Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Wolfe: (impatiently) Test, test, one, two, three. Finally.

[clears throat]

My name is Christopher Wolfe. I am a Scholar for the Magnus Institute, a prestigious academic organization dedicated to collecting and furthering the knowledge of all of humanity. In practical terms, it’s a massive library, with hundreds of branches throughout the world. My particular branch is based in Alexandria.

I work in the department of the Institute dedicated to the esoteric and the paranormal. I’ve worked in field research for twenty years, but certain... circumstances have led to my reassignment to the Archives. Inevitably, most investigations in this department only lead to dead ends, and when that point is reached, all statements and research are transferred to the Archives. This means that while the research and library sections dedicated to the paranormal are impeccably organized, the Archive is an absolute disaster. In theory, however, any decent archivist should be able to keep the place in some semblance of order.

My predecessor, whoever that may have been, was not that archivist. There must be hundreds of overflowing boxes stacked nearly floor to ceiling, each containing gods only know how many statements. The shelves are packed with still more files, and the occasional artifact. One of my Postulants has already found a bag containing seemingly endless small bones.

[pause]

Yes, my Postulants. As part of my... new responsibilities, I have been assigned a Postulant class of thirty-two. I have already dismissed two, and so far, it seems highly unlikely I will decide to fill any of the six available spots in this department. But one of them did come up with the idea of using a tape recorder, so credit where credit is due.

Yes, I suppose I should explain the tape recorder. Some of the statements here have proven uncooperative, shall we say, when I or any of my students attempt to record them digitally. In the end, we had to delete the recordings. Hopefully, this will serve as an acceptable alternative.

Right. Enough excuses. We have to begin somewhere, I suppose.

[brief shuffling of files]

[clears throat]

Statement of Victoria Krause, regarding an unsettling encounter near the east harbor of the Port of Alexandria. Original statement given May 27, 2027. Recorded June 3, 2031.

Wolfe (statement): I work as a dockhand, unloading cargo ships in the Port. Most of the time, I stay in the west harbor, because that’s the one that’s actually used for commercial shipping. But one night, about three weeks ago, my friend Yelena wanted to meet up in the east harbor, and go out for dinner at this little restaurant she’d been telling me about for weeks. I agreed, and after work, set off for the east harbor.

We had decided to meet at dock three at eight o'clock. I got there about twenty minutes early, so I decided to have a look around and see if I could find that restaurant Yelena was so excited about. She hadn’t given me its name, but she loved any place that served breakfast food late at night, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for.

I found a few places that could have been where Yelena was taking me, but I ended up getting a little lost because as I said, I don’t spend a lot of time in the east harbor. But I eventually made my way back to our meeting spot, expecting to find her already there, because by now I was fifteen minutes late.

She wasn’t there. Yelena wasn’t exactly known for being punctual, but this was a little odd, especially since the whole thing was her idea. I checked my phone to see if I had missed any messages from her. Nothing.

I waited for another five minutes, in case she really was just running late. When she still didn’t show up, I texted her, asking if everything was okay.

She didn’t respond.

By now I was sure something was wrong. I started walking around again, asking people if they’d seen her, but no one had. I sent several more texts, not just to Yelena, but also to her brother, and a few mutual friends. They all confirmed she’d told them nothing, and had seemed perfectly all right when they last saw her. I tried calling her, but no one answered.

After about an hour of searching, I was ready to get the local Garda involved. As I was heading back to dock three, I heard a voice call out “Tori?”

That was Yelena’s nickname for me. No one else used it.

I turned around, expecting to see my friend running up to me with some convoluted story of losing her Codex or forgetting we were supposed to meet up or getting involved in some sort of drama with her neighbors, something, anything that would explain what was going on. But there was no one there.

Or at least that was my first impression. After a moment, I noticed there was someone standing in the alleyway just off the street I was on. I called out to them, but got no answer.

Thinking back on it, the figure looked nothing like Yelena. But in the moment, I was so utterly sure it was her that any semblance of common sense left me. I approached the alleyway.

“Yelena?” I said. “Where have you been?”

The figure didn’t say a word, didn’t even move.

“Are you all right? Is something wrong?”

Nothing.

“Yelena, are you hurt? What’s going on?” My voice rose slightly in my growing panic. Something was very, very wrong here. And yet I couldn’t let go of my certainty that it was Yelena at the end of that alleyway, and she needed my help.

