Leo's breath turned to ice. He rushed to his friend Mia, a hacker who'd helped him before. Together, they dug into Elias Thorne: a collector of "transcendent artifacts," linked to a secret society called The Ouroboros Circle, and suspected in several "unfortunate accidents" of past owners of rare objects.
Meanwhile, the box began acting strangely. Without new blood, its panes flickered with fragmented deaths of people Leo didn't know—a woman drowning, a man falling from scaffolding, a car exploding. It was showing him deaths connected to the box's history.
Mia traced the glass box's origins to a 17th-century alchemist who claimed it could "window the soul's final thread." Every previous owner had died violently within a year of acquiring it. The box wasn't just a predictor—it was a catalyst, drawing death to it and its keeper.
As rain lashed the windows, Leo spotted a figure across the street, watching his apartment—a tall silhouette with a cane. Thorne.