Beautiful Chaos

Dawn bled into the sky, chasing away the night’s phantoms, but the unease stuck—a stubborn stain on the fabric of my thoughts. More sleep wasn’t in the cards, and I knew it. I dragged myself out of bed, resigned to the day ahead. There were places I needed to be, people who might help me untangle the mess of blood and glass that haunted my waking hours. I needed answers, and maybe a clue about this damn key. But just my luck, it seemed the world was already up and running, and I got caught in the morning grind.

The drive into the city was a slow death march, the morning traffic pushing me down, inch by tedious inch. Nearly two hours of red lights and exhaust fumes finally spat me out into the crumbling heart of the Downtown Business District. The buildings around here were little more than decaying corpses, their former grandeur long devoured by time. I parked next to a dilapidated flower shop, its windows as dead as the flowers it once sold, and an abandoned record store—a mausoleum for forgotten tunes.

But amid this desolation, something caught my eye—a crimson door. It stood out against the faded surroundings like a bloodstain on old parchment. The sign above it read Beautiful Chaos - Demonology, Smithing, and Alchemy , the letters curling like tendrils of smoke. The door promised secrets, the kind only the desperate or the damned would seek out. Naturally, I headed in.

A delicate chime tinkled as I stepped inside, the sound swallowed by the shadows clinging to the walls. The interior was a warren of tall, black-wood bookshelves and glass display cases, each one brimming with relics and oddities that seemed to drink in the dim light rather than reflect it. This place was a collector’s cavern, every inch of it crowded with forbidden knowledge and dangerous artifacts.

Behind the counter, a man stood, his face pale as bone with dark circles under his eyes like bruises. He was a wraith, barely human, and his gaze sent a shiver down my spine.

In the world of demonologists, there were two kinds: the ones in lab coats, sterile and clinical, who harnessed demonic energies for progress, and those like him—creatures of the night who wove dark magic for obscure and often perilous purposes.

But both kinds were just as likely to reject Enhancements entirely, letting Corruption seep through their veins until it coiled around their minds like a venomous snake. Skirting the edge of sanity was another part of the job—a dangerous line they walked willingly, or sometimes unknowingly, until the line disappeared altogether.

The trade danced on the edge of legality, wrapped in a shroud of murky morality.

Despite the shop’s dilapidated appearance, hope flickered within me as I scanned the room. There was promise here, buried beneath the dust and grime. His voice grated like a rusted hinge swinging open, filling the silence with tension.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’m searching for someone. Their blood is the only lead I have.” The words hung in the air, and I watched as his lazy disinterest sharpened into something dangerous. His eyes narrowed like a predator sizing up prey.

“You’re not a detective, are you?” His eyes darted to a small, polished stone in his hand—an artifact of truth, once favored by the cops, but now usually kept out of sight. The stone wasn’t exactly unreliable; it was just that truth had a nasty habit of twisting itself in the eye of the beholder. What one person swore on could be another’s blasphemy.

“Do I look like a detective?” I asked, lifting my hat to reveal the grayish hue of my face, the skin stretched too tight over the bones.

“Couldn’t say. Are you?” he repeated.

“Not anymore,” I replied honestly.

The stone remained still, confirming my truth. He relaxed slightly, the suspicion in his eyes giving way to something more calculating.

“I see. Are you here for trouble, then?”

“Only if it comes looking for me.”

The man nodded, apparently satisfied, and reached under the counter to flick a switch. The door behind me locked with a definitive click.

He led me through a hidden passage into a room that felt more like a sanctum than part of the shop. It smelled of old parchment and beeswax, and the walls bare save for a small table cluttered with arcane instruments. Each item hummed with latent energy, secrets hidden within their intricate designs.

The man muttered to himself as he rifled through the assorted objects, his fingers brushing against trinkets and talismans until he found what he was looking for. “You have the blood?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly.

From my pocket, I drew a small of glass, its edges raw and jagged, as if torn from something that didn’t want to let it go. Dried blood, taken from the shadowed figure I’d chased through McGuffey’s estate, smeared across the shard’s surface, catching the light and gleaming like tiny rubies embedded in glass—dark, tempting, and thrumming with secrets.

