Chapter 4: Echoes of a Friend

Chapter 4: Echoes of a Friend

Chaos was the perfect camouflage. Alex didn’t fight Isabelle Vane; they weaponized the gallery itself. With a desperate surge of power, they didn’t create darkness, but manipulated perception. For a split second, the obsidian sculpture at the heart of the room appeared to bleed black, viscous fluid. The twisted steel monolith groaned, a deep, resonant sound of tortured metal that vibrated through the floor. The crowd’s aesthetic awe curdled into primal fear. A woman screamed. A security guard fumbled for his radio.

In that single, manufactured moment of panic, Alex moved. They darted towards the emergency exit, a phantom in the surging crowd. But the Curator was faster than seemed humanly possible. She didn't try to stop them. Instead, she moved to intercept their path, a calm island in a sea of hysteria. A shard from the obsidian sculpture, impossibly sharp, detached itself and whipped through the air, fast as a bullet. Alex twisted, but not fast enough. It raked across their ribs, a line of searing, magical cold that stole their breath and felt like it was carving through to their soul.

Alex stumbled, clutching their side, the pain a nauseating shock.

“A souvenir,” Vane said, her voice cutting through the din. The smile on her face was one of serene victory. “Tell me, have you enjoyed the collection sponsored by Mr. Alistair Finch? He does so love to support emerging artists.”

She let them go. The name was the true attack, a poisoned dart delivered with perfect precision. Alex shoved through the emergency exit, setting off a blaring alarm that was quickly lost in the gallery's own cacophony, and disappeared into the concrete labyrinth of the South Bank.

Back in their bolthole—a grim, forgotten bedsit above a kebab shop in Elephant and Castle—Alex collapsed onto the lumpy mattress. The wound in their side was a clean, black line that wasn't bleeding so much as it was leaking pure cold, a chilling Umbral infection. They pressed a hand to it, channeling their own innate darkness to fight the invasive magic, gritting their teeth against the waves of pain.

Alistair Finch. The name echoed in the pained silence of the room. The resident of the trapped Kensington apartment. The sponsor of the Tate exhibition. The two events were not just connected; they were orchestrated by the same hand. A hand belonging to the Conclave.

Alex’s breath hitched. A memory, fragmented and sharp, pierced through the fog of pain. A rainy Tuesday, two years ago. Liam, hunched over a laptop in their shared flat, his face illuminated by the screen, eyes wide with obsessive excitement.

“You won’t believe this, Alex,” he’d said, turning the laptop towards them. The screen showed an auction house webpage for a rare grimoire. “It sold for half a million quid. To a shell corporation. But I traced it. It all leads back to this one guy, this reclusive billionaire collector. Alistair Finch. He’s buying up every major occult artifact that hits the market, all quiet-like. He’s not just a collector. He’s building an arsenal.”

The memory was a key turning in a long-rusted lock. The wound in Alex’s side throbbed in time with the phantom ache of the scar on their jaw. This wasn’t a new enemy. This was Liam’s enemy. The investigation that had consumed him in his final months wasn’t just academic curiosity. It was something more.

The Conclave hadn’t just stumbled upon Alex. They had been cleaning up loose ends, and Alex was the very last one, a living, breathing ghost of Liam’s failed crusade.

There was only one place to go. A place Alex had sworn they would never return to.

The journey to Bloomsbury felt like a pilgrimage into the heart of their own personal hell. Every street corner held a memory: the pub where they’d celebrated the end of exams, the park where Liam had first tried to explain the concept of ley lines, the café where they’d argued about the ethics of summoning rituals.

Liam’s flat was on the top floor of a crumbling Georgian townhouse. Alex’s hand trembled as they inserted the old key into the lock. They hadn’t been back since the day it happened. The landlord had sealed the place after the ‘gas explosion’ report, and it had remained untouched, a monument to Alex’s failure.

The door creaked open, and the smell hit them first—stale air, dust, and the faint, ghostly scent of the incense Liam had burned during the ritual. The room was exactly as they had left it. A crime scene preserved in amber. The chalk and salt circle was still a faint outline on the floorboards, a scar on the room that mirrored the one on Alex’s face.

Dust motes danced in the sliver of light from the grimy window. Art history books were piled high on a desk, a half-empty mug of what was once tea sitting beside them. On a corkboard, a chaotic web of newspaper clippings, arcane symbols, and hand-drawn maps of London was connected by a spiderweb of red string. At the very center, circled multiple times, was the name: Magus Valerius. Below it, a more recent addition: Alistair Finch?

The room was a testament to Liam’s brilliance and his obsession. He hadn’t been a reckless amateur stumbling in the dark. He had been a soldier preparing for a war no one else knew was being fought. The weight of Alex’s guilt shifted, transforming from the burden of failing a foolish friend to the crushing agony of having abandoned a comrade on the battlefield.

They ran a hand over the dusty desk, their fingers tracing the rim of the cold mug. They weren’t here for ghosts. They were here for answers. What had Liam found? What had he hidden?

Alex closed their eyes, trying to think like Liam. He was clever, meticulous, but also paranoid. He wouldn’t have left his most important research out in the open. They scanned the room, their gaze falling on the worn patch of carpet beneath the desk. A memory surfaced of Liam complaining about a loose floorboard that he was always meaning to fix.

Kneeling down, the pain in their side a sharp protest, Alex pulled back the carpet. Their fingers found the edge of a single, slightly raised floorboard. Using the tip of a pen, they pried it up.

Beneath it, nestled in the dark space between the floor and the ceiling below, was a small, unassuming black Moleskine journal.

Alex’s heart hammered against their ribs. Their hands shook as they lifted it out. It wasn’t a grimoire or a magical text. It was just a journal. They opened it to the first page. Liam’s familiar, slightly frantic handwriting filled the page.

October 12th. It’s real. Not just the magic, the artifacts, the history. All of it. The Umbral Conclave is not a myth. They are a shadow government hiding behind corporate shells and philanthropic foundations. Their leader, Magus Valerius, has been pulling the strings in this city for centuries. They’re not just hoarding power; they’re harvesting it. The Tate, the tube, the financial district—he’s turned the entire city into a farm, siphoning off emotional energy to fuel his control. Finch has to be one of his lieutenants, his acquisitions expert.

Alex flipped through the pages. It was all there. A detailed investigation, connecting disappearances, strange energy readings, and corporate takeovers, all leading back to Valerius. The research was brilliant, terrifying, and utterly hopeless for one person to tackle alone.

The ritual hadn't been a reckless grab for power for its own sake. It had been an act of desperation. Liam was trying to find a weapon, an edge, something to fight back with. He was trying to connect to the Umbra not to master it, but to understand his enemy's source of power.

Then Alex reached the final entry. The handwriting was jagged, almost illegible, scrawled in haste.

They know I’m looking. I can feel them. Vane’s people have been watching the flat. I’ve run out of time for research. There’s only one move left. The old texts all point to the same place, their foundational sanctum, their source. The catacombs beneath King's Cross. A place where the veil is supposedly so thin it’s practically non-existent. I have to try the ritual there. It’s the only way to get the power I need to expose them. The only way to win.

The journal slipped from Alex’s numb fingers. It wasn't an accident. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a plan. A failed, tragic, monumentally stupid plan. Liam hadn't been pulled into the Umbra by accident. He had tried to dive in headfirst, and it had consumed him.

The Conclave hadn't just murdered their best friend. They had driven him to it.

A cold, hard clarity settled over Alex, displacing the guilt and grief with something far more dangerous: purpose. The echoes of a friend had finally given them a clear target. They were no longer just hunting for atonement. They were finishing the war Liam had started.