Shortly after the Earl of Montagu's family departed the imperial palace in their carriage, another group of guests also chose to leave the banquet hall early.
"Oh — it's His Lordship!"
"But how can this be? The ball is still in full swing…"
It was the Duke of Carlisle and his knights.
A ripple of whispered astonishment followed them across the hall, but not a single soul dared step into their path. The crowd parted instinctively — the way shallow water retreats from a stone — and the Duke passed through without slowing.
*A waste of time.*
Lennox Carlisle had nothing more to do here. He had seen enough.
He hadn't come to mingle with fools who danced carelessly in their tasteless, overwrought costumes — feathered and jeweled and utterly ridiculous. Nor had he come for the wine, the music, or the insufferable tradition of handing flowers to strangers.
His visit to the capital in summer had been a spontaneous decision.
One of the three men he kept stationed in the capital had sent word: he may have found what Lennox had been searching for — for a very long time.
Few among the Duke of Carlisle's closest associates knew that for years, he had been conducting a quiet, relentless hunt for a single object.
It was an heirloom — something entrusted to the Dukes of Carlisle generations ago. But it had vanished ten years prior, swept away in the chaos that erupted after the death of Lennox's father, the previous Duke. With the seat of the Northlands left vacant and his relatives circling like carrion birds, committing atrocity after atrocity in their bid for power, the relic had simply… disappeared.
"You'll find it soon," said Hardin quietly.
The man in dark clothes walked half a step behind the Duke, his voice pitched low enough that only Lennox could hear.
Though Hardin had served the Duke for years, he still didn't know precisely what the object was. All he knew was that it resembled an ordinary gemstone — but unlike ordinary gemstones, it possessed certain magical properties.
He also knew that his master — a man for whom neither possessions nor people held any particular value — had been consumed by the search for this relic for as long as Hardin had known him.
"Shall we return to the auction house in the south?" Hardin asked. "Search the records again?"
"No. That won't be necessary." Lennox's voice was flat, final. "Once I've concluded my business here, we ride north."
"Understood, sir."
When Lennox reached the grand entrance, he paused.
He turned — slowly, deliberately — and cast his gaze back across the banquet hall. The golden light, the swaying dancers, the endless cascade of bluebells.
Hardin's eyes narrowed. "Are you looking for someone?"
"…No."
There had been something — a faint, prickling unease, as though someone's gaze had been trailing him since the moment he crossed the threshold. But some time ago, the sensation had vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
For a few silent moments, Lennox watched the glittering crowd, his red eyes scanning the sea of faces with an unreadable expression. Then he turned away.
"We're leaving."
---
## — Shattered —
***Flash!***
"Oh God — don't do this!"
"Get out of my way!"
In a state of fractured consciousness, Juliet could make out only fragments — voices that barely penetrated the thick fog smothering her mind.
"Damn it — *don't move!*"
"Lily!"
"No — *Cassius!*"
Then someone screamed. The scream cut off abruptly, as though a hand had closed around the sound and strangled it.
"***Juliet!***"
Hearing her name — torn from a throat raw with terror — Juliet forced her eyes open.
A lance of pain drove through the back of her skull, sharp and blinding. It felt as though something had struck her — hard. A concussion, perhaps. Her vision swam. Her thoughts moved like water through sand.
But even through the haze, she understood three things.
She was lying on an ice-cold stone floor.
The air smelled of iron and damp.
And she had no idea where her parents were.
*Where am I? Where are Mother and Father?*
The fog in her mind began, slowly, to thin — and then she heard a voice nearby. Angry. Familiar. Unmistakable.
"***No!*** Who told you to kill them?! I told you — all you had to do was steal the key!"
*…Kill?*
*Who did he kill?*
The moment the voice reached her, recognition struck like a blade between her ribs.
She didn't need to see the speaker's face.
It was Gaspard. Her uncle.
"But you didn't tell us *not* to kill them," a second voice replied — flat, indifferent, the tone of a man discussing the weather.
"Did I have to spell that out?!"
Juliet lay perfectly still, her cheek pressed against the frozen stone. She kept her eyes half-shut and her breathing shallow, letting the quarrel wash over her while her fractured mind pieced together what had happened.
"And who says we killed *all* of them?" the second voice continued, an edge of amusement creeping in. "Their daughter's still breathing."
A beat of silence.
"…She's *alive?*" Gaspard's voice shifted — confusion first, then the rapid, calculating hum of a man weighing profit against risk.
It was obvious, even to Juliet in her broken state, that he was deciding whether it would be more convenient to leave her alive — or whether it would be safer to kill her and dispose of the body.
"Listen, *Baron*," the stranger cut in, his patience thinning. "Your brother drew his sword and fought back. We lost a man because of it."
"Did you honestly think you could subdue a former knight without bloodshed?" another voice added — rougher, bitter.
A long, strained pause.
"…Fine," Gaspard muttered at last. "But where is the key?"
"It wasn't where you said it would be."
*The key.*
*That's what he wants.*
Juliet bit down on the inside of her cheek, using the small flare of pain to anchor herself. Her eyelids were growing heavier with each passing second, and the darkness kept pulling at her, soft and insistent, urging her to let go.
