As the doors swung wide open, the scene revealed Charlotte at the far end of the office, buried entirely beneath a mountain of files and folders.
She sat behind an imposing desk, reviewing documents with a clinical eye, stamping signatures at a steady, unhurried pace.
The room hummed with the dry, rhythmic clatter of her typewriter, its metal type striking the paper with an almost mechanical precision.
"Morning, boss. Here's the boy — Alphard Quinn."
"Thank you, Madeleine. You're dismissed."
The door clicked shut behind her, and an uncomfortable silence settled between them. Alphard stood frozen in place, not moving another inch, while Charlotte remained absorbed in her paperwork.
This isn't the same office as last time. This one's even stranger.
Just as the wait began stretching longer than expected, a figure burst into the room.
It was a young man with hair so dark a blue it bordered on pure black, and eyes of a sharp, brilliant green.
He wore a flawless black three-piece suit — a fitted jacket with narrow lapels over a dark satin vest, an immaculate high-collared shirt, and a silk tie fastened with a sober silver pin.
Alphard felt a jolt the instant he laid eyes on him — not from the dark elegance of his clothes, but from the fixed set of his face; that sharp, unmistakable stare struck him as familiar in a fraction of a second.
"You're the one who saved me. You're the one who carried me home."
"That's right. Allow me to introduce myself — Philip Crowley."
"I'm Alphard. Pleasure to meet you."
Philip offered a faint smile before leaving the office with a slow, indifferent gait. Alphard stood frozen, unable to process the moment; in his mind echoed the vivid, unsettling memory of only hours ago — this same young man, in the blink of an eye, speaking words in some incomprehensible tongue, tearing apart the beast that had come within a breath of ending his life.
I should be careful around that guy. Better not get on his bad side, or he could probably kill me without even trying.
Before he could sink further into the thought, the rustle of papers being set aside pulled him back to the present. Charlotte, having set her work down, fixed her eyes on him, rose gracefully, and, extending her right hand with a firm gesture, gestured toward the seat waiting for him.
He crossed the room and settled with practiced ease into the plush armchair. Charlotte took her own seat across from him, folding her hands with an unhurried grace. Alphard wasted no time, studying her face closely, searching for any hint of doubt or suspicion in the set of her features.
To his frustration, the woman radiated an unshakable calm, her expression so composed and transparent it was impossible to read what she was actually thinking.
"We meet again, in a place quite similar to before, Alphard. Curious, isn't it?"
"Maybe. But this time I haven't come because you asked — I came on my own terms. And I'm here to talk business."
"Business? Are you trying to blackmail me?"
Charlotte let out a stifled laugh, her expression never once wavering. Still, Alphard didn't miss the faint tremor that passed through her stomach, catching immediately the contained laughter shaking through her body from within.
That alone confirmed what he'd already suspected, along with the subtle, unmoving smile she'd worn intact since the very first second.
Her tone hasn't changed at all, but the words she's using make it pretty clear she's not taking me seriously. I need to convince her, or this whole visit's a waste of time.
"Of course not. I've thought over your offer to work together, and I see a lot of upside in it."
"So you've decided to join us?"
"Yes. But not just that. I want protection for my family."
Simple as the request sounded on its surface, Charlotte was certain there was something far denser lurking beneath it.
That someone like Alphard would come seeking to negotiate, only for his sole demand to boil down to his family's protection, struck her as, at the very least, unusual. In circles like hers, a request that modest usually served as the front for something far more elaborate.
Still, she stayed alert to whatever Alphard said next, watching for any crack in the story.
"First — that's not a negotiation. You're asking me for something, not offering anything in return. Second — it's a delicate request, but not an impossible one. Everyone here, along with their families, already falls under our protection. And third — either confirm you're working with us, or you can see yourself out."
Alphard was stunned by Charlotte's blunt candor. Without a moment's hesitation, the woman had cut straight to the point with a directness that left no room for pretense. Still, past the initial shock, he understood the situation clearly — Charlotte wasn't improvising. She'd already anticipated every move he might make.
Aware that his options were slim, and that he had little of real value to offer her, Alphard decided to play the one card he had left worth anything — a name capable of changing the terms of the entire conversation: the Quinn name.
"I understand — but you've misread me a little. I only wanted to make sure you'd answer honestly, without holding anything back, and from where I'm sitting, it worked. I'll admit I don't have much to offer, and honestly, I don't think I need to — someone carrying the Quinn name would be worth a great deal to your organization on its own. But what I'm actually negotiating for isn't a place in your ranks. It's knowledge."
