seat, the leather hot against my palms. The moment I settled behind him, the world changed shape. The engine came alive beneath me—a trembling heart of metal—and when Rook revved, the sound tore through my chest like thunder splitting bone.
Air knifed my face, sharp and alive, carrying the scent of exhaust, baked bread, and something faintly floral from an unseen corner. The spring air was warm but merciless, clawing through my hair, tugging at my jacket like invisible hands trying to drag me back. My feet hovered inches above the asphalt; I could see how close they were to the ground, to ruin. Cars flashed beside us, mirrors shivering, horns bleeding into the rush of air. My heart rose into my throat.
For the first time in months, maybe years, I felt something like freedom—wild and reckless, stitched together with fear. Every breath tasted of dust and adrenaline. Every turn tilted the world around us, every tremor in the road sang up through my spine. I pressed my knees tighter against the bike, leaned into the motion, and let the city streak past in heat and blur.
I didn't think of death, not in the way I used to. It was just there, near enough to touch if I stretched my hand out. The line between alive and gone was thinner than I'd imagined, thin enough to tempt.
I closed my eyes for half a second, and the wind felt like it could peel me open.
The bike roared down the vein of the city, swallowing streets as if they were threads being pulled loose from the fabric of Ebonreach. Every turn scraped the air raw. I could feel the vibration in my teeth, in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't just speed—it was an animal rhythm that ran through the machine and into me, something old and merciless that knew no destination, only motion.
Rook said nothing. He didn't have to. His shoulders were wide and steady, moving with the engine's breath, a figure that seemed incapable of hesitation. I kept my hands light on his sides, not out of trust but because holding tighter would admit fear. The city peeled away behind us—lamplight smearing against the windows of narrow shops, laundry lines trembling like ghosts above the alleys, children's voices fading into dust.
We crossed the bridge, where the bridge draft turned colder, slicing through my clothes. The river below was a strip of tarnished glass, catching the last bruised colors of daylight. The stench of it rose in waves—iron, rot, and a thin sweetness of decay. For a while, I watched our reflection ripple in that black water, two blurred shapes chasing their own vanishing.
I tried to remember the last time I'd left Ebonreach. Couldn't. Every memory stopped at its border, as if the city refused to let me imagine beyond it. I'd spent years dreaming of escape, and now that I was cutting through the streets that had caged me, it felt less like leaving and more like being released from the body of something I'd lived inside too long.
The sky turned the color of burnt copper. Traffic thinned. We passed blocks of half-collapsed factories and dead shops where the glass had yellowed from years of rain. Dogs scattered at the sound of the engine. Old men watched from doorsteps with cigarettes hanging loose from their lips, eyes dulled by the sameness of surviving another day. I wondered if they envied me or pitied me.
At some point, I stopped trying to measure time. My eyes watered from the rush of air. My face was numb. My fingers ached from gripping the seat. The smell of gasoline clung to my skin. But something about it—all of it—felt right, like being scraped clean. The world had narrowed to speed, sound, and heat.
We turned off the main road and the world grew quieter. The asphalt broke into gravel, the sound changing from a howl to a deep, grinding hum. Rook slowed, boots brushing dirt. I could see it ahead—the skeleton of the old train yard stretching across the horizon, its rails swallowed by weeds and rust. The place looked abandoned by time itself, a graveyard of locomotives with their ribs showing.
He cut the engine. The silence that followed felt wrong, almost too sudden. My ears rang, and petrol haze hung thick. The last of the sun pressed weakly against the broken metal. Somewhere, a crow cried out, its voice echoing through the hollow carriages.
I climbed off the bike, my legs unsteady, head light. My heart still drummed against my ribs, unwilling to stop. grit lifted with each breath I took, catching in my throat.
For forty-five minutes I had been a pulse inside a living machine—now I was just a man again, small and breathing in the wreckage of what used to move.
