The path to Redstone Castle swallowed sound. Ancient oaks formed a skeletal corridor, their gnarled branches knitting together overhead like interlocked fingers, smothering the moonlight.
The mist coiled around Myhra's ankles—not the cool kiss of evening fog, but viscous, clinging like spectral hands trying to drag her under.
The castle rose before her, its rust-hued stones glistening wetly in the dim light, as if the very walls were sweating blood. Ivy slithered across its surface, not merely growing but pulsing like some ancient and giant beasts blood veins, its tendrils tightening like a noose around the fortress's throat.
The gates stood slightly ajar. Not broken. Not forced inviting her inside with an welcoming arm.
Myhra almost hypnotised moved forward. Iron hinges groaned as the wind whispered through them—a sound too rhythmic to be accidental. Myhra's fingers twitched toward the hilt of her blending sword, the weapon humming against her palm as if sensing the wrongness in the air.
Then—a voice.
From the stones beneath her feet. A murmur so faint it might have been imagination, were it not for the way it raised the hairs on her neck. The moment she crossed the threshold, the stones moved. Not much—just a ripple beneath her boots, as if the castle had shuddered at her touch. Then came the voice:
"You came."
It wasn't spoken. It was pulled—from the marrow of the walls, from the rust in the hinges, from the very air that suddenly clung thick as syrup in her lungs. The gargoyles' eyes rolled to follow her, their stony lips peeling back from too-sharp teeth.
One even winked.
Myhra's breath hitched. The pressure in her chest wasn't fear. It was recognition. Some part of her—some deep, buried instinct—knew this place. Knew it like a nightmare knows its dreamer.
The courtyard stretched ahead, choked with weeds that glistened black in the moonlight. At its heart, the keep loomed, its doors wide open. She slipped through the gate.
The air reeked of wet decay, of moss and mildew, and beneath it— the smell of...
Old-ancient blood.
Old blood. The kind that stains stone and never really fades.
The doors were massive—iron-banded, tall enough to make her feel like a child again. Mist leaked from the seams, dragging across the ground like fingers with nowhere to go. It didn't swirl. It searched.
She stopped. Her eyes changed.
Not a choice—reflex. Pupils widened to full black. Irises flared orange, catching on every ripple of magic around her. Everything sharpened and broke into layers: Insects buzzing on the edge of vision, moving like they were underwater. Serpents slithering just out of reach, silent but tasting her fear. The mist writhing like it felt her watching.
She knew this magic. Mistcraft.
She knew mist magic. Knew its orders, read of its power and limits.
Not the kind used for illusions or petty theater. The real kind. Tied to old things—ancient bloodlines, forgotten commands. She'd read about it once, in dusty books that smelled of mold and danger.
But books didn't teach you how it feels. This wasn't just a place touched by magic. The fog didn't obscure—it watched. And from deep within the castle's belly, something watched back.
Myhra had studied the patterns of mistcraft, traced its limits in careful ink. She understood the way it obeyed—how it clung to memory and responded to will.
But this? This wasn't mist obeying. This was mist just aware.
It didn't blur vision—it clarified. It stared.
And something inside the keep stared back.
A figure shifted beyond the doorway.
Myhra didn't breathe. Her hand moved on instinct. The blade came free with a soft hiss, like breath leaving a body that wouldn't inhale again.
"Show yourself," she said, voice low, steady.
No figure answered but the mist did answer. It laughed.
Not loud. Not human like a whisper echoing down a well.
And then—words. Not spoken, but delivered straight into her bones: "Whispering Mist remembers you."
The mist coiled around Myhra's legs, thick and sinuous, its touch unnaturally cold—not the crisp chill of high-order mist magic, but more insidious. It didn't just obscure; it listened. Every breath she took was swallowed by the fog, every heartbeat echoed back to her as if the castle itself were counting the rhythm of her pulse.
This broke mist's rule...all of them. Myhra could feel its energy in her bones like her own...
The whispers weren't illusion. They were memory—fragments of voices long silenced, pleading in languages dead for centuries. The mist carried them like a tide, washing against her skin, seeping into her thoughts. A woman's scream, cut short. A child's whimper. The rasp of steel dragged across stone.
