Chapter 2: The Empty Throne

Chapter 2: The Empty Throne

The fifty dollars felt like a lead weight in Thomas’s pocket. Mr. Baumann had insisted he take it, pressing the crumpled bills into his hand with a finality that brooked no argument. “A deal is a deal,” the old man had said, his voice a low rumble in the oppressive silence of the mansion’s ground floor. “You are here. You are paid.”

It wasn’t a payment; it was a shackle. Now he had no excuse to run.

They moved through the derelict house like ghosts haunting their own grave. Every footstep on the rot-soft floorboards seemed to echo into an abyss. Dust motes danced like frantic sprites in the weak columns of light slanting through grimy windows. Furniture lay shrouded in white sheets, resembling a lumpy, forgotten morgue. Thomas flinched at every creak, every skittering sound from within the walls, his hand instinctively going to the throbbing, grotesque bite mark on his forearm. The image of the dead Diener in the basement, his face a mask of hate, was seared behind his eyes.

Baumann, however, moved with a disquieting purpose. He was no longer the frail cobbler from down the street. He was a hunter in his element. His sharp eyes scanned not the rooms themselves, but the spaces between things—the gaps beneath doors, the patterns of dust on the floor, the quality of the shadows in the corners. In one hand, he carried a heavy iron crowbar. The silver-inlaid pistol was now tucked securely into his belt, its presence a cold, hard promise of violence.

“He will not be in the open,” Baumann murmured, more to himself than to Thomas. “The old ones, they are proud, but not foolish. They crave security. A place with one entrance. A place that is difficult to reach. A place where the sun can never touch.”

They searched the ground floor, room by decaying room. A parlor with a collapsed piano, its keys like yellowed teeth in a silent scream. A dining room where the long-forgotten ghost of a feast seemed to hang in the air, thick with the smell of mildew and regret. A library where books had dissolved into mulch on their shelves. With each empty room, a fragile, stupid hope began to blossom in Thomas’s chest. Maybe Baumann was wrong. Maybe this was all the paranoid delusion of a crazy old man. Maybe the branded corpse in the basement was just a coincidence, a piece of some other, more mundane horror.

“There is nothing here,” Thomas said, his voice thin. “Can we just… go?”

Baumann ignored him, his attention fixed on the grand staircase that swept up into the second floor’s impenetrable darkness. “Patience. A predator does not leave its scent where the cattle roam. It builds its nest high, away from the herd.”

The second floor was colder. It was a noticeable drop in temperature, a damp chill that had nothing to do with the autumn evening outside. Thomas’s breath plumed in front of his face. He wrapped his arms around himself, the pain in his arm a dull, persistent throb.

They passed several bedrooms, each one a portrait of decay. Then they came to the master suite at the end of the hall. The door hung ajar on a single, groaning hinge. Inside, the room was dominated by a colossal four-poster bed, its canopy ripped and hanging like tattered sails on a ghost ship. But Baumann’s eyes were drawn to the far wall, to a massive, dark wood wardrobe that stood like a sentinel.

“Here,” the old man breathed.

He ran a calloused hand over the dusty floor in front of the wardrobe. Thomas saw nothing but dirt and grime, but Baumann seemed to be reading a hidden text. He pointed. “Look. No dust here. And these marks… these long, parallel scratches in the wood. Something heavy has been dragged across this floor. Again and again.”

Thomas’s nascent hope withered and died, replaced by a returning wave of icy dread. He watched as Baumann wedged the tip of the crowbar into the thin seam between the wardrobe’s back panel and the wall. The old man grunted, putting his surprising strength into the effort. There was a sharp crack of splintering wood, and the entire wardrobe shifted forward with a deep groan.

Behind it, there was no wall. Only a rectangle of absolute, featureless black. A hidden passage.

A stale, ancient air washed over them, carrying with it a scent Thomas couldn’t place—something like cold stone, dried blood, and grave dirt. It was the smell of something that had been sealed away for a very, very long time.

“He is clever,” Baumann said, a grudging respect in his tone. He pulled a heavy flashlight from his coat pocket, its beam cutting a weak swathe into the oppressive darkness. It revealed a narrow, steep flight of stairs, clearly a later addition to the house, ascending into the attic. “The throne room.”

Thomas didn’t want to go up there. Every cell in his body screamed at him to turn and run, to flee the cold, the smell, the encroaching truth. But he was trapped, caught in the old man’s orbit, pulled along by a force he couldn’t fight.

The ascent was terrifying. The air grew colder with every step, a biting, unnatural frost that seemed to leech the warmth directly from his skin. This wasn’t the simple cold of a drafty attic; it felt active, predatory. The silence was absolute, a heavy, expectant void that swallowed the sound of their breathing.

When they reached the top, the sight stole the air from Thomas’s lungs. The attic was a cavernous, cathedral-like space, the roof arching high into the gloom. A single, grimy dormer window allowed a shaft of pale moonlight to pierce the darkness, illuminating a scene of profound stillness. Dust lay thick as snow on everything, but at the very center of the room, at the end of that lonely moonbeam, it sat.

A coffin.

It was long and ornate, carved from a black, veinless wood that seemed to drink the light. Tarnished silver fittings traced its edges, glinting dully. It rested on a low bier, a dark altar in a forgotten temple. Thick, undisturbed cobwebs draped over it like a funeral shroud, tethering it to the rafters above. It looked as if it hadn't been touched in a hundred years.

A wild, desperate relief surged through Thomas. It was ancient. It was covered in cobwebs. It was empty. It had to be. Ulrich von Strauss was a ghost, a story, a memory that had died in this box decades ago. The Diener in the basement was the last, lone worshipper at a dead god’s tomb. They had found the source of the story, and it was over.

“It’s finished,” Thomas whispered, a shaky laugh escaping his lips. “He’s gone. He’s got to be.”

Baumann said nothing. He walked slowly, deliberately, toward the coffin, his footsteps making no sound in the thick dust. He placed his crowbar and flashlight on the floor and pulled two objects from within his tweed coat. The first was a mallet. The second was a stake of pale, sharpened wood, nearly a foot long. The sight of it made Thomas’s stomach clench.

Hope warred with a primal, suffocating terror in his heart. He prayed it was empty. He prayed for this nightmare to end. But he feared the truth. He feared the thing that might be sleeping beneath that lid, cocooned in the dust of ages.

“Stand back, boy,” Baumann commanded, his voice tight. He positioned the point of the stake over the center of the coffin lid. “When I open it, you must not look into its eyes. No matter what you hear.”

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He heard the old man take a deep, steadying breath. He heard the faint scrape of metal as Baumann wedged the crowbar under the coffin’s heavy lid.

The true horror, he thought, wasn’t finding a monster. It was the moment right before you knew for sure. The moment you opened the box.

He heard a loud, groaning crack as century-old seals broke. The lid was lifting. He held his breath, waiting for the shriek, the explosion of movement, the final, terrible confirmation.

But none of it came. There was only the sound of the heavy lid thudding against the attic floor.

And then, Klaus Baumann’s horrified, indrawn breath.

“Gott in Himmel,” the old man whispered, his voice trembling with a terror that dwarfed anything Thomas had felt yet. “It’s empty.”