He took it from me, turning it over in his hand before gesturing to a large silver cauldron that he’d unearthed from the chaos. “Drop it in,” he ordered, his eyes never leaving the shard.

I let the shard fall, and the blood mingled with the water in the cauldron, turning it a deep, otherworldly crimson. The air around us thickened with a pulse of dark energy as the man unfurled an ancient parchment, laying it flat on the table. He began whispering incantations, each word sending shivers down my spine. The parchment reacted, sketching out a cityscape unfamiliar to me. But as quickly as it formed, the ink began to swirl into chaos, the lines twisting into a frenzied storm of shapes and colors. The sight was mesmerizing and deeply unsettling.

The man’s eyes bulged with terror, his face twisting into a mask of horror as he stared at the convulsing display. The air around us crackled with malevolent energy, the ink in the cauldron erupting like molten lava. The cauldron itself caught fire, an inferno fueled by an unseen force. A howl filled the room, not a sound, but a force that tore at reality, pulling at the corners of the world as if the very pages of existence were being turned by some ancient, malevolent hand.

Amidst the chaos, the shop turned into a whirlwind of destruction. Books hurled themselves off shelves, pages torn from their bindings, while furniture crashed to the ground with the finality of a guillotine. But the man stood firm, eerily composed amidst the turmoil, his eyes glinting with a calm resolve. He snatched a bar of copper from the clutter and thrust it into the heart of the storm, his voice bellowing incantations that were nearly swallowed by the roaring wind and fire.

And then, as abruptly as it began, the storm ceased. The room plunged into an unsettling quiet, the echoes of the tempest lingering in our ringing ears.

We stood in the near-darkness, breaths ragged, adrenaline still riding us hard. The only thing missing was a heartbeat—mine, specifically. No frantic pounding, no thud of life trying to keep up. Just that familiar, unnatural quiet in my chest, like a punchline to a joke no one wanted to tell.

The man’s demeanor didn’t falter, unfazed by the chaos that had erupted around us. His voice remained steady, a stark contrast to my racing thoughts and the tremor in my hands that I couldn’t quite control. Looking at him, I was reminded of Professor Clark’s lectures on demonology—the stern warnings he’d issue about harnessing raw aether without a proper conduit. Back then, they seemed like the ramblings of an old academic, cautionary tales to scare the students. But now, those words echoed like ominous predictions, playing out right before my eyes. The air was still charged with residual energy, an eerie buzz that sent chills down my spine.

“Who can name Benjamin’s five primary catalysts?” Professor Clark asked, peering at us over the rim of his glasses with a mix of expectation and amusement. We sat there, fumbling for answers, until she spoke—the woman who would become my wife, who would one day give me Sarah. Her voice was like honey, smooth and sweet, but with a core of unyielding steel.

She listed them off with ease, her confidence unwavering. “Rhodium and silver are the primary conductors. Gold attracts and ensnares. Bronze buffers, and copper nullifies.”

I shook off the memory, banishing her voice to the back of my mind where it belonged, trying to anchor myself in the here and now.

“So, can you tell me who belonged to that blood?” I asked.

He looked down at the cauldron, his fingers brushing over it almost tenderly, as if touching something sacred or deeply cursed. There was a reverence there, a kind of awe that had no place among the broken shards and ruined tools.

“That blood...” he said, like he was sharing a secret with the dark. His eyes flickered in the dim light, and for a moment, he looked less like a man and more like some forgotten thing dragged up from an old well.

“It’s old-world,” he murmured, his gaze distant, as though staring at something I couldn’t see. He wasn’t talking to me anymore; he was talking to the blood itself, to whatever memory it held.

He leaned in, and the shadows shifted, deepened, painting long fingers across his face, distorting the edges of his features until they blurred into something ghostly. There was something intimate about the way he whispered to the room, his voice dropping until it barely brushed against my ears.