“Tori?” The voice was quieter now, but it was undoubtedly Yelena’s.

“Yes,” I said, and took a step closer, “it’s me.”

“Come... here.” She spoke in a strained tone, as though in pain.

I took another step, then paused. “Why don’t you come out here?” I don’t know what it was that stopped me, but I knew I did not want to go any further into that alleyway.

“Tori...”

“Yelena?”

“Come... here.”

“No,” I said, my hands starting to shake. “No, you come here. I’m not going in there.”

Suddenly, the figure was much closer to the edge of the alleyway, though I hadn’t seen it move. “Come... here,” it repeated.

Its mouth didn’t move when it spoke.

It didn’t have one.

It lifted its head, and I saw it had no face at all.

I screamed, and so did it, a horrible, unnatural howl of what I can only describe as delight.

I turned and ran, not daring to look back for fear of what I might see following me. I didn’t stop running until I reached Yelena’s brother’s house four streets away, and I practically banged his door down in my panic. I told him what I had seen, but I was half-hysterical and not making much sense. I don’t know how much of my story he actually understood, or even believed, but it was enough that we reported Yelena missing the next day.

I haven’t seen her since, and I certainly haven’t been back to the east harbor.

Wolfe: Statement ends.

Yelena Novikov was reported missing by her brother, Dmitri Novikov, and her friend, Victoria Krause, on May 2, 2027. No trace of her was ever found.

Dmitri Novikov corroborates Krause’s account, at least as far as the disappearance of his sister and the story Krause told him. Conveniently, Krause could list no additional witnesses of this faceless figure when we contacted her.

However, Postulant Khalila Seif was able to draw certain parallels between the disappearance of Yelena Novikov and several other people who went missing in the east harbor area around the same time. Ameera Atiyeh, Hatem Nazari, and William Koel all mentioned going to an unnamed breakfast restaurant before vanishing. I personally dismiss this as a coincidence, but Seif did come up with another, more relevant detail.

There are no alleyways or breakfast restaurants near dock three of the east harbor. In the cases of Atiyeh, Nazari, and Koel, friends also reported thinking they saw them in streets, alleys, or on docks, respectively, that did not appear on any map of the east harbor. Justin Gutierrez, who was reported missing about a year before this statement was given, was later seen several times, always at a distance, always in the east harbor, and always in places that should not have been there. 

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Chapter Text

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Izumi: This is Postulant Izumi Himura, recording the statement of Scholar Sumit Mahanta. Statement concerns... [paper rustle] a coffin. [pause] And that’s all it says here. 

[clears throat] Incident occurred in 2012. Statement given October 23, 2013. Recorded June 9, 2031.

Statement begins.

Izumi (statement): At the time of writing this, it’s been about three years since I first moved into the apartment where it all happened. I finished near the top of my Postulant class in the Lingua department at the age of eighteen, and received a silver band placement here at the Alexandria branch of the Institute. My relatively young age and lack of experience meant my paycheck was not, shall we say, overly generous, but I quite liked the apartment. It was small, but it suited me. I had enough space for the essentials, the building itself was well-maintained, and my neighbors were generally pleasant. I suppose none of that really matters, but I need you to understand that this was exactly the last place in Alexandria you would expect something like this to happen.

I’d been living there for about a year by the time I got the package. I was heading home after a late night translating some works requested by the Institute branch in Delhi, and all I wanted to do was sleep. There was a white delivery van parked outside my apartment building, and in the faint glow from the streetlights, I could just make out the words “Breekon and Hope Deliveries” printed on the side. It briefly occurred to me what an odd sight that was so late at night, but honestly I was too tired to really think about it. I walked past the van and up of the building, when the side door of the van opened, and two enormous delivery men stepped out.

“Are you Mr. Mahanta?” one of them asked me. He had an odd, exaggerated accent, like something out of a cartoon.

“Package for you,” the other one said, holding out a clipboard.

I stared at them like they had grown second heads. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“Friend of yours said to make sure this gets to you,” the first one said.

The second handed me the clipboard. “You’ve got to sign for it.”

“Protocol, you understand,” added the first, offering me a pen.

