Chapter 92: Dead Hunter, Sam’s Diary

Chapter 102: Dead Hunter, Sam’s Diary Seven recesses, arranged left to right, each labeled with a day of the week, Monday through Sunday. All circular.

He thought about it briefly, then went back down to the second floor dining hall and found the round clock-face paintings on the walls.

They came away cleanly.

He collected all seven and carried them back up to the stairwell, lantern still burning, and came around to the back of the statue.

He worked through the rest: the pastry for Thursday’s afternoon tea, the bed for Friday’s liaison with the Marquess’s wife.

"Saturday has two hour hands, 6 and 7. The first scene is the gold coin, buying and selling children for money. The second is the skull, all those deaths on the battlefield."

He pressed it into the slot and waited.

"One day without a meal. Sunday, no eating." He paused. "Every painting represents a feeding scene. If there’s no meal, there’s no scene to represent."

"All those elaborate rules, and then the lock that opens everything requires breaking one of them. Interesting builder."

The stairwell shook.

The stairs swung through half a revolution. The upper portion, previously hidden behind the ceiling, came into view.

Raphael looked down at the lantern. The moment the mechanism completed, every trace of light in the crystal went out. Whatever arcane charge had filled it was gone.

He originally intended to leave it there, but since it might still be useful, he decided to leave it near the threshold on the third floor, just in case.

Whatever occupied the space in between remained unseen.

He activated Blood Frenzy before stepping through, the familiar compression hit immediately, his arcane energy pinned as before, but the Blood Frenzy had already engaged, and the physical amplification held at double his base functions.

Light came from crystals embedded in the ceiling, the same material as the lantern’s core, casting a steady pale glow over everything below them.

All of it deep in dust, and all of it degraded past any real value, centuries without maintenance had taken whatever worth these objects once held, and they would crumble at a firm touch.

Whatever material they were made of, it had not aged. No weathering on the surface. No patina, no cracking, no staining.

Near the doors, a dark stain on the floor.

A human, dead for some time, a ragged wound blown open through the chest. The heart had been punctured.

He crouched beside the body and searched for anything identifying.

"Bounty hunter. Independent freelance operators, contracted work. So he took the same commission from the vampire and made it this far."

"Who killed him? Not here. Maybe inside the doors?"

"Whoever hit him was strong, had a sharp weapon, and knew what they were doing. He started with the gun, that didn’t work, switched to the blade.

Raphael made a quiet sound. He understood now why the meeting room had gone silent when the vampire presented his commission, and why the vampire had looked genuinely surprised when Raphael accepted.

He wasn’t particularly bothered. He was going to find Alp’s Shadow regardless, this was simply one more thing on the list.

A small book and a drawstring bag.

He opened it. The first line on the first page read like a man settling his affairs:

The rest of the book was divided into Chapters, records of Supernatural creatures Sam had hunted across his career, species Raphael hadn’t personally encountered alongside ones he had.

Single-sex species, self-reproducing, talons extremely sharp, strong intragroup communication, social structure of a pack animal.

Sam had documented his reasoning process, everything he’d found and worked through, ending on a single unsolved question:

This doesn’t feel like an ancient ruin. It feels like someone built a game. Everything inside is connected.

That was the last page. The next thing that had happened was in front of him, Sam, dead on the floor, the notebook ending where his life did.

"Unexpected."

Not much, a single pulse, as if something heavy below had shifted.

Words written in dried blood on the stone.

Raphael’s eyes snapped to the nearest one.

The sword hit his guard almost simultaneously, heavy, direct, full-force through the air at his heart, striking his crossed claws and throwing sparks in every direction.

A knight in black armor stood before him. The same face as one of the two statues by the doors.

The impact had pushed against Blood Frenzy at full output. Whatever was inside that armor, its physical functions were running at Lv6 at minimum.

Footsteps, perfectly silent, from directly behind him.

Both statues. Both alive.