The rain had stopped, but the streets still glistened like bruised mirrors under the sickly glow of the streetlights. Isabelle drove through the winding city, her hands locked tight on the wheel, her mind a storm of fear and furious determination.
The photograph from the envelope sat on the passenger seat, weighing heavier than any lead.
Witness.
The word whispered through her mind again and again, seeping into every thought, every heartbeat.
They weren't just watching her.
They had always been watching her.
And the only place where she might find the next clue—the only place that made any horrible sense now—was the ruined cathedral where all of this had seemed to stir into monstrous life.
She parked half a block away and approached on foot. The cathedral loomed in the night, a blackened skeleton against the cloud-choked sky. Its once-majestic towers were cracked and broken, its massive front doors scorched and hanging ajar.
Every step she took toward it felt heavier, like the ground itself was trying to hold her back.
She hesitated on the threshold, heart hammering.
Inside, the darkness swallowed everything whole. Her flashlight cut a trembling path through the ruined pews, the crumbling pillars, the tattered remains of sacred banners long forgotten.
Ash coated everything—a fine, grey powder that puffed into little ghost clouds with every step.
The air smelled of old smoke, wet stone, and something sharper underneath—like rust and regret.
Somewhere deep within the cavernous space, she could hear the faintest sound: the low, mournful drip of water leaking from the cracked ceiling.
She remembered what Estelle had told her about the Verdant Clinic. About the masquerade club. About being paraded as entertainment for those who thought themselves untouchable.
And she remembered the whisper from the hidden speaker:
"One of you isn't who you think."
The cathedral felt like the heart of it now. The pulsing, rotted heart of a thing that refused to die.
She moved carefully, skirting broken beams and shattered glass, until she found the row of melted candles near what remained of the altar.
The candles were long dead, puddled into strange, waxen shapes that resembled melted faces.
But something caught her eye—something the last time she had been here, she hadn't noticed.
At the base of the altar, half-hidden by fallen stone, was a narrow iron grate.
She knelt, brushing ash away with her sleeve.
The grate was old and rusted, but the screws holding it down were fresh—too clean compared to the decay around them.
Someone had been here.
Recently.
She dug her fingers around the edges, ignoring the way the metal bit into her skin, and heaved.
With a shriek of tortured hinges, the grate lifted.
A dark passage yawned beneath.
Isabelle hesitated only a moment.
Then she slipped through, lowering herself into the darkness.
The tunnel was low and cramped, lined with ancient stones slick with dampness. Her flashlight's beam bounced wildly with each careful step.
It stank down here—like mildew and something worse beneath it, something metallic and spoiled.
The passage ended at a small stone chamber.
And there, illuminated in her shaking light, was a sight that made her breath catch in her throat.
An altar.
A hidden one.
Much smaller, tucked into the bowels of the earth like a secret too vile to see the light of day.
Melted candle stubs ringed it in haphazard circles. Some were new; the wax still clung to the stones in fresh drips. Others were ancient, blackened nubs coated in dust and ash.
The altar itself was covered in scorched cloth—black velvet that might once have been rich and vibrant but was now charred and eaten by flame.
And atop it...
A single photograph.
Isabelle's heart pounded so loudly she thought she might go deaf from it.
She approached, each step like moving through a nightmare.
It was a picture of herself.
A child, no more than six or seven. Smiling shyly at the camera, wearing a pale dress that looked almost ghostly under the flashlight's beam.
But someone had defaced the photograph.
Her eyes—once bright and full of innocent light—had been scratched out with something sharp, gouged down to the paper's torn fibers.
Tiny black Xs where her gaze should have been.
She touched the edge of the photo with trembling fingers.
It was real.
It was her.
And someone had kept it here, waiting.
Why?
The question screamed inside her mind.
Why her? Why now? How had this picture—this moment from a lifetime ago—ended up in the hands of people tied to Vivienne's disappearance, to the masquerade club, to the victims stitched together in maps and files?
Her legs gave out and she slumped to her knees before the altar, the flashlight clattering to the floor.
Its beam tilted up, casting warped, mad shadows along the ceiling.
And there—carved into the stone base of the altar—were the words:
WITNESS
Each letter gouged deep, ragged, almost desperate. As if whoever had carved it had done so in frenzy, tearing the word into the very bones of the cathedral itself.
The same word that had followed her, whispered down phone lines, scrawled in envelopes, flashing in the dark.
Witness.
But witness what?
Isabelle sat frozen, staring at the carved word, the photo, the dead candles.
Then her flashlight flickered.
Once.
Twice.
And then steadied.
A sound prickled at the edge of her hearing.
Soft.
Delicate.
Almost musical.
Like a child humming a lullaby, far, far away.
She turned sharply, but there was no one there. Only the dark tunnel leading back to the surface, now somehow longer, deeper, more dangerous.
The humming grew louder.
Coming closer.
Her fingers closed convulsively around the photograph.
She shoved it into her jacket and snatched up the flashlight.
The moment she stood, the altar behind her cracked audibly—a deep, splintering sound, like something ancient finally giving way.
The humming stopped.
Dead silence.
And then, from behind the altar, something shifted.
A hand.
Pale, clawing up over the stone edge.
And then a face.
Half-covered in porcelain. The mask cracked through the middle.
Vivienne's face.
Or someone wearing her face.
The mouth smiled—too wide, too wrong.
Isabelle didn't wait.
She ran.
To be continued...