The yard felt endless. Rows of rusted engines stood like monuments to something forgotten. The wind moved through them, carrying a sound that wasn't quite a whistle, not quite a moan. Somewhere between.
Rook stepped ahead, his boots crunching gravel. "End of the line," he muttered.
I didn't answer. My mouth was dry, my hands trembling with leftover adrenaline. The air here felt different—thicker, heavier, charged. It smelled of metal and rain that hadn't fallen yet.
If this city had gods, they stopped watching long ago.
And yet, standing there at the edge of the train yard, I felt something watching still.
"Can you wait for me?" I asked, voice half-buried in the wind still clinging to us. "To take me back, I mean."
Rook turned his head slightly, the last stripe of sunlight crawling along the line of his beard. His mouth twitched—almost a smile, but without warmth. "We only agreed for a drive to the yard," he said. "Not a round trip."
I exhaled, the breath sharp, tasting of metal and dust. "And how am I supposed to come back then?"
He kicked at the gravel with the toe of his boot, the stones scattering like loose bones. "You're going to the Highlands, right?"
My head jerked up. "What?"
Rook's gaze slid to me—slow, deliberate, cutting through whatever mask I thought I had. "Don't look so surprised. I'm not an idiot. I know exactly what you're after. I've been to prison, kid. Met a lot of your likes there. Men chasing ghosts, devils, power—call it what you want. Always the same hunger behind the eyes."
The air thickened. My fingers twitched inside my jacket pocket, restless. Rook wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, the smell of oil and sweat rising between us.
"But you," he continued, voice low and steady, "you're still too young for this bullshit. You think you know what you're doing, but you don't. Anyway—" he looked back at his bike, then at the dying light over the rails, "—you might not even come back. So why should I wait?"
"I will come back," I said, and the words left me faster than I meant them to. They hung there—thin, trembling, like they were daring the world to laugh.
Rook met my eyes for a moment—long enough to read the kind of lie that thinks it's telling the truth. Then he nodded once. "Give me the money so I can leave, kid."
Something inside me recoiled. The realization settled like a weight in my gut: we were far from anyone. No voices, no buildings. Just the field of rusted trains, the heat fading off the dirt, and this man who could break me in half if he wanted. The wind moved around us, dry and whispering, carrying the faint clink of loose metal from somewhere deep in the yard.
I swallowed, then pulled the crumpled bills from my pocket. My fingers shook as I counted seventy—each note softened and worn, like the hands that had passed them before me. I handed them over without a word.
Rook took his time counting them, the paper snapping in his calloused hands. When he was done, he folded the money and tucked it into his jacket. "All good," he said, mounting the bike. "Rethink it, kid. Hopefully I'll see you again."
He revved once, loud enough to stir the dust, and for a moment I thought he might actually wait. But the engine roared to life, and he was gone—vanishing down the dirt road, leaving only a sharp echo and the smell of burnt fuel behind.
I stood there a while, the silence pressing in until even my own breathing sounded too loud. Then I turned toward the empty rails and started walking.
The ground was uneven, scattered with nails and old glass that glittered faintly in the dusk. Each step carried the crunch of scale, the soft whisper of weeds brushing against my jeans. The last light bled out of the sky, and with it, the sound of the bike faded for good.
The road narrowed into a ribbon of stone, twisting through the plain like a scar carved by something too heavy to be forgotten. Each step sank into the dust, the air still with a silence that didn't feel natural—like even the wind had been told not to enter. The horizon lay swallowed in shadow, except for the distant outline of a mountain rising against the dark, its crown burning with a single ember of light.
I pulled the coin from my pocket. The metal was warm against my fingers, though the night wasn't. In the faint glow that still clung to the sky, I could make out the engraved pattern on its face: a coiled path leading upward, narrow and uneven, bending upon itself before vanishing into a pointed crest. I looked up again—the road before me curved just the same, winding through the skeletal trees, leading toward that mountain. It was too exact to be chance.
