The door to the master's archive was locked, but not against ghosts.
Elias slipped through the corridor like a shadow under moonlight, bare feet silent against the floorboards of the Jourdain estate. The relic weighed heavy in his satchel, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat, ever louder the closer he came to the plantation's heart.
This was where the maps were kept. The ledgers. The truth.
He found the room, oak door, brass knob, gilded frame. It swung open too easily. Either fate was on his side, or he was expected.
The shelves smelled of parchment and ink and dried sugar cane. Elias rifled through drawers and cabinets, uncovering colonial maps inked with routes, export logs, hand-scrawled French notes. He traced a finger down one brittle paper, marked with red Xs and old Creole symbols he recognized from the underground city. Shipment manifests. Hidden compartments. One ledger mentioned something called Roche d'Argent. The Silver Rock.
That's when he felt it: the shift in the room. The silence being replaced by breath.
Lucien Jourdain stepped from the shadows.
Sword in hand.
"You should not be here, Papa," he said, voice low and calm. "But then again, I don't think you ever were."
Elias backed away slowly. "I'm here to protect what matters."
Lucien gave a thin, cold smile. "You've never spoken like that. Not even when the old gods visited you. I wonder what name you whispered in your sleep, hmm? Rae? Elias?"
The relic in Elias's satchel pulsed again—sharp now, insistent. Almost demanding.
"I don't want to hurt you," Elias said.
"You already have. You've desecrated his memory." Lucien stepped forward, sword gleaming. "Whoever you are, whatever spirit rides you… this ends tonight."
The blade lunged before the sentence ended.
Elias dodged the first strike barely, the sword slicing his robe. Pain exploded across his ribs. He stumbled back, gripping a ceremonial dagger, small, silver, dull-edged but sharp enough.
They circled. Elias moved with a dancer's desperation, not skill. Lucien with the ease of someone trained from youth to kill.
The second clash was closer. Metal rang out like thunder.
Lucien sneered. "You fight like a man who's never held a weapon."
Elias didn't respond. He couldn't. He wasn't trying to win.
He just needed to survive long enough.
Lucien lunged again.
And Elias, guided not by thought but instinct, the mirror, stepped inside the strike, turned his shoulder, and drove the dagger into Lucien's side.
The master gasped. Staggered. Not a fatal wound—but deep enough.
Blood soaked the silk of his waistcoat. He collapsed to one knee, staring at Elias, fury and confusion burning in his eyes.
"You…" he whispered. "You're no man. You're something… else."
Elias pulled back, trembling, the dagger slick in his palm.
The relic pulsed violently now. From within the satchel, the mirror began to glow, not just a symbol, but a shape, flickering like a star collapsing into itself.
He didn't know what it meant. Only that something had changed.
He backed out of the room, leaving Lucien gasping, bleeding, not dead.
He couldn't kill him.
He still wasn't sure if he could come back from that.
But now he had the maps. The truth. The next step.
And the relic, it was waking.