I took the pen from him and signed my name at the bottom of the delivery form, unsure what else to do. The first man went around and opened the back of the van. He and his partner unloaded an enormous box, and carried it between the two of them up to the apartment building’s door. I followed them down the front hall, into the elevator up to the third floor, and to the door of my apartment. They waited for me to unlock the door, but I had made up my mind that I was not going to let these two into my home. I told them to leave the box in the hallway, and they did, thankfully without any protests, and left.

The box turned out to be even heavier than it looked, and it was quite a struggle to get it into my apartment. It was like the box had a… gravity to it; the floor seemed to bend underneath it, and everything in the room sort of looked like it leaned toward it, although that could have been just my sleep-deprived imaginings. But I managed it, and once I had dragged it into the middle of my tiny living room, I went to bed, too exhausted to deal with any more strangeness that night.

The next day, I got up, made myself a strong cup of coffee, and forced myself to walk into the living room and examine the box. It was addressed to me in neat, precise handwriting, but the return address was covered up by an ominous smear of mud. I set to work peeling away the packaging tape, and when I got the lid of the box open, I froze.

It was a coffin. It was made of old, pale wood that was oddly warm to the touch, and fastened with a padlock on an ice-cold metal chain. It looked too small to hold a person, and if there was anything dead inside, it couldn’t have been in there for very long, since I couldn’t smell anything. I stood staring at the coffin for almost a full minute before I realized there was something else inside the box.

A rusted key and a folded note. I reached for the note first, and unfolded it, hoping to get some answers as to what, exactly, was going on here. It read as follows:

Sumit,

I know we’ve had our differences, but I hope you will do me the favor of looking after this package for me. Don’t worry, you won’t have to hold it for long. I’ll be back before you know it.

-Anthony

His last name was obscured by an dirt smudge similar to the one covering the return address, but I didn’t need to see it to know who he was. I recognized the signature, even a year later. Anthony Veralt and I had been Postulants around the same time, though he was studying in the History department, and to say we’d had our differences was an understatement.

Anthony and I were roommates at Ptolemy House. The first real conversation we had was an argument over the answer to a math problem, and that pretty much set the tone for all our future interactions. We fought over everything from the shower to ethics of the Institute’s policy of not getting directly involved in outside affairs. By the time Postulant training was done, I was ready to strangle him, and the feeling was definitely mutual. Thank the gods we were studying in different fields, or one of us might have just gone through with it. Both of us were quite vocal about never wanting to see each other again.

So receiving any kind of mail from him would have been strange, let alone something like this. My shock was fading into intellectual curiosity by now, and I turned the paper over to see if there was some sort of postscript I had missed that might offer me more concrete answers, but there wasn’t. I folded the note up again and reached for the key. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea of opening the coffin, but I didn’t see any other way to find out more about it. As I was moving to put the key in the padlock, I noticed something on the coffin lid.

Three words, scratched deep into the wood. Do Not Open.

I set the key down. I needed more information, and who better to get it from than the man who sent me the damned thing in the first place?

I sent in a message to my supervisor that I was sick that day, and set off to find Anthony Veralt. Asking around the history department revealed that he’d only been coming in sporadically, working overtime for a week straight and then vanishing for two or three weeks at a time. No one had been able to get ahold of him outside of work for several months. Interesting, but unhelpful. I asked whether they’d acquired any new artifacts recently, and they hadn’t. So where had that coffin come from?

I went home and tried doing more research, but couldn’t find anything that covered locked coffins with keys that you weren’t supposed to use, so I read up on traditions surrounding death and funerals around the world, hoping to turn up something even slightly relevant, but had no luck.

I went into work the next day like nothing had happened. It was clear I wasn’t going to get any answers just staying home, and maybe I could do some research in the Institute library during my lunch break.

As weird as it sounds, I started to get used to having the coffin around. It began to just sort of blend into the background of my home. So much so that about two weeks later, I set a stack of books down on it without thinking anything of it until something inside it began to move.

It was a very slight movement at first, so slight that at first I doubted I had heard anything at all. But then the scratching sound grew louder, more insistent. I swept the books off the lid with shaking hands, and the sound stopped. I stood staring at the coffin in utter bewilderment. If there had been anything alive in there to begin with, it should have been long dead.

