Drip.Drip.Drip
The cold, wet liquid splashed down his cheek. He flinched, eyes snapping open, as his hand jerked upward on instinct.
Drip
Another drop slides down the ceiling, this time landing on his lips.
The smell filled his nose with a dense, sharp metallic scent as the drop slid into his mouth. He froze, his brain lagging behind the sensation as his tongue instinctively moved as the taste of coppery metal flooded his mouth. He wretched suddenly, a sharp, violent reaction that doubled him forward as he spat phlegm, still tasting the sour, dense liquid in his mouth. Blood.
My head hurt so badly…
Wait! blood
The groggy Felix Corwin suddenly opened his eyes and stared widely at the speckles of blood on the ceiling.
Ouch
Felix shut his eyes again. He felt an abnormal throbbing pain in his head as though someone had repeatedly pounded against his head until it was reduced to mush.
Slowly, he opened his eyes again, held the bottom frame of the bed for support and slowly attempted to sit up. He felt his legs drop as he almost slipped and lost his balance. He quickly clutched the bed frame tightly and tried to regain control of his limbs.
So sticky… why is the floor so sticky?
Felix looked at the room splattered with blood and came to the most likely conclusion.
Assassins!
As soon as he came to that conclusion, he laughed self-deprecatingly. Why would an assassin come for me? Someone like me is at the very bottom of society.
I doubt I know anyone rich or bothered enough to hire an assassin.
A thief, maybe … but that was even more laughable.
Perhaps they broke in and found nothing to steal, and retaliated by smashing his head with a club. How depressing…
Felix finally managed to focus his eyes on the cramped living space, his somewhat sturdy wooden desk was filled with neatly arranged books and blueprints scattered all over and propped to the side, an unscrewed sundial was carelessly dumped on the table with most of its parts on the floor, the ink bottle tipped over with its contents splashed all over his desk, he slowly turned his head to the flickering oil lamp, the shards of glass on the floor and the wall covered with blood.
Wait! The wall was covered in blood!
The realisation hit him like a brick as his eyes narrowed at the messy crime scene. There was blood on the walls, on the ceilings, and even on the floor where he was lying. He jerked back in shock as he looked at his bloody hands.
Holy mother of the crimson sun !!
Felix felt inexplicably horrified as he straightened his neck and sat up abruptly. He couldn't hold himself back from calling on the goddess as he quickly drew a crimson sun symbol on his chest.
However, his head protested with an even more severe throbbing pain. It made him temporarily lose his strength as he winced uncontrollably. The realisation of what he witnessed managed to wake him from his reverie as he came to an even scarier conclusion than before.
Did I kill someone?
countless scary theories flashed through his mind. In a span of a few seconds, he had gone from victim to fugitive. If he killed someone, not even the deacon from the church of the crimson sun could extricate him from the hands of the law.
Where is Eleanor?
With how thin the walls were, she was bound to be alerted once there was any sudden noise. Or perhaps she was also in the same situation as him!
He stopped as he pondered, suddenly deep in thought, even if Eleanor did not notice, the amount of noise would have alerted Mr Langley upstairs; the grumpy old man would have surely knocked on their door to give a stern warning. Then he would wait till morning and file a thorough noise complaint to the police and the landlord, the siblings would never hear the end of his complaints, if they had disturbed a wince of his night's sleep.
He stared in confusion as he kept going through the possible scenarios that could have led to this strange situation. Felix then sighed as he slowly forced himself to calm down.
"What matters now is understanding the situation I am in." he suddenly paused as he added
"… as for the consequences, I can think of it after"
A grimace hung on his face as he wiped his bloody hands on his collared shirt. He winced in pain as he forcefully stood up from the ground, then carefully stretched his legs and stepped over the pool of blood
He suddenly sighed as he noticed his expensive, linen white collared shirt had a bloody hand print from him cleaning his hands on it earlier.
"What a waste, I only have two good ones reserved for important occasions". Felix resisted the urge to smack himself in the head as he shook his head disappointingly and lampooned silently.
As he slowly headed to the other side of the room towards the oil lamp, he noticed the shards on the floor from his mirror; the wooden frame was stained with crimson blood and a strange, clear liquid. The scene was even worse than he had previously imagined. He wore a strange look as he brought the lamp closer and focused the light on the broken mirror on the wall.