But she *would not* let go.
The pieces fell into place with nauseating clarity. These men had broken into the mansion on Gaspard's orders — Gaspard, who had visited her father only the day before, who had sat across from them at the table, who had smiled and poured wine and spoken of family.
A wave of fury rose through her — hot, violent, blinding — and for one savage moment it burned away the fog entirely.
*I should have killed him. I should have slit his throat the moment he walked through our door.*
But then — through the haze of rage and pain — she felt it.
A faint warmth against her chest.
Something glowing softly beneath the neckline of her dress, hidden in the folds of silk against her skin.
The key.
The key her father had given her just the day before.
*So Gaspard hired these men to break into the mansion and steal it.*
*But what in God's name is this relic? Why does he want it so badly?*
What none of them knew — not Gaspard, not his hired killers — was that the key was no longer in the house. It was here. Around her neck. And since Gaspard was still arguing with his accomplices about its absence, that meant they hadn't found it. They hadn't even thought to search *her*.
"Enough," Gaspard snapped, and she heard the sharp click of his boots turning against the stone. "I'm leaving. Listen carefully — you don't know me. We have *never met*. And if any of you so much as *hint* otherwise, I will make certain you regret it."
His footsteps retreated. A door opened and closed.
Silence — and then a low, ugly laugh.
"So… we can do whatever we want with her?"
The remaining men turned their eyes toward Juliet, motionless on the floor.
"What do you suggest?"
"Kill her. Clean and simple."
"No — wait. There's a better option." The voice dropped, conspiratorial and greedy. "We sell her to a slave ship. A noble girl like this? Young, pretty? We'd get a *very* good price. Split the coin equally."
They spoke about her future as though she were livestock at auction. But with each passing second, Juliet heard less and less of their words. Their voices were receding — growing distant, tinny, as though she were sinking below the surface of deep water and they were calling to her from the shore.
Her surroundings blurred. A deafening hum filled her ears, drowning out everything.
And the only thing she could see — the only thing that remained sharp and real in the dissolving world — was the key. Glowing silver against her chest, pulsing with a light that had no earthly source.
---
## — The Voices —
*⟨…Hey.⟩*
*Who said that?*
Juliet's thoughts stumbled. *An auditory hallucination?*
But no. The voice was too clear, too *present* — not a memory, not a figment, but something speaking directly into the marrow of her consciousness.
*⟨You.⟩*
*⟨We are waiting.⟩*
*⟨I will kill them for you.⟩*
A throbbing pressure began to build at the back of her skull — not quite pain, but something deeper, something that vibrated in the space between thought and bone.
And then the voices multiplied.
They swarmed through her mind like a hive disturbed — persistent, overlapping, each one distinct. Some were sweet and coaxing, soft as lullabies. Others seethed with barely contained fury.
But all of them — every single one — were desperate.
Desperate to be heard. Desperate to be *released*.
*⟨No — I'll kill them for you!⟩*
*⟨We are big. We are strong.⟩*
*⟨It costs us nothing.⟩*
*⟨Tear them to pieces…⟩*
*⟨Easy. So easy.⟩*
*⟨You can rest now.⟩*
*⟨Just let us out. Just. Get. Us. ***Out of here***.⟩*
Juliet's breath hitched.
*Out of where?*
And then — like a bolt of lightning splitting a darkened sky — understanding struck.
The voices were coming from the ***key***.
*The key.*
*Montagu — Guardian.*
And that door she had searched for so desperately as a child — crawling through every room of the mansion, pressing the key into every lock she could find…
*Ah.*
*So that's it.*
It wasn't a door meant to be *opened*.
It was a door meant to keep something ***locked***.
No wonder she had never found it. The door was never meant to be found. It was hidden — *deliberately* hidden — so that no one would ever stumble upon it, no one would ever be tempted.
*Guardian* — not "key holder." Not "owner."
***Guardian. Protector.***
Whatever was sealed behind that door was never supposed to come out.
*Then these voices…*
A chill ran through her — cold and absolute, colder than the stone beneath her body.
*If the door was hidden so that no one could even find it… then what's behind it must be —*
But her strength was failing. Her eyes were closing, dragged shut by an invisible weight she could no longer resist.
In the last flickering moment of consciousness, Juliet's hand moved on instinct. Her fingers closed around the key — tight, trembling, unyielding.
And in the darkness that swallowed her whole, a door appeared.
Immense. Ancient. Drenched in blood — old blood, dark and crusted, as though the door itself had been *wounded*. Chains hung from its surface in rusted tangles, and carved into the wood were symbols she could not read, in a language that had died centuries ago.
***Chink.***
Even with her eyes sealed shut, Juliet saw it. She *heard* it — the clear, unmistakable sound of a lock turning for the first time in hundreds of years.
The door groaned.
And then it opened.
Laughter erupted from the other side — loud, wild, ***joyous*** — the ecstatic, unhinged laughter of something that had been caged for so long it had forgotten what freedom tasted like.
And through the widening gap, something stepped out.
Something ancient. Something vast.
Something that had been waiting — patiently, hungrily, for a very, *very* long time — to return to this world.