Chapter 2: The Price of Knowledge

Chapter 2: The Price of Knowledge

The symbol was a splinter in Alex’s mind. For two days, they’d lived in the sterile glow of a public library’s computer screen, cross-referencing ancient sigils, alchemical charts, and obscure demonic scripts until their eyes burned. Nothing. The geometric nightmare scorched into the Camden alley was a void in the archives of human knowledge. It existed in only one other place: their memory, scrawled in blood-red ink on a page in a book Liam had called The Key of Penumbral Night. A book that had been consumed by the same chaotic energy that took Liam.

The desire for an answer had become a physical ache. The creature in the alley knew their name. The symbol was from Liam’s research. These weren’t random attacks from the Conclave; they were surgical, personal strikes. The Conclave wasn’t just an enemy; they were a ghost wearing the face of Alex’s past, and this symbol was the first word it had spoken to them. But it was in a language they couldn't understand.

That left one option. An option Alex detested.

Cecil Court, a narrow Victorian thoroughfare of antique bookshops, felt like a street out of time. At the very end, tucked between a seller of vintage maps and a dealer in first-edition poetry, was a shop with no name on its sign. The window was crammed with dusty, leather-bound tomes, a taxidermied crow, and a human skull resting on a stack of tarot cards. It was a tourist trap for goths and occult enthusiasts, but Alex knew the real business happened behind the beaded curtain in the back.

The bell above the door chimed a discordant, rusty note as Alex entered. The air was thick with the scent of decaying paper, beeswax, and something else… a faint, metallic tang like old blood and ozone.

“We’re closed to browsers,” a raspy voice called out from the gloom.

From behind a towering bookshelf, a man emerged. Elias was a creature made of tweed and suspicion, with a bird’s nest of grey hair and spectacles perched precariously on his nose. His eyes, magnified by the thick lenses, darted around, cataloguing Alex from their worn boots to their perpetually messy hair.

“I’m not browsing,” Alex said, keeping their voice low.

Elias’s gaze sharpened. “No, I suppose you’re not.” He gestured with a skeletal hand. “Back room. Don’t touch anything. Some of it bites.”

In the cramped back office, surrounded by stacks of precariously balanced books, Alex pulled out a folded piece of paper and laid it on the cluttered desk. It was a charcoal sketch of the symbol.

Elias leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. He didn’t touch the paper, as if it might burn him. He was silent for a long moment, the only sound the frantic ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner.

“Nasty,” he finally breathed. “This is a Conclave binding mark. Old. Very old. Used to anchor a piece of the Umbra to a specific task and a specific target.”

“The target was me,” Alex stated flatly. “What’s the task? What does it mean?”

Elias leaned back, a thin, predatory smile touching his lips. Here was the obstacle Alex had been dreading. Elias didn’t trade in information; he bartered it. “Knowledge has a price, as you well know. Especially knowledge that could get a humble bookseller like myself noticed by the likes of Magus Valerius.”

He knew the name. Of course, he did. “What do you want?”

Elias’s eyes glinted. “A simple retrieval. A collector, a Mr. Alistair Finch in Kensington, has a book that belongs to me. The Somnium Animus. It’s a small, unassuming thing bound in green leather. He is… unaware that its ownership is temporary. His security is mundane, but the flat itself has certain… esoteric alarms. Nothing someone with your unique talents couldn’t handle.”

A theft. Of course. It was always something that pushed the boundaries of legality and safety. But the hunger for an answer was too strong to refuse. “Fine. I get your book, you tell me what the symbol means.”

“All of it,” Elias agreed, his smile widening. “Every last detail.”

Kensington was a world away from the gritty alleys Alex called home. The apartment building was a monument of clean glass and white stone, with a doorman who looked like he could snap a person in half. Getting in the front door was out of the question.

Alex circled the block, eyes tracing the architecture. An alley ran along the back, and Finch’s flat was on the third floor. A series of ornate ledges, drainpipes, and window sills provided a near-perfect ladder for anyone with the right skills and a complete disregard for gravity.

Under the cover of deepening twilight, Alex scaled the wall. The climb was fluid, a silent dance of muscle and balance. They moved like a shadow, clinging to the cold stone, the city’s hum a distant song below. They slipped onto the small balcony of the target flat and, after a moment’s work on the lock with a thin piece of metal, slid the glass door open.