I took a deep breath, and then very deliberately placed a book on the other end of the lid. The scratching began again almost instantly, and this time when I removed the book, it took nearly five minutes to stop. I decided against doing a third experiment.

At that point, a braver soul than I might have opened the coffin to see what it was that scratched at the lid, but I have never been daring at the best of times. So I instead did my best to ignore it. I rationalized my decision by telling myself that Anthony was eventually coming to pick it up, so it wasn’t like I would have to deal with it forever, and the words on the lid made it very clear that I would regret looking inside. In truth, I was just scared.

About a week later, we got one of our rare rains, and the coffin... moaned. It was an almost melodious sound, sort of like singing. I watched it carefully, but the scratching sound didn’t start up again, and the coffin made no other noise or movement.

So that was that, apparently. The coffin would scratch at anything placed on the lid, moan when it rained, and I just sort of left it alone. For the most part, this worked out fine.

Except at night. I started having the strangest dreams, and although I could only ever remember flashes of what they had been about, they always left me deeply unsettled. I would almost always wake up struggling to breathe through an enormous pressure on my chest.

I started sleepwalking, too. Not every night, but often enough to be a concern, especially because I always woke up with the coffin key in my hand. I hid the key in ever more elaborate places, but I always found it. Eventually, my solution was to stop myself before I could leave my bedroom. I would lock my door, and deliberately leave books on the floor so that I would wake myself up by stepping on them or tripping over them. It worked well enough, though I did once end up with a broken toe.

And that was my life for almost a full year. I mentioned earlier that the coffin had this kind of gravity to it, and as the months passed, this effect only increased, to the point where the floor was noticeably dented underneath it, and I swear all my furniture was tilting towards it, especially my shelves. When I tried to move the coffin, it was so heavy I couldn’t even get a decent grip on it. Towards the end of the year, though, the room began to seem less tilted, and the depression in the floor gradually became less pronounced. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when one day in December, I opened my apartment door to find those two delivery men standing there.

Anthony was there too, and that did surprise me. He actually seemed a little taken aback when I answered the door, like he’d thought I wouldn’t be home. He thanked me for looking after the coffin for him, I told him to go fuck himself, and he laughed and asked me for the key. I gave it to him, and told him that if he wanted to open this thing, he was not going to do it in my home. Anthony shrugged, and told the delivery men to take the coffin outside, which they did.

I shut the door firmly behind them, and closed the curtains. I didn’t want to see what they would find in there.

Only when the screaming stopped did I part the curtains and look out into the street. The two delivery men were getting into their van, and there was no sign of Anthony.

I moved out of the apartment a few days later, and since then I’ve applied every time an opportunity to be transferred has come up. It’s almost a pity; I really do like Alexandria, but… I just don’t think I can stay here anymore. 

Izumi: Statement ends.

Scholar Mahanta was transferred to the Institute’s branch in Petra, Jordan, three weeks after giving this statement. Glain attempted to contact him, but he was, ah, disinterested in continuing the investigation any further.

Scholar Anthony Veralt was reported missing on December 14, 2012, by one of his neighbors. A search of his home did reveal receipts from several transactions with Breekon and Hope Deliveries, but the investigation ultimately turned up no real leads, and he was never found.

Thomas looked into Breekon and Hope Deliveries, but it’s based in Cairo, not Alexandria, and hasn’t been in business since 2024. If they kept any records of their deliveries, we’ve been unable to find them.

[pause]

Wolfe doesn’t believe this statement, and I concede that there’s little actual evidence that any of this really took place, but... I don’t know. I’ve worked on a dozen discredited statements in the past two weeks in some form or another, and this one feels different somehow. More real.

Heavier.

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Thomas: -strange, don’t you think?

Jess: What is?

Thomas: That everyone outside of the Institute knows so little about all of this.

Jess: Probably because so few people ever run into this kind of thing. Think about it. We must have worked on dozens of statements since we started here in May, but only what, two? have been at all convincing.

Thomas: I know, it’s just... the Institute’s trying to keep this a secret, and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing.

Jess: (not really paying attention) Mm. Maybe. What did you get for this question?

Thomas: C. You’re not listening, are you?

Jess: It is a little odd, but there’s nothing you can do. Focus on surviving Postulant training first.

Thomas: I suppose. Speaking of which, we’ll be up at dawn tomorrow, so I’m going to bed. 