"And what exactly do you need knowledge for?"
"I already told you the first time. To get home."
Alphard studied Charlotte's eyes as she did the same to him. To him, even the smallest shift in her expression might confirm an answer; to her, the steadiness in his gaze might read as pure determination.
I've got her. Offering up a renowned family name might sound absurd on its face, but really, I just want to confirm one thing — whether she actually knows what I am, or if she still thinks I'm just someone left rattled by the cathedral.
Charlotte rose and walked toward the tall windows. Though the sunlight barely managed to filter through the thick gloom outside, a faint gleam against the glass was more than enough for her to know exactly what hour of the day it was.
"What I look for is loyalty and purpose. Our organization fights, and investigates, supernatural phenomena — and last night you very nearly died. And yet I watched you survive it, without any power of your own to speak of. This isn't about your family name. This is about what benefits all of us, and you could prove genuinely useful. If you want knowledge, you'll have to earn it — just be careful not to fall into the abyss chasing it, or you'll be lost for good. Like I told you before — we're not what you think, Alphard. We exist beyond human reason, and just like you, we're bastards fighting against fate, against madness, against misery itself."
"Is this knowledge dangerous?"
"Maybe not on its own. It's more that we're not always capable of handling it properly. Come with me — I want to show you something."
Alphard followed without protest. As he trailed behind her, a silent mechanism activated, and a section of the office wall slid smoothly aside, revealing a hidden passage whose access was reserved strictly for those who knew how to trigger it.
Crossing the threshold, the space opened into something colossal, taking on the monumental proportions of an underground cathedral.
Along the stone walls stretched countless plaques etched with names, flanking rows of solid wooden pews all facing toward a central altar.
There, an imposing, unsettling symbol reigned: an inverted triangle, within which rested a crescent moon lying on its side, forming the shape of a half-lidded, sleeping eye.
Where the pupil should have been floated an ethereal flame of pure white, suspended in the air. Wrapped around the geometric figure, chains woven from shadow and tiny fused vertebrae bound the sacred fire in place, giving the impression that some ancient entity held absolute dominion over the souls of the dead, and over dreams themselves.
Before the imposing symbol, Charlotte lowered herself to both knees against the cold stone. Slowly, she brought her fingertips to her forehead, then drew them down in a straight line to her stomach, executing the sacred gesture with the precision of a deeply ingrained habit.
Finally, she closed her eyes and clasped her hands against her chest, bowing her head in silent prayer.
What could that symbol mean? Must be something religious. I'll do the same, so I don't stand out.
Alphard mirrored her, lowering himself and repeating the same bow Charlotte had made.
He closed his eyes, and the instant he did, the physical world dissolved entirely. The underground chamber gave way to a fathomless void, submerged in a constant, silent grey mist.
Rather than a jolt of terror or a chill crawling up his neck, what filled his chest instead was an overwhelming sense of liturgical reverence.
In the distance, a figure emerged from the gloom — a woman. She wore a dark veil hiding her face, and a white robe whose translucent folds rippled with countless drifting spirits. Cradled in the palm of one hand, like a living relic, rested a tiny, endlessly flowing lake.
"Why do you lie to me? I know you are not my servant. I will not punish you, my child. One day, you will rest in this lake."
What? What is she trying to tell me?
Almost immediately, the space began to dissolve. The grey mist and the spectral glow of the woman's robe wove together into a tide of white light, blurring every outline and shadow until the vision was swallowed whole. A moment later, the trance came to an end.
At that, Alphard opened his eyes and found himself back where he'd started, just as Charlotte finished her own prayer and repeated her gesture once more.
"Did you say your prayer, or are you simply not a believer?"
"I did. I just finished a bit faster than you."
"Do you know why the gesture is shaped that way? Because it traces a lake — a lake that flows through our minds and returns, in the end, to the womb. That's the shape of all of us: we emerge from the womb to become mind, and when death finally comes, the mind returns to where it began. Praised be the Goddess."
"That's true. Everything ends where it began."
Alphard found himself turning back to how he'd arrived in this world, Charlotte's words offering him, somehow, a strange thread of hope. Still, his mind snagged on the connection between the womb and his own wound, in that very same place, and he began to wonder whether the two might be tied together somehow.
I should probably read one of the Goddess's scriptures sometime.