Elias took a slow step forward, his eyes flicking between Jonas Brooks and Lucien Grave. The room felt heavier now—charged with something unseen. Whether it was the weight of secrets or something darker, he couldn't say.
Jonas leaned against the table, arms crossed. "You look like hell, Voss."
Elias smirked despite the pain. "Feels about right."
Lucien, however, never stopped watching him—studying him like an ancient text waiting to be deciphered.
"You've been touched," she murmured.
Evelyn tensed beside Elias. "Touched by what?"
Lucien stepped closer, her gloved fingers hovering just above the bullet wound in his side.
"That wasn't just any bullet," she said. "It carried something with it. A mark."
Elias stiffened. "A mark?"
Lucien nodded. "You're bound to something now—whether you realize it or not."
That sat wrong with Elias. He'd had enough of cursed books, cryptic deaths, and vanishing men. The last thing he needed was some invisible curse tethered to his soul.
Jonas sighed. "We'll deal with that later. Right now, we need to talk about why you're here." He nodded toward Dave. "He told us you're chasing Victor Crane."
Elias nodded. "Yeah. Except Crane's supposed to be dead."
Lucien's lips curved faintly. "Death isn't always the end."
Jonas rolled his eyes. "Ignore her. What do you actually know?"
Elias exhaled. "Crane was digging into something called the Codex Noctis before he disappeared. Found a cipher buried in the text. A warning." He paused. "Then he vanished."
Jonas exchanged a look with Dave. "And what do you think happened?"
Elias met his gaze. "I think whatever he found got him killed."
Lucien tilted her head. "Or worse."
Elias frowned. "What's worse than being dead?"
Lucien didn't answer. She simply smiled.
Jonas pushed away from the table and grabbed a worn folder from a nearby shelf, tossing it down.
"There's something you should see."
Elias stepped forward and opened it.
The first thing he saw was a photograph—grainy, low-quality, but unmistakable.
A man walking through a dimly lit alley, his face half-shadowed beneath a flickering streetlamp.
A man who looked exactly like Victor Crane.
Elias's blood turned cold. "Impossible," he whispered.
Jonas exhaled. "Yeah. That's what we thought too."
Elias stared at the photo, mind racing. If Crane was alive, then that meant—
No.
Not alive.
Something else.
Lucien's voice was soft, certain.
"I told you," she said. "Death isn't always the end."