Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
The morning mist had not yet fully dissipated, and Arthur's leather shoes were already soaked with dew. He stood in front of the bakery, the glass window reflecting his crumpled collar—evidence of having slept in his clothes the night before.
The baker's wife was kneading dough, her flour-dusted fingers suddenly pausing in mid-air, as if the scene had been put on hold.
"Good morning, may I ask..."
The dough thudded heavily onto the countertop as the baker's wife turned and disappeared into the back kitchen, the sound of the iron door slamming shut startling a sparrow perched on the windowsill. Arthur took two steps back, brushing his nose with his fingers, only to bump into the brass bell of the hardware store.
The old craftsman, who was tightening a screw, trembled slightly; his wrench clattered into a tin bucket, creating a sharp echo that rang out in the empty street.
As dusk approached, Arthur counted the number of times his heels struck the cobblestones to pass the time. When the seventeenth chime pierced through the clouds, he suddenly halted. That sound seemed to seep up from the depths of the earth, its bronze reverberation wrapped in a rusty smell that made his molars ache.
The clock tower was older than any building in town. Vines gnawed at its Gothic spire, and unknown purple wildflowers peeked through its cracks. Arthur tiptoed to count the clock's fissures when dusk was abruptly torn apart by thunderous bell tolls.
The hinges of every door along the street groaned in unison as residents streamed out, their eyes glazed with a sickly gray-white hue. Arthur darted into an alleyway, the back of his head brushing against damp moss.
He held his breath as he counted the black leather shoes that passed by—twenty-three pairs, all stepping in perfect rhythm. The fire pit in Central Square flickered with eerie blue flames, illuminating faces like paper lanterns floating on a river of death.
As an old man in a black robe raised his bone staff, the great bell suddenly reversed its tolling; the grinding gears sounded like the whimpering of a dying beast.
"In the name of shadows!"
The old man's hoarse shout startled a night owl into flight. Arthur felt an old injury at his clavicle begin to burn; it was where he had been struck by a spell from the Black Wizard three years ago.
Flames suddenly surged three meters high, twisting the shadows of the residents into a distorted spider web. He watched helplessly as everyone's pupils faded to a silvery gray, like glass beads from which their souls had been drawn away.
As the crowd dispersed, the flower girl’s bamboo basket brushed against Arthur's pant leg. The scent of Cornflower mingled with a Rusty Smell. He reached out to steady a staggering old man, only to see his own reflection in the murky depths of the man’s eyes—his Left Eye had inexplicably turned amber.
The old man jerked away from his touch as if shocked, the silver-gray fading from the center of his Pupil like foam left behind on the beach as the tide recedes. Arthur crouched beside the drainage ditch in the southeast corner of the square, moss embedded beneath his fingernails.
As the flame of his lighter flickered, those seemingly chaotic scratches suddenly aligned into a Hexagram formation. He recognized the outermost rune; it was a Blood Sacrifice totem recorded in the Ancient Celtic Sorcery Examination.
When the flame swept over the central groove, the dark red crystalline reflection reminded him of the bloodstains on the rim of his wine glass from last night. As the midnight bells of the church tolled, Arthur meticulously traced the seventh mutated rune with his fountain pen. The ink on the parchment began to flow backward, forming cuneiform characters of some lost civilization under the moonlight.
In the attic, a mouse scratched behind the wall panels, its sound perfectly synchronized with the rhythm of the clock tower's gears turning.
Comment 0 Comment Count