Chapter 1: Tithes to the Dead

Chapter 1: Tithes to the Dead

The smell of death was a cloying mix of wilting lilies and formaldehyde. It clung to the back of Kaelen ‘Kai’ Vance’s throat, a grim counterpoint to the scent of rain-soaked asphalt and old paper that defined Remembrancer Antiques. He shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his worn hoodie, the fabric a flimsy shield against the oppressive solemnity of the wake.

It had only been three days since he’d staggered out of the Blackwood Forest, mud-caked and babbling about a thing made of embers and rage. Three days since the clawed hand of living fire had seared a spectral brand onto the back of his own. The scar, a faint, silvery claw mark, tingled now, a phantom itch under his skin.

Everyone had called it a panic attack. The campus shrink, the city cops who found him wandering on the highway, even his landlord. Everyone except Simon Zhou.

The old antique dealer had listened, his eyes bright with a strange understanding behind his thick spectacles. He’d poured Kai a cup of scalding tea that smelled of cinnamon and ozone, and hadn’t once used the words ‘hallucination’ or ‘trauma-induced psychosis.’ He’d simply said, “Some legends have teeth, my boy. Be careful where you tread.”

Now Simon was dead. A faulty gas main, the official report claimed. An explosion in the night. The words echoed with a chilling, hollow familiarity that made Kai’s stomach clench.

He shuffled through the small crowd of mourners—stuffy academics from the university, local history buffs, fellow merchants from the city’s ‘Curio Row.’ They spoke of Simon in hushed, respectable tones, remembering his sharp eye for fakes and his encyclopedic knowledge of local history. None of them knew the real Simon. The Simon who kept a silver-inlaid dagger as a letter opener and who’d once told Kai that the city’s gargoyles weren’t just for decoration.

Kai’s desire was simple: to say goodbye to the only person who hadn’t looked at him like he was broken. But a deeper, more desperate need gnawed at him. He needed to see the photograph again.

It was a local legend, Simon’s most prized possession. The only known picture of the ‘Smoldering Hag of Blackwood,’ a grainy, black-and-white image of a tall, distorted figure wreathed in smoke, captured by a terrified hiker in the 1970s. It was the centerpiece of the shop’s folklore section, a piece of tourist kitsch that Simon had always treated with an unnerving reverence. It was the thing that had drawn Kai to the woods in the first place, for his post-grad thesis. It was the thing he’d met in the flesh.

He needed to look at it now, to confirm the burning coal eyes, the too-long limbs, the impossible, terrifying reality of it.

But as he moved deeper into the shop, past shelves laden with brass sextants and dusty taxidermy, the world began to… shift.

The tingling in his scar intensified into a low thrum, like a live wire pressed against his skin. The air grew thick, and the mundane world bled away at the edges of his vision. Faint, silvery threads of light, like spider-silk after a frost, clung to a tarnished silver locket. A deep, ugly indigo stain, pulsing like a fresh bruise, covered the floorboards where the main explosion had occurred. The shop wasn't just a building full of old junk; it was a humming, vibrant nexus of unseen energies.

This was new. A terrifying side effect of his encounter in the woods. This ‘Echo Sight,’ as he’d started to call it, had been flickering on and off for days, showing him ghostly fingerprints on library books and shimmering trails of emotion left behind by passersby. Here, in Simon’s shop, it was like standing in the middle of a screaming ghost symphony.

He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to focus. The photograph.

He rounded a towering bookshelf filled with leather-bound grimoires disguised as ledgers and stopped dead.

The wall was empty.

Where the famous framed photograph should have been, there was only a lighter patch of flocked wallpaper and a single, stark nail. A faint square of dust marked its former outline. It was gone.

A cold dread, sharper than the grief, snaked its way up his spine. Why would anyone steal that? It was a local curiosity, not a priceless artifact. Unless… unless it wasn’t just a photograph.

Driven by an instinct he didn’t understand, Kai reached out, his fingers tracing the empty space on the wall. The Echo Sight flared violently. Beneath the mundane surface of the wallpaper, he saw them: shimmering, razor-thin lines of angry crimson light, woven into a complex, circular pattern. It wasn’t a picture frame’s outline he was tracing, but a seal. A cage.

His fingertip brushed the nail.

Pain. Blinding, electric-white pain shot up his arm, a jolt like a thousand angry wasps stinging him at once. He gasped, stumbling back, clutching his hand to his chest. For a split second, the crimson lines on the wall blazed into view for his naked eyes, a web of arcane glyphs that burned with contained power, before vanishing as quickly as they appeared.

It wasn't a frame hook. It was the lynchpin of a trap. A magical landmine left right where the photograph used to be.

The pieces slammed together in his mind with brutal clarity. The missing photo. The magical trap. The convenient ‘gas leak’ that had killed the one man who knew the city’s secrets. This was no accident. Simon hadn’t died. He’d been murdered. The thief hadn’t just stolen a picture; they’d stolen a lock, and in doing so, had unleashed whatever it was holding back. They’d let the Hag off its leash.

And someone had set a trap for whoever came looking for it.

The realization left him breathless, his heart hammering against his ribs. The quiet mourning, the polite conversations, the wilting lilies—it was all a facade, a thin layer of normalcy stretched over a pit of lethal secrets. He was in danger. Just by being here, just by knowing something was wrong, he was a target.

He backed away slowly, his eyes darting around the room. The mourners were no longer a comforting presence; they were a gallery of potential threats. Who among them knew? Who was watching?

His gaze fell upon a woman standing near the front counter, the one who had been organizing the proceedings. She wasn't like the others. While they milled about in somber disarray, she stood with the stillness of a predator. She was in her late thirties, dressed in a black pantsuit so sharp it could have been tailored from obsidian. Her hair was a severe, chin-length bob, and her eyes… her eyes were a different story. They were dark, intelligent, and utterly devoid of grief. They were the eyes of a soldier on watch.

As he watched, she subtly shifted her weight, and the lapel of her blazer moved just enough to reveal the hard, dark outline of a custom-molded holster nestled under her arm.

Panic clawed at Kai’s throat. He had to get out. Now.

He turned, bumping into a stand of walking canes and sending them clattering to the floor. The noise cut through the hushed murmur of the room. Every head turned towards him. Including hers.

Her gaze locked onto his, and in that moment, Kai felt utterly, completely seen. It wasn't the pitying look of the cops or the clinical assessment of the shrink. It was a look of appraisal. Of calculation.

He muttered an apology, righted the canes, and made a beeline for the door, not daring to look back. He pushed through the glass-paned door and out into the cleansing shock of the cold, wet evening. The rain was a welcome baptism, washing away the cloying scent of the wake.

He was halfway down the block, his sneakers splashing through puddles, when a voice cut through the sound of the rain.

“You saw it, didn't you?”

The voice was calm, controlled, and close. Too close. Kai froze, turning slowly.

It was her. The woman in the suit. She stood just a few feet away, an umbrella held over her head, though she seemed utterly impervious to the chill. Her intense gaze missed nothing, zeroing in on the back of his hand, which he was still instinctively cradling.

“The trap,” she clarified, her voice like chilled steel. “You touched the warding glyph. Most people wouldn’t even see the residue.” Her eyes narrowed, a flicker of something unreadable—curiosity? suspicion?—in their depths. “What are you?”