“It’s twisted, powerful. It doesn’t belong in any of our books, in any of our spells. It’s the kind of blood that chooses to stay hidden, that refuses to be known. It’s alive—more alive than it has any right to be. And it knows we’re here.” He reached up, his hand moving slowly, deliberately, until his fingers traced a thin line in the air. I could almost see it then, the shimmer of something that wasn’t quite there, a ripple across the surface of reality itself.

He paused, his eyes flickering to the mess of broken equipment on the floor, the shattered glass that glinted in the weak light, and then back to me. The shadows moved across his face again, the lines of worry etched there deepening, turning into something like warning.

“Whatever left this behind...” His voice was barely more than a breath now, his lips curling into something that could’ve been a smile, but wasn’t. “It walks outside life and death. It’s old... older than this city, older than the stone it’s built on, maybe older than anything we have words for.”

His eyes were locked on mine, and there was a chill there, a hint of something primal, something like pity. “If you’re smart,” he said, the ghost of a smile still tugging at his lips, “you’ll stay away. Because whatever it touches...” His eyes flickered to the blood once more, and I could feel the words settle into the room like a curse. “Whatever it touches, it claims. Permanently.”

There was a long pause.

“Right,” I said slowly. “Anything more helpful than eternal doom? An address, maybe?”

He looked at me like I’d spat in his drink. I sighed, nodding as if I’d gotten the answer I expected. “So, great evil, total darkness, end of the world. But nothing I can actually use. Got it.”

His hand shot out, cold fingers wrapping around my arm. He leaned in, eyes boring into mine with a twisted curiosity. “Can I keep it?”

I shrugged him off, glancing around the room. The place was a wreck, rubble and ruin everywhere. No way in all the rings of hell I’d be footing the bill for this mess, so might as well give him what he wanted. Not like it mattered to me anymore.

“Sure, why not.”

Something shifted in his gaze, a shadow flaring to life as he bowed, then began clearing the debris with a strange reverence.

My hand trembled as I pulled the key from my pocket. Small, intricate, its patterns seemed to shift and twist in the low light, never quite the same twice. “There’s one more thing,” I said, keeping my tone even. “Know anything about this?”

The shopkeeper’s eyes darted to the key, and for a split second, something flickered—a spark of recognition, maybe, or greed—before he masked it with a shrug. “Oh, that?” His tone was too casual, like he didn’t already have his sights on it. “A trinket. Probably nothing special. But if you’re looking to part with it, I’d give you... fifty bucks.” He tried to keep his voice steady, but the twitch in his fingers gave him away.

I lifted an eyebrow, pulling the key back a fraction. “Fifty bucks? You can do better than that. How about telling me what you actually know?”

His mask cracked, a flicker of frustration before he composed himself, leaning in as his voice dropped to a hushed, conspiratorial tone. “Alright, alright. A hundred, then. It can’t be worth much more.”

“Not for sale. Just give me something useful.”

The pretense slipped completely. He eyed me with something like resentment, but nodded, letting out a begrudging sigh. “Well... I would, but you fried my diviner.” He cast a pointed look at the smoldering remnants of his machine. “Could take days to fix… but if you leave the key with me, perhaps for a few days, I might be able to dig up something useful for you.”

I didn’t even blink, slipping the key back into my pocket. “I think I’ll keep it. But thanks.”

His eyes narrowed, frustration and something darker smoldering there, but he slumped with a sigh, turning back to the scorched remains on his workbench, muttering curses as he sifted through the wreckage.

I left him behind in the smoky gloom, stepping out into streets that lay quiet and abandoned, the only sound the distant rumble of thunder. A storm building somewhere on the horizon. The stench of old magic and broken promises clung to me like grime on these streets, memories stirring in its wake, dark and uninvited.

There was only one group with the kind of power to twist McGuffey’s death into a neat little suicide and scramble a diviner beyond recognition: the Midnight Council. Shadows lurking in every deal, every lie, every dirty corner of this city. And when they decide to tighten their grip? You feel it.

It was either them or something I’d never tangled with before. But I’d put my money on the power-hungry over end-of-the-world evils any day. Then again, it’d be just my luck if this crackpot actually had it right.

You could never trust a demonologist.

Damned casters.