Aldric sat at his desk in the dim light of his bedroom, the curtains drawn halfway, letting in only a sliver of moonlight. His laptop screen was still open to the decoded Old Norse phrase, but his eyes weren't on the screen anymore. They were unfocused… drifting.
Blood.
Shadowed flames.
No human presence.
He whispered the three phrases aloud, as if hearing them outside his head would help anchor them in something real.
It didn't.
It made them worse.
He ran a hand through his hair and leaned back, exhaling slowly.
This wasn't some metaphor.
Not poetry.
Not symbolic fear.
It was a ritual description… and a very old one. Older than any religious text humans still touched today. Older than the earliest recorded civilizations. Old enough to be considered myth—even by historians.
He reached for the massive leather-bound tome he'd placed on his bed: The Chronicle of the First Dawn, the sole surviving copy he had spent three years finding… and one more year translating.
The book was banned in every country that mattered.
It was illegal to own. It was illegal to quote.
And it was absolutely illegal to have memorized.
Aldric had done all three long ago.
He flipped through the faded vellum pages with trembling fingers until he reached the chapter he remembered.
Page 431 – Pre-Human Era: The Thirteen Silent Rituals.
His eyes dragged across the text until they found it—the one he prayed he had misremembered.
Ritual IX.
"The Offering of Evefall:
When blood burns without fire,
When shadows dance without form,
When humanity cannot witness…"
A chill raced down Aldric's spine so violently his fingers tightened on the book.
No human presence.
Blood.
Shadowed flames.
The exact three markers Leora had whispered in Norse.
He swallowed hard.
This ritual wasn't a murder.
It wasn't a crime scene.
It wasn't something humans were supposed to know existed.
It was a warning.
A warning that someone had committed something not meant for human eyes.
Something impossibly old.
Something that required knowledge no civilian, politician, gang, or criminal syndicate should possess.
Aldric closed the book slowly and sat motionless for a long moment, the distant hum of cars outside the only sound grounding him.
"Who… the hell… knows this?" he murmured.
He knew the answer was terrifying.
Only three groups in history had ever possessed ritual knowledge predating humanity:
1. The forgotten priest-kings of the Pre-Edenic era.
2. The Shadow Archivists—dead for thousands of years.
3. And one person who never officially existed.
A person whose name appeared in no database.
No archive.
No police file.
No government directory.
A person Aldric once stumbled upon during his years of research—only to watch every trace of that record disappear within an hour.
Whoever this individual was, they lived in the cracks of history… slipping past every form of documentation humans had built.
Someone like that wouldn't just know about Ritual IX…
They would use it.
Aldric's heart began pounding.
He stood, crossed the room, and pulled the curtains back just a little.
His eyes narrowed.
Across the road, eleven houses north—stood a tall apartment building. Its rooftop was barely visible from this angle…
But Aldric's instincts weren't wrong.
Not tonight.
A faint glint—like night glass reflecting moonlight—caught his eye.
Binoculars.
Someone was watching his house.
He stepped away from the window sharply, breath held.
No… no way…
Aldric had dismissed it as an algorithmic error at first.
A time-stamp flicker.
A corrupted entry.
But then it happened again.
A perfect overwrite.
No signs of breach.
No source trace.
No IP.
No MAC address.
As if the intruder had walked through digital walls.
And now he was physically here.
"Why me…?" Aldric whispered.
But deep down, he knew why.
Not because Aldric was special.
But because Aldric noticed things he wasn't supposed to notice.
He closed the curtain fully, paced silently back to his bed, and sat with his elbows on his knees.
His mind raced.
If they're watching me…
Then they know I decoded the Norse.
They know I recognized the ritual.
They know I'm connecting dots no one else sees.
He clenched his fists.
This is bad.
This is… very bad.
His breath steadied after a few seconds.
His mind sharpened, reorganizing the chaos like a machine.
He picked up the ritual book again.
Not to read it.
To hide it.
He stashed it behind a loose panel at the back of his closet—one of the many hiding spots he created years ago.
Then he wiped his fingerprints off the cover and closed the panel.
Nothing left in sight.
He sat again.
"Someone using a pre-human ritual…" he muttered. "That means whoever it is… they have knowledge no government or organization currently has."
His jaw tightened.
Except maybe one.
The LCO.
He didn't know who they were—but he knew they existed.
A ghost organization whispering through corruption cases, vanishing criminals, and sudden disappearances of major gang leaders.
If anyone knew about this ritual, it would be them.
But he wouldn't tell them.
He couldn't.
Not yet.
Not until he understood why Leora saw what she saw.
And why he was the one being watched.
Aldric inhaled once, slowly.
Then he killed the lights, crawled into bed, and shut his eyes—forcing his mind into stillness despite the storm churning inside him.
Outside, eleven houses down, a silent figure lowered the binoculars.
A faint clicking sound—metal folding.
Then the silhouette stepped backward into the shadows of the rooftop and vanished from the moon's reach.