The morning crept into Thornsfield wrapped in a curtain of grey mist, heavy and silent like a held breath. Despite the late hour, the town still wore its sleepy expression—shutters closed, chimneys puffing lazy trails of smoke, and the occasional dog meandering across cobblestone paths.
Eliza pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders as she pushed open the heavy oak doors of the Thornsville Library. It groaned in protest, as though disturbed from slumber. The scent of old paper and candle wax hit her immediately—comforting, familiar, yet somehow eerie in the quiet.
The librarian, a spectacled woman named Mildred who looked like she'd been fossilized somewhere between the Victorian era and the modern age, gave Eliza a curt nod and motioned toward the restricted section. Eliza gave her a thankful smile before weaving her way past shelves, each one groaning under the weight of forgotten knowledge.
She found what she was looking for tucked between a crumbling atlas and a volume on ancient herbs—Ars Umbrae: The Art of Shadows. Bound in cracked leather, its edges worn from time and secrecy, the spellbook on witchcraft felt heavy in her hands, as if it knew the weight of its own contents.
She pulled it open and dust spiraled into the air. The pages were yellowed, filled with curling Latin script and bizarre illustrations—serpent-headed figures, symbols of binding and summoning, and ritual diagrams that sent an involuntary shiver up her spine. Her finger paused over a passage:
"Sanguinem vocat umbras—The blood calls the shadows."
The same phrase etched into the victim's flesh.
Her pulse quickened. The ritual described involved sacrifice, binding, and a gateway—not metaphorical, but literal. A portal. Her eyes darted to the margins where someone had scrawled annotations in ink, barely legible: Thornsfield graveyard... silence..convergence.
She stared, feeling her breath catch. It wasn't just folklore. Something had been started years ago, and it hadn't ended.
—
Meanwhile, in a cramped office that smelled faintly of burnt coffee and printer ink, Victor sat at a steel desk in the Thornsfield Police Department. Folders were spread out before him.
Three victims. Same bite marks. Same Latin inscription. No blood.
He tapped a pen against his lip as he scanned the autopsy reports again. Something wasn't adding up. No signs of struggle. No signs of entry. The bodies were found cold, preserved, almost untouched by decay. Not natural. Not even close.
Detective Like, a wary man with a smoker's cough and eyes that had seen too much, leaned in from the doorway.
"You're not going to find your boogeyman in those files, Casello."
Victor didn't look up. "Maybe. But monsters leave traces. Even if they're wearing human skin."
Luke shook his head and walked off, muttering something about city boys and their ghost stories.
Victor returned to the photos, this time focusing on the placement of the symbols. They weren't random. They followed a pattern—points on a map, forming a pentagon. And right in the center of it all…
The graveyard.
—
At the other end of town, Lorenzo adjusted his scarf and stepped into the lecture hall of Professor Harley,one of Thornsfield's oldest surviving scholars and one of its most paranoid.
"The graveyard?" the old man rasped, eyes narrowing behind glasses thicker than a brick. "You kids still playing demon hunters?"
"No, Professor. People are dying. And the symbols—they're real. Latin. Ritualistic. Possibly connected to the town's older folklore."
Professor Harley leaned back in his chair, face pale. "There was talk once—before the town council buried it under festivals and firework shows. A group, long ago. Worshippers of something darker. Said they tried to bring forth a child not born of this world."
Lorenzo's throat tightened. "Did they succeed?"
"No one knows," Harley murmured. "They all vanished. But the stories say… they left something behind."
"However you may find some information from the spiritualist who lives nearby"
—
Back at the library, Eliza was still poring over Ars Umbrae when her phone buzzed.
Victor.
"Meet me at the chapel ruins behind the graveyard," he said the moment she picked up. "I found something. I think the bodies form a symbol. It's… it's ritualistic."
Eliza closed the book with a thud, slid it into her bag, and stood.
The pieces were now falling into place, and for the first time in five years, she felt the chill of her sister's disappearance crawl up her spine like a whispered warning.
Whatever this was, it wasn't over.