I hadn’t touched it. Hadn’t even sat on it.
What was the point? I’d only lie there, staring at the canopy, counting the hours until dawn.
Better to walk. Better to explore this place I’d chosen.
The corridors of the Black Keep were a labyrinth. Stone hallways that twisted and turned without logic, staircases that led to dead ends, doors that opened onto rooms full of nothing but shadows and dust.
I passed through them like a ghost, barefoot and silent, leaving no trace.
The stone was cool against my feet. The air was drafty, biting, exactly what I needed.
I walked for hours. Lost track of where I was going, let my feet choose the path.
And found myself standing in front of a door.
It was different from the others. Older. The wood was dull with age, the iron bands that held it together rusted to the color of dried blood.
A chain hung across it with thick links and a heavy padlock, the kind of security intended to keep its secret.
But it wasn’t the lock that caught my attention.
It was the cold.
The door was sealed with rusted iron, but cold radiated from the cracks like a hearth.
I touched the lock. Cold spread from my fingers into the metal, ice crystals forming along each link of the chain.
The iron groaned, recognizing kindred touch, but my hands ached with the effort. Pulling heat from iron took more than pulling it from flesh.
The chains fell away.
No flash of light, no thunderclap. The padlock simply clicked open. The door swung inward on hinges that should have screamed with rust but instead moved without resistance.
I stepped through.
The room beyond was circular. It was likely the West Tower, if I’d mapped the castle correctly.
Tall windows lined the curved walls, their glass so thick with grime that the moonlight filtering through was pale and weak.
Dust covered every surface. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling in dense curtains, stirring in the draft from the open door.
No one had been in this room for ages.
I walked to the center of the space. My feet left prints in the dust, the only mark I’d made in weeks that proved I was more than a ghost.
The temperature here was absolute. Deep. The kind of cold that settled into your marrow and made itself comfortable.
Something moved in the shadows.
I stopped. Held very still. Listened.
A soft sound. Almost like... breathing. But not quite. More like the whisper of air through a space that wasn’t meant to hold air.
The rustle of something dry and forgotten shifting in the dark.
Eyes opened in the corner.
Pale green. Luminescent. Glowing with a light that had nothing to do with moonlight or candles or any natural source.
