Page 69 of Whispers of Ruin

The way he says it—with a capital R. It is holy and dangerous all at once.

He does not meet my eyes. His gaze flickers briefly to the floor, then to the folds of my dress, and instantly back down again, cheeks reddening like he has been caught looking at a goddess he does not feel worthy of worship.

“Lead the way,” I say softly as I watch the tension in his shoulders ease just a little.

While I follow him, barefoot down a marble corridor, I realize this is it. The moment between the before and the after.

Somewhere near to here, Xan is waiting for my ascension.

The boy—Owen, as he had introduced himself, guides me through the bowels of the Order in near-total silence. The hallways we pass feel older than time, mounted with obsidianstone that drinks in the flickering light of the wall sconces. His footsteps are soft—the kind that suggest even the floor might punish him for stepping too loudly. I try to match his pace. Every echo of my bare feet against the cold stone floor feels amplified, a scream in the silence.

Eventually, we stop before a pair of massive double doors—twice my height, sculpted in ancient black oak, their surface etched with archaic runes and twisting symbols that seem to writhe and shimmer in the candlelight. The handles are forged from wrought iron, each one a curved dagger frozen mid-strike.

Owen turns to me, wide-eyed and pale, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

“This is where I leave you,” he whispers, anything louder might summon a demon best left sleeping. “They are waiting inside.”

I nod, though my chest is tightening.

“Good luck… Miss Vale,” he adds, barely louder than the breath it took to speak it. And just like that, he vanishes, swallowed by the shadows behind us.

I linger for a moment; hand poised above the dagger handle. The wood radiates heat, or maybe it’s my pulse surging in my fingertips. I close my eyes.

One breath.

Another.

Then I push.

The doors creak open with the groan of an ancient beast, revealing a vast circular chamber bathed in candlelight. Theceiling soars above me in a dome of stone and colored glass, where stained panels filter the waning morning sun into fractured shards of gold and crimson. Smoke coils like silk through the air, rising from censers, hung at regular intervals around the room. It smells of myrrh and burnt cedar.

Seventeen figures form a ring around the center, unmoving, cloaked in silence. Every one of them is dressed in robes as black as oil and wears a mask as dark as pitch—sleek, smooth, anonymous. A council of phantoms.

At the center stands Lucian Voss.

He is dressed in ceremonial black, a subtle sheen in the fabric that catches the light like liquid ink. His mask, sculpted from silver steel, devours every glint that touches it. There is a stillness to him that is more than human. It is the silence of the executioner before the blade falls.

This is it.

The Judgement of the Masks.

I scan the room, eyes darting from one masked figure to the next, desperate to spot Xan among the sea of identical shadows. I thought it would be easy—how many men could possibly share his height, that sinful broadness of shoulder? Apparently, at least eight. Eight!

My heart clenches with growing panic. Iknowhe is here—hemustbe—but the fact that I cannot pinpoint him sends a wave of irrational dread crawling up my back. It is like playingWhere’s Waldoin a cultist’s surreal haze.

A deep, echoing gong shatters the silence. In eerie unison, every masked figure stomps their right foot against the ground.The sound reverberates—thunder trapped in a crypt. Odd, sure—but at this point, the least strange thing in all of this might just be the door handles, even if they look like something straight out of Satan’s interior designer’s catalog.

I notice, at the center of the room, directly across from Lucian, stands a strange ancient-looking altar made of stone. With a slow, sweeping motion of his hand, he gestures for me to approach. I hesitate, scanning again the sea of masked faces for any trace of Xan. A twitch of a finger, a tilt of a shoulder—anything to ground me. Yet nothing. Just black masks and quiet.

Swallowing my nerves, I draw in a shaky breath and step forward. The slab is cold and imposing, clearly stolen straight from some sacrificial temple. Graceful as a newborn giraffe, I climb up onto the massive stone and lie down, trying not to think about how this feels less like a rite of passage and more like the start ofThe Shining, minus the snow.

Now lying flat—on what might generously be described asslightly more comfortable than a deflated camping mattress, I stare up at the vaulted ceiling, trying not to shiver.

Lucian steps into view, shrouded in shadow, his silver mask glinting like the blade of a guillotine. His theatrical voice cuts through the mute calm.

“Today, the Order parts its impenetrable gates for fresh blood. May the assassinations be many and the chaos of life cling relentlessly to our newest sister, Mira Vale.”

Of course. Nothing says “welcome” like ceremonial bloodletting and a death wish disguised as a blessing.

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