He froze, holding on tightly to the oil lamp as he became even paler than a sheet, staring at his mutilated head in the reflection. There was at least a 3-centimetre bloody flesh wound on his forehead and terrifying injuries everywhere else, pieces of flesh stringing out of the wound. It was so deep he could see the white bone protruding from underneath, and a greyish white liquid flowing down his head from his brain; the horror of his grotesque wound made his knees wobble as he gripped the lamp tighter for support.
Felix resisted the urge to vomit as he felt another throbbing pain in his head. It was no wonder he felt a horrible headache. His brain was probably about to fall out of his head !! The tightly cramped room felt even stuffier as he quickly adjusted his collar to reduce the suffocating feeling.
His darting eyes finally settled on his normally pale face, which now had the dull waxen sheen of cooled candle grease, his veins tracing bluish paths along his temples and down his neck, and his cheeks hollowed out across the bones beneath his brown hair, which was nearly dyed crimson. A faint discolouration lingered at the corners of his mouth, a bruise. He stared back at his dispirited grey eyes, now sunken, deep-seated with dark circles. Lifting his hand, slowly, in uncertainty, his nails had taken on a faint bluish hue, and the skin around them looked tight and shrunken.
He froze as an unbearable realisation settled in his chest
There was no breath fogging the mirror. No warmth rising from him. No sensation of beating on his chest
He was looking at a corpse.
"No.." he yelped in shock, the voice from his throat croaking, sounding almost guttural and unnatural.
"….No, no, no "
He gripped the edge of the mirror, harder than he meant to, as the glass shards drove into his skin. Ignoring the pain, he continued to mutter
"I'm alive,"
"I'm here. I'm…"
His voice catches as his eyes lock onto his unnatural reflection again. Still staring back at him.
"Not living..."
His hand reached out to touch his hollow cheeks again. Cold. His hand dropped from his cheek. For a long moment, he just stood there, staring at the thing in the mirror
"…what am I?"
How did I get such a wound?
And why am I still alive?
He quickly glanced away from the mirror, unwilling to confront his reflection.
"Think,"
"Just… think."
Because there has to be a reason. People don't just wake up like this. There's always something before. An accident. An illness. Felix's head hurt even more as he tried to recall any events from last night. Anything
The last thing I remember...
He straightens his posture, holding himself together through sheer will. His eyes moved across the room again, slowly searching for details he might have missed.
Is anything out of place? Are there signs of a struggle? Blood? Broken glass? Anything that explains why he looks like something pulled from a grave? And why the hell was he dressed so formally to bed?
He almost dropped the lamp again as he felt a stinging pain as the bloody flesh on his head squirmed. His confused expression morphed into an expression filled with primal horror. He reflectively dropped the lamp lower to avoid seeing his reflection.
Pausing and taking a deep breath to control himself, he sighed. The roller coaster from tonight almost sent him into severe shock. He hung the lamp back on the wall and hurriedly picked up his frock, which was thrown casually on the bed and went through the pockets without any luck. He didn't find any clues from last night. His hand went through his trouser pockets as he pulled out a cold metallic object from his right pocket. A Pocket Watch. Strange.
"How didn't I notice it before? "
Perhaps the headache was messing with his perception, or the empty piece missing from his brain. He was tempted to go knock on Eleanor's door to ask for clues, but he was also worried that she might be frightened by his current state.
No need to worry, El, once I gather enough clues, I will leave so I don't drag you into this. Something like me does not belong in the living
He stood in silence as his thoughts drifted; he was very aware that his previous situation had been deeply worrying to his sister. As a recent graduate of Arcanum University, he hadn't managed to get any reasonable job prospects. Luckily, they hadn't acquired any debts due to the university funds being covered by his father's colleague, Mr Bernie, a renowned machinist.
Regardless, attending university meant he had to dig deep into the reserve funds left by their father to fund his books, research and Eleanor's subsequent training program to become a governess. The matter of Eleanor's health was also concerning; due to her weaker constitution, she could not withstand even the tiniest breath of Veyn and often experienced moments of severe breathlessness. Despite Hallow City being a modern city built with an air filtration system to keep the toxic Veyn fumes out and reduce the concentration to the lowest limit, she still had to have her apparatus on her at all times.
The breath apparatus was a new machine to help people with a similar health condition that his sister had; it was hailed as mind-blowing by the Guild of engine works. Felix got some help from Mr Bernie and spent a ridiculous amount of money to procure one specially made for her. A total of 35 pounds, which was enough to rent a comfortable manor in the centre of the city for a full year. What was even more frustrating was the amount of shillings he had to spend on the extra refills.
It was not a one-time buy!