"Come to me....open me," the door seemed to sigh. She wondered how many of the shadows she was dealing with.
Myhra's fingers closed around the iron handle. The moment she touched it, the castle's ancient wards flared to life, searing her palm with phantom fire. She gritted her teeth, her blood-red eyes burning brighter as she poured her will against the seal.
Her incantation slithered through the air, the words warping the mist around her into spirals. The lock resisted, its magic a snarled knot of spite and spite—until, with a sound like a bone breaking, it gave.
The door groaned open.
Beyond lay not a hall, but a throat.
The mist was everywhere alive, a living, breathing entity that pulsed in time with some unseen heart. It clung to the walls, dripped from the ceiling, pooled on the floor in viscous puddles that reflected no light. And in the depths of it, the whispers sharpened into words:
"She's here."
"The blood remembers."
"Let her see."
Then—movement.
A figure stood at the end of the corridor, its shape indistinct, flickering like a candle on the verge of guttering out.
"Let her see."
And then—movement.
A figure stood at the far end of the corridor, its shape flickering like a flame on the verge of being extinguished. It wasn't a ghost, nor some ill-formed illusion. It was something worse. A phantom—half in this world, half beyond it—waiting with purpose.
The mist gathered at its feet like obedient hounds, whispering secrets too old, too dark for the living. Myhra's sword was already in her grip, drawn without conscious thought, its blade vibrating faintly with restrained power, as if it too sensed what waited ahead.
The figure tilted its head. And smiled.
With barely a breath, Myhra advanced, her boots silent on the stone floor. Behind her, the great entrance slammed shut, the sound echoing like a death knell through the hall. And the phantom was leading her deeper into its heart.
The grand staircase loomed next, its banisters coiled with serpentine carvings. She ascended the staircase slowly.
At the top, a corridor stretched forward—a tunnel of locked doors. Each one pulsed faintly with strange energy. She tested them as she passed, her fingers brushing the wood. They were cold. Every one locked. The surfaces too smooth, worn by centuries of touch.
Then she found the last door.
It was different. Darker, heavier, its brass handle gleaming as if recently polished—though no living hand had likely touched it in years. It yielded under her grasp without resistance, gliding open with unnerving silence.
The room beyond was a study, though it felt more like a crypt. Towering shelves groaned beneath the weight of ancient tomes. The scent of dust and forgotten ink choked the air. A massive desk anchored the centre of the room, papers scattered across it in disarray.
A quill lay abandoned mid-sentence, the ink dried into a jagged, black scar. The chair had been pushed back as if someone had left in haste. Or been taken.
Myhra stepped inside. Her breath curled in the freezing air.
The map crinkled under Myhra's fingers as a sound cut through the silence—a whisper of movement behind the bookshelves. She whirled, catching only a flicker of shadow before it vanished. Then, another shift in the darkness.
There, by the desk. From the shadows beneath the desk, something skittered—a sound like bone scraping against wood.
A figure stood cloaked in gloom, its edges blending with the surrounding shadows. Its voice slithered through the air, dry as crumbling parchment: "You came... you came..."
Every muscle in Myhra's body tensed. Her hand hovered over her weapon, but the figure made no move to attack. It simply watched, its presence heavy with something between anticipation and dread.
"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice cutting through the thick air.
The figure didn't answer. For a heartbeat, it remained utterly still—then dissolved into the darkness like ink in water.
Myhra lunged after it. What's there problem? They're neither answering her nor attacking just vanishing whenever she say something...
Her pursuit was silent, her footsteps barely grazing the stone as she followed the shadow's trail. It moved unnaturally, gliding along the walls as if the castle itself willed it forward. Faint laughter echoed in its wake—joyless, hollow, the sound of something that had forgotten how to truly laugh.
The corridors twisted, disorienting her with their labyrinthine turns. The air grew colder, damper, clinging to her skin like a second layer. The shadow led her upward, spiraling along a narrow staircase that coiled into the tower's throat. The higher she climbed, the more the castle's magic pressed against her, ancient and suffocating, as if the stones were breathing.
At the top, a door.
Weathered wood, iron bands rusted with age. The shadow slipped beneath it without a sound.
Myhra didn't hesitate. She shoved the door open.