Chapter 9

    The night pressed in, darker and heavier than it had any right to be. The city lay under a blanket of fog, its lights dim and ghostly, like the last embers of a fire about to die. I wandered through the back streets, where the alleys twisted in on themselves like mazes built by hands that had long forgotten their purpose. The air was wet, every breath dragging a chill down to my lungs, every step slipping on the rain-slick cobblestones.

    I hadn’t heard from Achilles since that night at the chapel, but his presence lingered, like the throb of a distant wound. There were whispers on the street, murmurs about a man who moved unseen, pulling strings, sealing fates. But there was something else beneath the rumors, something that felt half-hidden, like a memory just out of reach.

    I’d been following a lead, though I wasn’t sure where it was taking me. A name had come up—Halifax—and with it, the promise of answers. It didn’t mean much at first, just another dead-end word in a city filled with them. But as I picked at the threads, I found they started to unravel, pulling me down into places that didn’t feel quite real, didn’t feel like the world I knew.

     I reached a warehouse on the far edge of the docks, a hulking relic of steel and concrete that loomed over the water. The fog clung to it, wrapping its beams in a slick, greasy film. There were no lights on inside, but the faint outline of a doorway showed through the mist, a cracked line of blackness cutting into the wall. I hesitated at the threshold. The silence here was different, thick and suffocating, as though the air itself had settled into the weight of an old secret.

     I stepped inside.

     The darkness swallowed me. I moved forward by feel, my hands brushing against damp, crumbling walls. Somewhere deeper in the building, I heard a faint hum—subsonic, low, barely perceptible. It felt familiar, like a vibration in the bones, something that reached back to that night at the park, to the murmured warnings and the quiet promise of death.

     Then there was light. Not much—just a glimmer, a flash, like the reflection of a blade. I followed it, deeper into the warehouse, where the sound of the hum grew louder, vibrating in my teeth. I came into a large room, empty except for a single chair in the middle and a figure seated in it, motionless, head bowed.

     I took a step closer. The figure didn’t move.

     “Halifax,” I said, though the name felt wrong as it left my lips. There was no response.

     The dim light revealed a glint of metal—something small and sharp clutched in the figure’s hand. I reached out and turned the chair, and there it was: a bodkin, a thin stiletto blade, held loosely in lifeless fingers. Halifax—or whoever this was—had made a choice, though it looked less like an act of desperation and more like a quiet, calculated refusal. A veto of life, or of whatever awaited.

     I leaned in, trying to make sense of the scene. There was no struggle, no sign of pain or fear. Just stillness. And the blade.

     The hum swelled suddenly, filling the room with a deep vibration that made the walls tremble. I turned, scanning the darkness, but there was nothing there—only the sound, rising in intensity, pressing in from all sides. It felt like being locked in, like a galaxy collapsing in on itself, pulled into a singularity where light and sound twisted into silence.

     Then I saw it: a horn, mounted on the far wall. It was an old ship’s signal, the kind they used to sound across the water, but it was dark, unlit. The hum seemed to be coming from it, or through it, as though the metal was vibrating with the frequency of the sound. I approached it slowly, reaching out to touch the cold, wet surface.

     The horn blared.

     A deafening blast shattered the silence, splitting the air like a knife. The sound wasn’t just loud; it was total, a force that filled the room, shaking the walls, the ceiling, everything. It felt like the world was coming apart, each piece rattling against its neighbors, tearing at the edges. I staggered back, ears ringing, head pounding, and that’s when I saw him.

     Achilles. Standing at the other end of the room, just beyond the reach of the dim light. His figure was blurred in the haze of sound and darkness, but I could see the outline of his face, his eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made the whole place seem to shrink around us.

     “You’ve found the wall,” he said, his voice barely audible over the fading echo of the horn. “But there’s nothing on the other side.”

     I tried to speak, but my voice was lost in the pounding in my skull. I took a step toward him, but he didn’t move. He was waiting, like he always was, watching as I struggled to piece together the fragments of whatever game he was playing.

     “What do you want?” I shouted, though the words felt hollow, like they were swallowed by the darkness before they reached him.

     He took a step closer, just one, and in that moment, I could see it—the blood on his hands, still fresh, still wet, like he had dipped them into the lifeblood of the city itself. “It’s not about what I want,” he said. “It’s about what you’re willing to see.”

     The horn fell silent. The hum was gone. And with it, the light seemed to fade from the room, leaving nothing but shadows and the faint outline of the door behind me. I turned toward it, stumbled back into the night air, gasping for breath, the fog wrapping around me like a shroud.

     I looked back, but the warehouse was empty. The chair was still there, the bodkin resting on the floor where it had fallen, but Achilles was gone. There was no sign of him, no trace of the sound or the light—only the cold that settled deep in my bones.

     The city seemed quieter now, as though it had settled into a kind of uneasy sleep, waiting for whatever came next. I could feel it, in the chill of the air and the dampness that clung to the streets—something had shifted, or ended, or begun.

     I turned away, pulling my coat tighter against the cold, and started walking, not knowing where I was headed or what lay ahead. But I knew this much: Achilles wasn’t done, and whatever he was doing, he wasn’t doing it alone.

     The fog swallowed me as I made my way down the street, and the city’s dim lights flickered like dying stars.

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