The trees stood like witnesses, their limbs stripped bare, clawing at the emptiness. Some leaned forward as if they'd tried to walk once and failed. The earth between them was ash-colored, cracked in veins that shimmered faintly with moisture. The smell of rot hung low, heavy, the kind that clings to the back of the throat until it becomes part of the breath.
The mountain was still far, but its presence pressed against me. The structure at its summit looked less like a building and more like something grown out of the rock—a cathedral of shadow and jagged spires, its highest point burning with an orange ember, like the last heartbeat of a dying sun. Storm clouds churned above it, not yet breaking, just circling. The sky felt alive, aware, watching.
As I walked, the sound of my boots against the ground became rhythmic, almost hypnotic. No birds. No insects. Just the faint echo of my own steps and the distant whisper of the wind threading through dead branches. The coin caught the last light, gleaming like an eye opening. I closed my hand around it.
Every few steps, I looked back, though there was nothing behind me but the slow birth of night swallowing the road. The world seemed to narrow with each breath, until it felt as though I was walking inside the coin's engraving, inside its promise.
The mountain stayed far, yet its shape grew clearer—sharp ridges, steep cliffs, and at its base, what looked like remnants of ruins. I couldn't tell if they were walls or bones. The light at the top flickered again, faint but constant, like a signal waiting for me to answer.
My throat was dry. My legs ached. Still, I walked.
Because something in me already knew: there was no turning back.
The road wound upward in slow agony, its stones uneven and slick beneath my boots. I'd lost track of time—minutes stretched into hours, hours collapsed into the steady pulse of my heartbeat. My mouth was dry; each breath scraped my throat raw. I hadn't thought to bring water. Or food. Just the coin, and the certainty that I'd run out of certainties long ago.
The mountain loomed closer now. Its base rose like the back of some ancient creature, black stone coiled in ridges and scars. The path carved into its side was narrow, spiraling upward in tight bends that vanished into shadow, only to reappear higher, smaller, more impossible. Faint lanterns hung along the trail's edge. They gave off a dull orange glow, enough to paint small circles of light in the dark, as if the mountain itself were breathing fire from within.
The closer I came, the more it seemed alive. The rocks didn't sit silent; they carried a low vibration. The sound wasn't constant, but rhythmic, almost like a pulse. The air thickened, charged with the smell of stone after rain and something metallic—iron, or blood.
Above, the clouds circled like they were being drawn inward, a slow spiral around the mountain's peak. In the center of that storm was light—orange, molten, burning against the night. It wasn't sunlight; it was something else, too steady, too deliberate, a beacon that didn't waver even as the clouds tore around it.
I could see now that the structure at the summit wasn't merely a ruin. It was a spire, jagged and severe, built from the same black rock as the mountain itself. Windows cut into its face like wounds, glowing low from within. The path led straight to its gates, though from where I stood, they looked no wider than a scar.
The trees here were gone—nothing but stone and cold soil. The only movement came from the mist that crawled across the ground, brushing against my legs before retreating like it had changed its mind.
I stopped once to catch my breath, resting my hands on my knees. My palms were slick with sweat and dust. When I looked up again, I saw how the clouds above the peak seemed to form a spiral around that burning crown, like an eye opening—watching, patient, waiting.
Every instinct told me to stop, to turn back before the path swallowed me whole. But I kept walking, drawn forward by something I couldn't name.
Maybe it was the coin still warm in my pocket. Maybe it was the promise that there was power waiting for me at the top. Or maybe it was the simple truth that there was nothing left behind me worth saving.
At first, I thought it was the wind—soft, uneven, slipping between the ridges like breath. But then it spoke.
It wasn't clear at once, just murmurs in the air, broken syllables carried by the cold. I froze where I stood, listening. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere, circling me like smoke.
He's come too far.
A woman's voice. Thin, almost tender.
Then another—low, grating, male. He's not ready. They never are.
