Chapter 2: Echoes in the Penthouse

Chapter 2: Echoes in the Penthouse

The Finch Enterprises tower was a shard of polished obsidian stabbing at the perpetually bruised sky. Inside, the lobby was a sterile cathedral of white marble and brushed steel, the air chilled to a temperature that discouraged loitering. It was a world away from my dusty office, a place so clean and quiet it felt profoundly unnatural. Every footstep echoed. My worn trench coat and scuffed boots felt like a personal insult to the decor.

Evelyn Reed, now visibly regretting her life choices, navigated us through this pristine wilderness. She was a bundle of nerves, her professional mask cracking with every hushed word into the intercom and every furtive glance at the silent security guards. Her keycard was our golden ticket, granting us access to a private elevator that ascended with a silent, stomach-lurching velocity.

“He’s in a trans-Atlantic teleconference for the next two hours,” she whispered, her voice tight. “But the security system logs every entry. If he checks…”

“He won’t have a reason to, unless we give him one,” I said, my voice deliberately calm. “Just get me inside.”

The elevator doors opened directly into the penthouse. My first impression was one of cold, calculated emptiness. It was less a home and more a showroom for a man who had forgotten how to live in a space. Floor-to-ceiling windows displayed a panoramic vista of Slakterquay’s rain-lashed sprawl. Minimalist furniture was arranged with geometric precision on a floor of cream-colored marble that looked like a frozen lake. There wasn't a book out of place, not a stray cushion, not a single sign that a human being with messy emotions and habits actually resided here. It was the perfect habitat for the hollow thing Evelyn had described.

A shiver, unrelated to the penthouse’s aggressive air-conditioning, traced a path down my spine. The air was thick with a residue that felt like static on the skin, a lingering charge of something potent and malevolent. It was the same wrongness I’d felt from the pen, magnified a thousand times.

“Where did it happen?” I asked, my voice low.

Evelyn pointed a trembling finger towards the center of the vast living area, at an empty space between a low-slung leather sofa and the wall of windows. “There. He… he fell right there.”

I walked towards the spot, each step feeling heavier than the last. The ambient wrongness intensified, coalescing into a palpable miasma of psychic filth. This was the epicenter. The place where the hole had been torn in reality. I could almost see the stain on the marble, a shadow that no amount of cleaning could ever erase.

“Stay back,” I told Evelyn, who looked happy to comply, retreating to the relative safety of the kitchen entryway. “And don't interrupt me. No matter what you see or hear.”

I shrugged off my trench coat, letting it fall to the floor. Kneeling, I hesitated for only a second before placing my palms flat against the cold, unyielding marble.

Closing my eyes, I let the world fall away.

Fire and ice. Not a memory, but a psychic scream embedded in the stone. The sterile room dissolved, replaced by a vision of itself, warped and distorted as if seen through a heat haze. The air crackled, thick with the scent of ozone and that same cloying smell of burnt sugar and blood from the pen.

A circle of glowing, jagged runes blazed on the floor where my hands now rested. It was a language I didn’t know, but my instincts screamed its purpose: caging, siphoning, dissecting.

Four figures stood within the circle, their faces hidden in the deep shadows of heavy, dark robes. They were chanting, their voices a discordant, guttural drone that scraped at the edges of my hearing. In the center, Alistair Finch stood unnervingly still. He wasn't fighting. He wasn't screaming. His face was a mask of grim determination, his eyes fixed on something beyond the room, beyond the city, as if staring into the face of a terrifying god he had summoned himself.

One of the robed figures stepped forward, raising an obsidian knife. It wasn't just sharp; it was a sliver of solidified night, a weapon designed to cut things other than flesh. The blade plunged into Finch’s chest.

The vision fractured. I felt a phantom agony, not of the knife, but of something far worse. Finch’s mouth opened in a silent scream, but it wasn't pain that contorted his features. It was effort. He was pushing. Straining. Willingly.

From the wound, there was blood, yes, a shocking torrent of crimson against his crisp white shirt. But something else came with it. A shimmering, incandescent light, the colour of a dying star. It was raw and chaotic, filled with the essence of a life lived—memories of childhood, the thrill of his first major success, the bitterness of betrayal, the faint, lingering love for a woman long gone. It was his soul, being violently, unnaturally birthed from his body.

The robed figures raised their hands, their chant reaching a feverish crescendo. The glowing soul-stuff was drawn from Finch, stretching and thinning like spun glass. It wasn't just being released; it was being harvested. Siphoned into the obsidian knife which now pulsed with a sickening, stolen light.

Finch’s body collapsed, an empty vessel. But the vision wasn’t over.

The magic that powered the ritual was a living thing—a predatory, corrupting force. It felt ancient and hungry. As I watched from the safety of my psychic perch, a voyeur to a murder of the soul, the vision began to warp. One of the robed figures turned its head, and for a split second, its shadowed hood fell away. I saw not a face, but a swirling vortex of shadow and amethyst light.

The vision shattered as the magic saw me back.

A bolt of pure, icy agony shot from the marble, up my arms, and into my chest. It wasn’t a memory of an attack; it was the original spell’s defense system, a psychic landmine left for anyone who came snooping. It slammed into my mind, trying to tear my own consciousness apart. The chanting from the vision echoed in my own head, no longer a memory but a weapon, trying to unwrite my reality.

I screamed, a raw, guttural sound, and threw myself backwards, scrambling away from the circle’s phantom location. I landed hard on the floor, gasping, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The world swam back into focus—the sterile penthouse, the grey city outside, Evelyn’s terrified face rushing towards me.

“Ms. McPherson! Aggie! Are you alright?”

I couldn’t answer. I was staring at my right hand. A network of fine, black lines, like shattered obsidian, was spreading from my fingertips across my palm, a venomous web just beneath the skin. It was numb and achingly cold, a physical mark left by a spectral blow.

The vision was gone, but the magical signature of the attack was now branded into me, a homing beacon of dark energy. I had my proof. Alistair Finch was ritually murdered, his soul stolen by practitioners of a magic so foul and potent it could leave traps in the past.

But the victory was hollow. The spectral evidence confirmed a death had occurred, but it had also painted a target on my back. Whatever—and whoever—did this was still out there. And now, they knew someone was looking. My simple case of a living dead man had just become a war with the shadows who made him. And my only lead was the icy, violet-tinged taint now spiderwebbing across my own hand.