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Chapter Text

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Thomas: Statement of Laila Mansour on the death of Martin Laskonis, recorded June 18, 2031, by Postulant Thomas Schreiber of the Magnus Institute in Alexandria. Original statement given on November 1, 2029.

Statement begins.

Thomas (statement): Looking back, I wonder if maybe I could have saved him. Probably not, but part of me feels guilty anyway for what happened to Martin. Ridiculous, I know. I’m not the one who... infected him. But maybe if I had been there when it happened, I could have- I don’t know. Done something.

 I work in a general store near the docks. A lot of the customers there are sailors sent to pick up supplies for their crew, and that was how I met Martin Laskonis last year, in June. I helped him find what he needed, and we started talking. He told me he was working on a cargo ship scheduled to stay here for two weeks, and had never been to Alexandria before. I half-jokingly offered to show him around, he took me up on the offer, and we spent an amazing two weeks together. We both really liked each other, and towards the end of the two weeks, things got a little more serious. It was then that we came up with our arrangement.

There was definitely a spark between us, but Martin’s job meant he was constantly traveling, I felt at home in Alexandria in a way I hadn’t anywhere else, and neither of us wanted to completely change our lifestyles for someone we’d known for two weeks. So what we decided on was this: any time Martin had the opportunity to travel to Alexandria, he would try to take it, and we’d meet up again for however long he was there. If it had been a while since we’d seen each other, and Martin couldn’t get to Alexandria, we’d agree on somewhere else to meet. It was a bit unusual, I’ll admit, but it worked for us. We both valued our independence, and this allowed us to be in a relationship while still leading separate lives. It was an open relationship; we both sometimes saw other people when we weren’t together, but always looked forward to our next meeting.

We texted occasionally between meetings, but mostly just to arrange the next one. When we saw each other, we inevitably spent the first day or so catching up on each other’s lives, which I enjoyed infinitely more than texting.

Like I said, our partnership was unorthodox, but we were happy with it. We celebrated our anniversary of sorts this June by spending a week in Spain, and it sounds cheesy now, but I remember thinking This forever. This is how I want the rest of my life to be. I felt like I had finally found balance between connecting with other people and my love of privacy. And Martin seemed to feel the same way.

It’s crazy, that trip to Spain was only a little more than four months ago, but it feels like years.

It was the first week of October when this happened. I hadn’t seen Martin since August, so when he texted to tell me he would be in Alexandria for a few days, I was thrilled. He would be busy all of the first two days, so we planned to go out for dinner on the third day and talk about everything we’d been up to since we last saw each other. Martin was waiting outside the restaurant when I got there, and he kept looking over his shoulder. At first I thought he was looking for me, so I waved, but even after he saw me, he still seemed nervous. I asked what he was looking for, but he just laughed and said he thought he saw someone he knew. The restaurant was crowded, and Martin relaxed almost as soon as we were through the door.

Nothing noteworthy happened at dinner. I mean, we had a great time, and told each other some pretty weird stories, but nothing related to why I’m here.

Afterwards, we walked back to my place. The whole time, Martin stayed close to me and kept his arms wrapped tightly around himself, like he was cold, even though it was a warm night. And he kept scratching his arms. Something was clearly wrong, but I figured we could deal with it better once we were inside.

When we got to my apartment, I locked the door behind me, and Martin breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t live in a bad area, and Martin himself was prone to forgetting to lock doors and close windows and thought nothing of it, so this was what finally pushed me over the edge. I said I could tell something was bothering him, and if he didn’t want to talk about it right now, that was fine, but I didn’t want him to pretend nothing was wrong.

Martin went quiet for a moment, then told me he’d been attacked the first day he arrived in Alexandria. He’d been walking near the docks, when he saw someone facedown on the ground. He called out to them, and when the person sat up, he saw that it was a woman in a red dress. Martin started to ask her if she needed help, but before he could finish the question, she had pinned him up against the wall of one of the buildings. Martin’s pretty tall, and the woman was at least a full head shorter than him, but she moved fast, and was much stronger than her slight form would suggest. She held him there for a few seconds, and when Martin struggled, he felt a sudden, sharp pain in his stomach. He fell to the ground, and he said he couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, but when he stood up, the woman was gone.