The flat was sterile, minimalist, and eerily silent. The air was cold and still, heavy with a latent energy that made the hairs on Alex’s arms stand up. The place felt wrong. It felt watchful.

The book was exactly where Elias had said it would be: on a small, ebony pedestal in the center of the living room, displayed like a piece of art. The Somnium Animus, bound in faded green leather. It was too easy. The thought screamed through Alex’s mind, a frantic alarm bell. Their impulsiveness warred with their instinct, and for a moment, they hesitated. But the image of the symbol, of Liam’s face in that last, terrifying moment, pushed them forward. They needed the translation.

The instant their fingers brushed the leather cover, the trap sprang.

A flare of silver light erupted from the floor, tracing a circle of glyphs around the pedestal. The balcony door slammed shut with a deafening boom, and another set of glowing sigils blazed to life across the glass, sealing it. The mundane apartment had become a cage.

Then, the shadows in the room began to move. Not like the creature in Camden, a singular entity of raw Umbra. These were different. They detached from the corners of the room, from beneath the designer furniture, peeling away from the walls like strips of old paint. They formed into sleek, canine shapes with burning, silver eyes—shadow hounds, constructs of pure magical will. They weren't born of the Umbra; they were crafted things. Disciplined. Purpose-built.

A low growl, a harmony of whispers and scraping stone, echoed through the silent apartment.

This wasn’t Finch’s security. This wasn’t some paranoid collector’s warding. This was a trap laid specifically for Alex. The Conclave knew they’d need the symbol translated. They knew Alex would be forced to seek out someone like Elias, a known player in the city’s occult underground. They’d anticipated the price Elias would ask and had prepared the bait.

Panic, cold and sharp, tried to take hold, but Alex forced it down, transmuting it into icy rage. They were being played.

One of the hounds lunged, its form a blur of animated darkness. Alex threw themself sideways, pulling on their own connection to the Umbra. A shield of solidified night erupted from their arm, deflecting the hound’s charge with a shower of shadowy sparks. The impact was jarring, the magic of the construct feeling rigid and abrasive against their own fluid power.

A second hound attacked from the flank. Alex didn’t have time to form another shield. Instead, they dissolved, their body becoming a semi-corporeal swirl of shadow, and let the attack pass through them. They reformed a few feet away, heart hammering against their ribs. The book was still on the pedestal inside the glowing circle. They couldn’t leave without it.

They were a rat in a cage designed by master exterminators. But this rat had teeth they weren’t expecting.

Alex stopped defending. They went on the attack. They didn’t just wield the shadows in the room; they became them. Plunging the flat into an unnatural, absolute darkness, Alex used the sudden blindness of their attackers to their advantage. They could see in this gloom, could feel the hounds’ positions as cold spots in the energy of the room. They flowed through the space, an unseen phantom of vengeance, striking with blades of void-stuff that unmade the constructs one by one.

With the last hound dissolved into inert dust, Alex stood panting in the center of the room. The glowing circle around the book remained. It was a prison, but also a puzzle. Smashing through it would be pointless. Alex took a breath, calming the storm inside them, and truly looked at the glyphs. They weren’t a wall; they were a circuit. And every circuit has a power source.

Their eyes followed the faint lines of energy running under the floorboards, all leading to a single point behind a large, abstract painting on the wall. A focus stone.

With a final surge of power, Alex sent a concentrated bolt of pure Umbra at the wall. The plaster exploded inward, and the fist-sized obsidian stone behind it cracked with a sound like shattering ice. The glyphs flickered and died.

Alex snatched the book from the pedestal, tucked it inside their jacket, and didn’t wait to see what else the Conclave had in store. They shattered the now-mundane glass of the balcony door and melted back into the London night.

Landing on a rooftop several blocks away, the green leather book a cold weight against their chest, Alex looked back towards the lights of Kensington. The adrenaline was fading, leaving a chilling clarity in its wake. This was no mere hunt. The Conclave wasn't just reacting to them anymore. They were predicting them. They had turned Alex's own desperation into a weapon and aimed it right back at their throat. The price of knowledge was far higher than a simple theft, and they were only just beginning to pay it.