The locket wasn't a key in the usual sense— it didn't open a door, but something far more intimate. It was a psychic key, and with a single touch, it unlocked a memory so raw it felt like a scream trapped in metal. In the days that followed, that silent scream seemed etched into Mordecai's very bones. Every thought carried a tremor of terror, making the world feel sharper and more brittle. Sleep became a stranger; he'd spend hours at his desk, the locket nestled on black velvet, his fingertips hovering just above it as if it might burn him. In those sleepless nights, he and Kaiphus forged a new, wordless language—tracing patterns and sigils across his back: for focus, for patience, for breath. They were the only things keeping him from being swallowed whole by the hunt's desperate urgency.
It was during one of these trance-like states of concentration, his own power gently probing the locket's fractured history, that the vision came. It wasn't a full memory but a splinter: the sensation of cold stone against a cheek, the smell of old incense and damp wool, and most clearly, the image of a symbol. It was carved into a wooden beam, half-hidden in shadow—a spiral that ended in a stylised, watchful eye. It was the sigil his mother's stories had called a "way-station", a neutral ground where the fabric between dimensions was thin, where travellers from lost worlds could sometimes find a moment's respite.
An address surfaced in his mind—a crossroads in the mundane world where the dimensional thin spot existed. It was not tied to a street number but to a place: the Old Granary Road, a route abandoned for half a century.
He didn't tell Samantha. He invented a school trip. To Lina, he simply said he'd be out of town for a night. He rented a nondescript, boxy van, its interior smelling of stale cigarette smoke and artificial pine, a stark contrast to the celestial spires of his memory. Kaiphus, usually a cloak, shifted into the form of a heavy, worn-looking travel blanket, its teal threads hiding themselves completely. As he drove away from the city, the familiar hum of its life fading behind him, he felt a terrifying mixture of hope and dread coiling in his gut. This was the most tangible lead he had ever had.
The Old Granary Road was a scar on the landscape, a cracked and weed-choked ribbon of asphalt that wound into the hills. The van bounced violently in the potholes, the suspension groaning in protest. He parked where the road became impassable and continued on foot as the sun began to bleed into the horizon. The air grew cold and still.
He found it at last. It was barely even a building anymore—just the skeleton of one. In the clearing stood the ruins of The Caravanserai, which was a sanctuary for travelers from another time. Its wooden walls leaned with the burden of years, the slate roof caved and broken in places.
By all rights, it should have felt abandoned, mournful. Yet the place seemed to hum with a secret life. The air was heavy with the scent of old incense—sandalwood and myrrh—a fragrance that lingered as if the rituals had never truly ended. It whispered of passage, of sanctuary, of worlds brushing close in the dusk.
He paused at the threshold, every sense on alert. Kaiphus tightened around his shoulders, shifting from a blanket to its true form as the teal threads glowed faintly in the twilight. The change was a clear warning. This was the place.
He stepped inside. The interior was one large, open space, the far end open to the elements where a wall had collapsed. A few crude benches were scattered about, and in the centre of the room, a single, old-fashioned oil lamp burnt with a steady, warm flame, though there was no wind to make it flicker. It was the only source of light, pushing back against the encroaching night and creating a fragile sanctuary. The sense of weary watchfulness was palpable, as if the very walls were holding their breath.
And he was not alone.In the farthest corner, deep in the shadows beyond the lamp's golden reach, a figure sat perfectly still. Mordecai froze, every muscle tense, and instinctively gripped the device in his pocket. Kaiphus prepared itself to become a shield, responding to his heightened alarm.
The figure shifted. A boot scuffed softly on the stone floor. Then, a low sound echoed in the quiet space. A laugh. It was a dry, crooked sound, raspy from disuse. But its cadence, the specific way it caught on the exhale, sent a jolt through Mordecai so powerful it nearly stole his breath. It was an echo, a distorted mirror of a sound he heard in his happiest dreams—Cassandra's childhood giggle, the one she'd let out when he'd make her doll float just a little too high.
He took an involuntary step forward, into the circle of lamplight. "Cassandra?" The name was a whisper, torn from a place deep within him he'd kept locked for twelve years.The figure in the shadows stood up, moving with a fluid, wary grace that was not his sister's. They stepped to the very edge of the light. It was a woman, though it was hard to tell her age. Her hair was a wild, dark mane, and her clothes were a practical, worn mix of fabrics from worlds he didn't recognise. Her eyes, a sharp, intelligent grey, studied him with an intensity that felt like a physical touch.
And then he saw it. The scar. A thin, pale line that started just below her earlobe and traced a path down the line of her jaw, a perfect match to the one Cassandra had gotten at age three, tumbling into the sharp corner of a crystal table in their aerie. He remembered his mother's frantic spells, his own small hand holding his sister's, and the way the tear had welled up in the cut but never fell. This was the same. It was impossible.
"You…" he breathed, his voice trembling.
The woman said nothing. Her gaze flickered from his face to the sentient cloak on his shoulders, and a flicker of… something… recognition, perhaps, passed through her eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced by a hardened caution. She neither confirmed nor denied her identity. She didn't ask who he was. It was as if his presence alone was a question she refused to answer.
For a long moment, they stood in silence, the only sound the soft hiss of the lamp. The hope that had surged in his chest began to curdle into a confused agony. This was her; it had to be, but... yet… it wasn't. The soul behind those eyes was older, harder, and carved by experiences he couldn't imagine.
Then, with a final, unreadable look, she turned. She moved back into the shadows, and for a heart-stopping second, he thought she would simply vanish. But she paused, her hand dipping into a pouch at her belt. She didn't turn back. She simply let a small, folded scrap of paper fall from her fingers onto the stone bench where she had been sitting.
And then she was gone, melting into the darkness at the back of the ruin with a silence that was more profound than any sound.
Mordecai stood rooted to the spot, his heart hammering. After a count of ten, he strode across the room, Kaiphus flowing behind him like a worried shadow. He snatched up the paper. It was rough, like parchment. Unfolding it, he saw a symbol drawn in a simple, bold ink stroke.
It was the same spiral and watchful eye from his vision, but here it was rendered with more detail. And beneath it, three words were written in the flowing script of the Eclipse Dimension: Sanctuary. Seek the Thread.
It was the sigil of a clandestine network. A rumour he'd chased for years, a ghost of hope for refugees from Ra'Zul's sweep. A system of safe houses and allies for those who had escaped the tyrant's shadow.
He clutched the paper in his fist, his knuckles white. He looked back toward the emptiness where the woman had stood. She... wasn't Cassandra. But she carried a piece of her: her laugh, her scar, a knowledge of their world. She was a message. A signpost.The hunt was no longer a search for ghosts. It had tightened from a vague, aching hope into a hard, focused fist around this new, tangible clue. The door he had been pounding on for over a decade was not just unlocked; it was now, finally, undeniably unlatched.