The issue of money also extended to normal living funds. It was why they decided to rent such a cramped two-bedroom flat far away from the city centre. He stubbornly refused to ask Mr Bernie for any more assistance, as he had already done more than enough to support them after his father's scandal and his subsequent passing.
He cleared his head, dropping the pocket watch on the bed and pacing around the room to look for clues. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the journal he bought on a whim under the bed.
I don't remember placing that there…
Felix carefully grabbed the book with his clean hand and gasped in shock. The previously empty journal had several entries. What was even more baffling to him was that it was his handwriting; ever since he bought the journal, he had forgotten about it and tossed it on his desk. so how did this empty diary suddenly have his writing?
He raised his hands to massage his throbbing temples, but stopped after he remembered his forehead wound. With a wry smile on his face, he slowly flipped through the diary entries to the last entry. His handwriting was frantic and messy, and the words were written in a strange language.
As an outstanding Classical archaeology and Ancient history graduate, he was very familiar with many languages and would usually not be stumped at translating historical texts. Similarly, his father was a language and linguistics professor who taught him all sorts of languages, from dead languages to more popular ones. His father had once referred to him as a once in a life time language genius. He would have been very disappointed that Felix did not study languages at university. He quickly searched through his brain for the possible language sequence, but could not come to any conclusions. He was about to drop the journal to search for other clues when he noticed a key pattern.
The text was written backwards!
Picking up his quill, he slowly rewrote the journal entry. He suspected that if anyone other than him found the journal, it would take them a very long time to understand the contents of the journal. Not only was it written backwards, but it was also missing some letters.
Felix silently wondered what kind of secret was guarded so heavily.
The words were also missing the third letter in each word, another clue only he could quickly grasp
..3.. my lucky number. What a joke
He was almost reluctant to continue decoding the page, as he stopped in confusion and tried to recall ever making the journal entry. After a while of unsuccessful brooding, he went back to decoding the text.
After decoding and piecing the entries together, he finally recognised what language it was written in.
Gaelic.
It was a language that had been forgotten since the third aeon. There was only one other person he knew who spoke this language. His father. Whatever was written in here, he really wanted to bury. He quickly cleared his thoughts as he quietly looked through the entry
03 March 1830
"I have done something I cannot account for within the bounds of reason.
The world is not as we know it,
Something is TERRIBLY wrong"
He felt his head throb again as he read his diary entry,
What did I do?
Is that why I died?
His expression, previously filled with confusion, was now tinged with worry. The worry was not just due to the strange, inexplicable content of the journal, or even the amount of coding he took to hide the text, or even the fact that his journal, which he had carelessly tossed aside, was now filled with entries in his own writing, but because the date of the entry was strange.
How was it already March?
Before he went to bed, it was the 3rd February 1330
Before he could make any sense of the strange time difference. He felt his muscles twitch and the wound on his head throb again. He paused in shock as he felt something wriggling out of his forehead wound and his flesh moving and wriggling. He held back his horror as he raised his hand to catch the tiny mirror shard that fell from his wound.
A sensation on his head again, his hand paused mid-motion. There again A faint, unfamiliar tightness beneath his skin, just above his temple. The place where the gash had been. He lifted his fingers reluctantly as he touched his forehead
It wasn't open anymore.
The torn flesh he remembers seeing was… closed
Suddenly, his chest jerked back violently, a sharp, violent inhale ripped into him, dragging air into his lungs. It burns. It burned like he dug his fingers through his throat and ripped his lungs out. He doubled slightly, clutching tightly at his ribs as another breath followed, then another ragged, uneven, desperate breath. The room suddenly stilled as he heard the faint rhythm beating from his chest. His heart
"No", he gasped suddenly, his voice breaking as the warmth began to seep into places that had been freezing. He stumbled back toward the mirror before he could stop himself, drawn to it with something closer to desperation than fear.
His mouth hung wide open as he stared at his reflection in shock; the previous garish wounds on his forehead were closed up, and they were only slightly red, as if he had hit them somewhere. The scratches were completely gone.
He stared at himself, breathing hard, chest rising and falling in jagged rhythm.
"I am ", he starts, then stops, because the word doesn't make sense anymore. Alive. He should have felt relief. Instead, a different kind of unease settled in. Because he knew what he saw. What he was. His hand lifted again, touching his chest, feeling the heartbeat beneath it.
Impossible.
If he had not seen his bone-deep injuries in the mirror himself and felt the throbbing pain, he might have assumed that he was still asleep and that he was currently in a strange nightmare.