The smoke came without warning—thick, acrid, and fast. It poured from the vents in the ceiling like a living fog, swallowing the tunnel's weak light. For one disorienting second, Marc thought the dark itself had caught fire. Then Diego moved—quick as a shadow, eyes gleaming—and was gone.
"Diego!" Marc's voice cracked against the walls.
He followed, boots echoing through the concrete throat of the old subway. The world narrowed to a chase of sound and instinct. Diego's laughter bounced down the corridor, mocking, taunting, leading him deeper. Every step felt heavier; the air stank of oil and iron.
Then the ground vanished.
Marc dropped through the brittle floor of the tunnel into blackness, the echo of his fall swallowed by the earth. He hit hard—stone, dust, pain. His vision blurred and his ribs screamed. The light from above shrank to a pale eye, then blinked out completely.
When he came to, the dark had weight.
He sat up slowly, coughing, and realized he was surrounded by walls—no, riddles. Words scrawled in charcoal, blood, and something that glowed faintly blue. Sentences spiraled from floor to ceiling like a cyclone of madness.
El hombre que sigue la luna se pierde en su luz.
Las sombras hablan en nombres, no en palabras.
The blood of gods makes poor ink.
Truth lives where silence dies.
He stared until the words began to blur and twist into each other. Somewhere in this madness was meaning. Somewhere in the graffiti, Diego had left a trail.
He tore a page from his field notebook, lit the small lantern he carried, and began to copy. Line by line. Word by word.
Hours passed unnoticed. Time had no rhythm here; the tunnel breathed like a beast. He began to see patterns. The riddles weren't random—they repeated certain letters, certain phrases, like refrains in a song.
He whispered them under his breath, turning them like coins in his mouth.
By the time dawn crept into the cracks above, he had a headache sharp enough to split stone. The air had gone cold, the lantern sputtering. He looked up, saw a sliver of daylight through a gap in the broken ceiling, and climbed.
Every muscle screamed. The moon was gone, its strength nothing but a ghost in his veins. But he made it out.
---
Back in the city, the morning had already started without him. The streets glittered wet from rain, news screens flashing William's face—another rally, another declaration of rebirth. The crowds cheered him like a prophet.
At the cottage, Alexia waited.
The clock ticked endlessly, the coffee went cold. She stood by the window, watching the road curve into fog. He'd vanished before without warning, but something about this absence felt heavier. When the morning turned to noon, she exhaled a curse, grabbed her bag, and left for work, telling herself he'd walk in any minute.
---
By the time Marc finally reached home, exhaustion had carved itself into his face. His clothes were torn, dust ground into every seam. He dropped his bag, stripped, and stepped into the shower. The water came down cold, biting against his bruises. Every nerve screamed its protest.
He stood there a long while, hands braced against the tile, head bowed. Steam ghosted the mirror, the water circling the drain pink with old blood.
When he stepped out, the man in the reflection barely looked human—hollow-eyed, half-shadow. The mark of the moon at his throat was dim, a muted silver instead of its usual glow.
He dressed, went to the lab, and started working without thought. He poured the samples from Big Ben under the microscope, layered them beside the rubbings from the riddles, brewed coffee that tasted like burnt metal, and forced his brain to run faster than his body.
He fed the riddle fragments into the machine, each line translated, cross-referenced, rearranged.
The results began to take shape—coordinates, times, and phrases that repeated in fractal rhythm. The words weren't just taunts; they were directions, coded through Diego's twisted genius.
Then the printer spat out something new. A message.
Meet me at the old port in two days, Velo de Luna.
He stared at the words for a long time, tracing them with his fingertip. Velo de Luna. Moonveil.
So it was official now. Diego was calling him out.
He leaned back in his chair, the ache in his body spreading like heat, the pain almost grounding.
Two days.
---
It was nearly noon when Alexia found him again. The door was unlocked, the living room dim. The TV flickered silently—William's speech again. He was standing before a sea of people, arms raised, voice melodic, hypnotic.
"Together we end the age of bloodlines. Together we rise beyond gods and kings."
The camera cut to the crowd—faces weeping, cheering, worshipping.
Marc sat on the couch, motionless, a coffee cup cooling between his palms. His notebook lay open on the table, filled with scrawled equations and diagrams, riddles threaded through with circles and lunar symbols.
Alexia stepped closer. "Marc?"
He turned his head slightly, eyes hollow. "He's planning something bigger."
"Who?"
"William. This was never about politics. It's a ritual. The explosion at Big Ben wasn't the goal—it was an offering." He gestured toward the papers, the riddles. "Diego's clues—he's warning me. Or testing me. The port isn't just a meeting place. It's the next stage."
Alexia picked up one of the pages. Her eyes scanned the writing. The words looped like labyrinths.
"This is really bad," she murmured.
Marc looked at her, exhaustion heavy in his voice. "I know."
"Then you can't go alone."
"I have to. Diego wants Moonveil, not Marc Stevenson. And he'll expect blood. He'll make sure of it."
Alexia's hand trembled slightly as she set the paper down. "What if it's another trap?"
Marc's faint smile didn't reach his eyes. "It's always a trap. The trick is deciding who it's for."
She sat beside him, quiet. The speech continued on the TV—William's words blending into the static hum of the room. Marc stared at the screen, seeing not the man but the patterns behind him: symbols hidden in gestures, rhythm hidden in tone.
William was speaking in two languages now—one for the world, one for the gods.
---
Outside, the clouds thickened. The city darkened long before evening.
Somewhere beneath it all, Diego watched from the tunnels, whispering riddles to the dark.
And far above, the moon hid its face, turning the world into a place without reflection.
The pieces were moving.
The port was waiting.
And the Age of Darkness had only just begun.
---