My chest tightened. The road behind me was empty, only the fog rolling like spilled breath across the stones. The lanterns flickered, their flames bending toward me, as if drawn to the sound.
The whispers grew bolder, layered, overlapping—hundreds of tones speaking in broken rhythm. Words rising, falling, vanishing. I couldn't make out all of them, only fragments that pierced through the noise:
Blood-tied.Marked.He carries the coin.The boy who asked for power.
My hand went instinctively to my pocket, feeling the outline of the token against my thigh. It was hot now—burning almost. I could smell the faint tang of metal heating under skin.
"Who's there?" My voice came out cracked, brittle in the vast dark.
The mountain answered in echo—there, there, there…—mocking me. The mist shifted, curling in slow movements along the stones ahead. And just faintly, for the first time, I thought I saw figures in it. Spare shapes, human-shaped, standing far up the path where the lanterns swayed. They didn't move, but their edges shimmered, as if made of the same breath the mountain exhaled.
The whispers swelled again, closer now, brushing against my ear like the ghost of touch.
Keep walking, Hugo.
That voice—familiar. Not from the mountain, but from memory. A man's voice. Calm. Amused.
My throat closed. I took a step back, heart pounding, then another forward despite it. The air around me rippled, humming with unseen weight.
"Where are you?" I said, though I already knew he didn't need to answer. He was everywhere.
The figures ahead seemed to turn toward me in unison, their faces indistinct, eyes hollow. Then, just as I blinked, they dissolved into the mist again.
Only the whisper remained—low, deliberate, certain:
You wanted to be seen. Now you are.
And for a moment, the mountain seemed to breathe out my name.
The path narrowed to the width of my boots, cut into the side of the mountain like a wound that never healed. Each breath scraped through my chest, leaving a sting in my throat. My hands were scratched from the climb; my legs trembled. The sky above had turned the color of bruised steel, and the light from the summit pulsed faintly through the clouds, steady as a heartbeat.
Then I saw movement ahead—something slipping from the dark mouth of an opening carved into the rock.
A man stepped out.
At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, blurring the edges of him the way the mist blurred the stones. His skin caught what little light there was, pale and almost green in tone, as though he'd been carved from something that lived underground. Long, ashen hair spilled over his shoulders, touched faintly with rose hues, damp strands clinging to the hollows of his face. And his eyes—unnatural, sharp, reflecting the faint red glow from above. I froze when I saw his mouth. The teeth. Too sharp, too deliberate, glinting wetly when he tilted his head.
My stomach turned cold.
He stepped closer, one slow movement at a time, and the world around him seemed to breathe with him. The shadows stretched, then stilled.
But as the distance closed, everything changed. The edges of him softened, the light on his skin shifted, and the impossible faded. His hair looked only fair now, not spectral. His eyes—just a dull gray. His teeth, normal. I blinked once, twice, hard, but the vision was gone. What remained was an ordinary man in a long coat, his expression calm, almost kind.
Maybe the climb was getting to me. Maybe the air was thinner up here.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice low and unhurried, smooth in a way that made the question sound almost tender.
The sound went through me. My body felt hollowed out. My mouth opened, but no words came at first. I could feel my heartbeat in my hands. Finally, I managed, "I'm here with…"
I fumbled into my pocket, pulled out the coin, and showed it to him like a talisman.
He tilted his head, studying it. "Oh," he said quietly. "You've got a coin." He reached out as if to touch it, but didn't. "Who gave it to you?"
"A man I work with."
His brows lifted slightly, though his face didn't lose its stillness. "A man you work with. Does he have a name?"
"Deus," I said.
He tipped his chin. "I see." His gaze lingered on me a moment longer, eyes unreadable. "And you came all the way here with the coin… for what?"
"I—" I swallowed hard. "I want—I want to be good at magic."
The man's mouth curved, just faintly, almost pitying. "This is so childish," he murmured. "What magic?"
"Black magic," I said, my voice small, uncertain.
