Chapter 2: Whispers in the Gloom

Chapter 2: Whispers in the Gloom

The angel’s condemnation echoed in my ears long after I’d left Mayfair’s sterile horror behind. Abomination. A stain upon the mortal coil. I shoved my hands deeper into my trench coat pockets, the worn leather a familiar comfort against the sudden chill that had nothing to do with the London fog. She wasn’t the first to call me something like that, and she wouldn't be the last. But hearing it from something so… pure, so blindingly certain of its own righteousness, left a uniquely bitter taste in my mouth.

It was the certainty that bothered me most. In her sapphire eyes, the world was a simple equation of light versus dark. For people like me, who lived and breathed in the grey twilight between, there was no room. We were just errors to be corrected.

Well, this error wasn't about to be erased. Not from his own case. Seraphina and her Empyrean Guard could have the official jurisdiction. I’d take the results.

To do that, I needed to know what that sigil was. My own knowledge of the occult, extensive as it was, had come up empty. That meant I had to go somewhere even the fog was afraid to linger. I needed to go shopping.

There’s a sliver of London tucked behind the brick-and-mortar reality of the city, a place you can only find if you know how to look away from what you’re supposed to see. I ducked into a grimy alley off Charing Cross Road, the air thick with the smell of stale beer and desperation. I ran my bare hand over a specific brick, one worn smooth by centuries of similar touches. A low hum vibrated through my bones, and the dead-end wall in front of me shimmered, the bricks dissolving like sugar in tea.

I stepped through the shimmering veil and into the Goblin Market.

The shift was instantaneous and total. The muted sounds of London traffic were replaced by a cacophony of chittering, hissing, and the melodic haggling of a thousand inhuman voices. The air, thick with the scent of strange spices, damp earth, and ozone, pulsed with raw, chaotic magic. My Nether-Sight flared, painting the scene in a dizzying kaleidoscope of auras—the muddy green of goblin merchants, the sharp, glittering silver of pixies flitting through the rafters of the cavernous underground space, the sullen, heavy red of a troll bouncer guarding a stall selling bottled nightmares.

This was the bleeding edge of the supernatural world, a neutral ground where deals were struck and secrets were sold. I kept my head down, navigating the throng with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly how dangerous it was to draw attention. I ignored the stall selling shrunken heads that whispered stock market tips and bypassed the gnome offering timepieces that ran on stolen moments. My destination was a small, shadowy stall tucked away beneath a weeping willow whose roots grew down from the cavern ceiling, its leaves dripping phosphorescent dew.

The proprietor was a Fae creature who called himself Flicker. He sat perched on a stool, looking like a praying mantis that had been squeezed into a bespoke waistcoat. His skin had a chitinous sheen, and his large, multi-faceted eyes, black as polished obsidian, tracked everything at once. A smile stretched his thin mouth, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth.

“The Tenebrous Hound,” he chirped, his voice like the rustling of dry leaves. “Slumming it with the common folk. What knowledge do you seek that you would risk my prices?”

Fae didn’t deal in money. They traded in far more valuable currencies: memories, secrets, favors, emotions.

“I saw a sigil,” I said, getting straight to the point. I pulled a small notepad from my pocket and sketched the jagged, intersecting knot I’d seen burned into the floor of the penthouse. I pushed it across the counter.

Flicker’s huge eyes focused on the drawing. For a moment, the ceaseless motion of his head stilled. The playful malevolence in his aura sharpened into something like caution.

“This is an expensive question, half-breed,” he hissed softly.

“Name your price.”

He tilted his head, his smile widening. “I will take… the memory of the taste of your first coffee. The real memory. The shock, the bitterness, the warmth. All of it.”

A strange request, but a small price to pay. I nodded. “Done. Now talk.”

He extended a long, spindly finger and tapped the drawing. A faint glimmer of light transferred from his fingertip to the paper, which then dissolved into grey ash. He closed his eyes, as if savoring the stolen memory from my mind. I felt a faint vacancy, a tiny blank spot where a lukewarm cup of instant coffee in a foster home used to be.

“It is the Mark of the Void-That-Hungers,” Flicker whispered, his voice losing its chirping quality and taking on a reverent dread. “The calling card of a cult known in the quiet places as the Hollow Men.”

“Hollow Men,” I repeated. The name felt disturbingly apt, given what I’d seen the shadow-thing do to Sir Alistair.

“They do not worship demons or gods. They worship Nothing. Oblivion. They believe reality is a flaw, a stain to be cleansed. They don’t kill their victims, Hound. They unmake them. They offer their souls to the Void, hollowing them out to feed the great emptiness.”

The taste of ash returned to my throat. Sir Alistair wasn’t just the first. He was a sacrifice. An offering.

“Why now? Why him?”

“Ah, ah,” Flicker chided, wagging a finger. “That was not our bargain.” He leaned forward, his obsidian eyes boring into me. The deal was done, but the Fae always offered a little extra, a hook for the next transaction. “But I will offer this as a professional courtesy. To ask about the sigil is to be heard by those who use it. They will know someone is hunting them now. You have painted a target on your own back, Sabre Harper.”

The warning hung in the air between us, colder than any threat. The Hollow Men knew I was coming.

I gave a curt nod, turning to leave. “Pleasure doing business, Flicker.”

“The pleasure,” his voice echoed behind me, “will be all mine to watch.”

As I stepped back through the veil into the mundane world, the chaotic energy of the market fading behind me, Flicker's words about ‘unmaking’ snagged on a memory I kept buried deep. The word, the concept, it was too close to home.

For a flashing, sickening moment, I wasn’t on a grimy London street anymore.

I am eight years old. The air in our small flat crackles, smelling of ozone and burnt sugar, the same smell as the penthouse. There’s a shadow in the living room, a place of deeper darkness that hurts to look at. It doesn't have a face, but I can feel it smiling. My mother is screaming, but it’s not a sound of fear. It’s a sound of defiance, of righteous fury, a name torn from her throat like a battle cry.

My own hands are glowing with a faint, terrifying amber light. Power, wild and alien, coils in my stomach. I feel a pull, a kinship with the consuming darkness in the room, and it petrifies me. Then, the shadow lunges, and my mother’s scream is cut short. There is a flash of terrible, silent light, and when it fades… she is gone. Not dead. Not taken. Just… gone. Unmade.

I slammed my hand against the brick wall, the sharp pain grounding me back in the present. My breath came in ragged gasps. The amber glow in my eyes, which had flared with the memory, slowly subsided.

This wasn't just a case anymore. It was never just a case. Every shadow I hunted, every monster I put down, was a proxy for the one that had erased my mother and left me with this damned demonic heritage.

Flicker was right. A target was on my back.

I smiled, a grim, humorless expression. Let them come. The Tenebrous Hound was ready to bite back. And this time, I wouldn't just be hunting for a client. I’d be hunting for answers.