He shivered, or rather—it looked like a shiver, but more like something passing through him. His shoulders shook, then a sound left him, soft at first, then rising into laughter. It wasn't loud. It didn't echo. It was the kind of laugh that belonged in a room with walls, not on an open mountain. It stayed close to the body, trapped, muted, like the mountain itself was swallowing it whole.
When it ended, he exhaled through a smile. "So you are here for black magic?"
"Yeah," I said quietly. "That's what I was told."
He nodded again, slow, deliberate. "Then follow me."
He turned toward the opening he'd come from. For a second, I hesitated. The air that spilled out from the hollow in the rock was cold and metallic, smelling faintly of wet stone and something burnt long ago.
Still, I followed.
The path narrowed even more as we climbed, twisting upward toward the crown of the mountain. The light above flickered across the edges of the cliffs, and the ground beneath my boots felt less like rock and more like something alive—breathing, shifting faintly under the weight of each step.
The man didn't look back once. His stride was sure, almost effortless, as if the mountain itself bent to his pace. And though I tried not to think about it, I couldn't shake the feeling that what I'd first seen—the sharp teeth, the eyes that glowed—hadn't been a mistake at all.
Only a glimpse of what waited ahead.
The path curved into a hollow where the mountain opened its ribs to the dark. The man walked ahead of me, silent, his long hair brushing the collar of his coat, his steps soundless on the stone. Inside, the air changed—damp, close, rich with the scent of moss and something faintly sweet, like flowers that had long since rotted. The walls glistened with veins of moisture, catching the faint light from a torch lodged in the ground.
In the dimness, I could make out the shape of an old woman sitting near the back of the cavern. Her spine was bent, but her movements were deliberate as she rose, her long skirt dragging through the dust. Her hair was a web of silver and white, her eyes a dull, watery gray that still saw too much.
"Who's your guest?" she asked, her voice carrying easily through the stillness.
The man didn't look at her. "Not mine," he said. "He came here with a coin."
The woman's eyes snapped to me, sharp and searching. The color seemed to drain from her face, then return in a rush. "Someone gave you a coin?"
"Yes," I said, hesitating. "A man I work with."
The man beside me answered before she could speak. "Deus."
The woman blinked once, slowly, and her expression shifted—less surprise now, more understanding, as though a small piece of some ancient puzzle had just fallen into place. She stepped closer, her footsteps making the faintest scrape against the stone. Her presence filled the space in a way that felt heavier than sight alone.
"What is it that you want so badly, young boy?" she asked, her voice low but steady.
I swallowed, feeling my heartbeat press against my ribs. "Black magic," I said, the words trembling out of me. "I want to have the powers—to be like Igor."
At the mention of the name, the woman turned to the man. Their eyes met, a brief exchange that seemed to contain laughter, memory, and something older than both. Then she looked back at me. "What a pleasant referral," she said. "We love Igor."
I frowned. "You… watch Igor?"
The woman laughed softly, a dry, rasping sound that blended with the man's quieter chuckle. The sound didn't echo—it lingered close, like breath against my ear.
"You're so pure," she said at last, her tone half-admiring, half-cruel. "Yet something inside you is tarnished."
"Huh?" I managed, unsure whether she was mocking me or confessing something I hadn't meant to reveal.
Her eyes glimmered in the torchlight. "You're an August child, aren't you?"
"What does that mean?"
"You were born in August."
The back of my neck prickled. "How did you know?"
She smiled, slow and knowing. "So pure."
Then, without another word, she turned away, her figure swallowed by the deeper part of the cave, her steps fading into the stone like she'd never been there.
The man beside me exhaled softly and looked at me again. The light caught his face—calm, expressionless, but there was something beneath it now, something studying me more carefully.
"Follow me," he said.
And though every part of me wanted to stop, I did.
The walls of the cavern seemed to close around us as we moved deeper in, the sound of our footsteps merging with the heartbeat of the mountain itself—slow, patient, and ancient.