Martin hadn’t been able to quite get a good look at her, because it had all happened so fast, but he remembered there had been something wrong with her skin. It was covered in dark spots that looked almost like holes.

I asked him if he had been stabbed, and Martin said that’s what he had thought too, but he was uninjured except for some scrapes where he’d hit the ground.

Since then, Martin kept thinking he saw that woman everywhere, and every time he did, his skin would get so itchy it felt like something was moving underneath it. He felt nauseous almost all the time as well, and had tried to see a Medica the day before, but they could find nothing physically wrong. He was almost certain that the itching and nausea were simply a stress reaction to his strange experience, but this realization had done nothing to actually lower his anxiety, and if anything, the symptoms were getting worse.

I felt terrible for having even brought this up, and I started to apologize, but Martin surprised me by thanking me for letting him talk about it. He said he felt better having gotten it all out, and I asked him if he wanted some coffee, and that was that. We talked for a while longer about nothing in particular, and then headed to the bedroom.

We had sex. There’s really nothing more to say about that. We were laying in bed afterwards, when I felt something in Martin’s shoulder move. Not like he was moving, more like there was something twitching under his skin. I sat up and tried to get a better look at his shoulder, but could see nothing. Martin absently scratched the spot and rolled over onto his side. I relaxed a little, and started to lay back down, when Martin suddenly sat bolt upright with a cry of pain and clutched his stomach. I offered to get him some painkillers from the bathroom, but he shook his head. He kept trying to tell me something, but was in too much pain to really get the words out, and I told him I was calling an ambulance. I had left my phone in the kitchen, and got up to go get it, and it was right as I was dialing the hospital’s number that I heard it.

It was a sickening cracking noise, like an egg breaking open and something horribly slimy emerging from it. I stumbled back to the bedroom, clutching the phone like a lifeline, rambling into the receiver about Martin’s nausea and the itching, until I stepped through the bedroom doorway.

My grip loosened, and the phone slid from my fingers onto the floor. I fell back against the wall, my legs shaking too badly to hold me up.

The sheets of the bed were soaked in blood and something else that I can only describe as some kind of mucus. Martin was not there, no, the pile of pitted, bloody flesh that lay at the end of the bed was not Martin, not anymore. The worst of it, though, was the worms.

They covered everything, the bed, the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. There were so many of them, had they had all come from Martin? They writhed and squirmed in a way that made me sick and yet drew me in. I stood paralyzed, watching them move and twist for… I don’t know how long. Until the sound of the ambulance siren shocked me back to reality.

I don’t know what I told the paramedics, but it can’t have made much sense; I was panicking, ranting about worms and blood and women in red dresses, and I think I passed out at one point, because I remember waking up in a hospital bed with no clear recollection of how I got there.

The hospital Medicas let me go, said there was nothing physically wrong, but that I had obviously been through something, and one of them gave me her therapist friend’s business card. I still have it, I think. Maybe I’ll use it. I don’t know.

That’s everything. That’s how Martin died. That’s the statement.

I thought it would help to tell you my story. But I’ve written the whole thing down, and I’m still just as confused and horrified by everything that happened as I was before I came here.

You will investigate this, right? The woman who did this to Martin, she’s still out there. If you can find her…

Thomas: Statement ends.

[deep breath]

This statement matches the last known location of Jane Prentiss. There is no evidence that the previous Archivist ever followed up on Laila Mansour’s statement.

I need to talk to Wolfe.

[CLICK]

[CLICK]

Wolfe: Another victim of Jane Prentiss?

Thomas: It’s possible. She did have sex with someone who was definitely infected.

Wolfe: All right. I need to make some calls.

[CLICK]

[CLICK]

[typing]

Wolfe: [sighs]

[papers shuffling]

[more typing]

[footsteps]

Santi: You weren’t kidding about this place. It’s a goddamn maze.

Wolfe: Mm. It was worse a month ago.

Santi: And I thought Artifact Storage was bad. Were the statements even read, or just thrown in here at random? [he picks up a file]

Wolfe: I wouldn’t touch that.

Santi: [pause] All right. [he sets the file down]

[typing]

Santi: Did you ever meet the previous Archivist?

Wolfe: No. He practically lived in the Archives from what I could gather, and he always sent assistants if we needed any help with research. I never even learned his name.

[pause]

And now he’s dead.

Santi: Probably had a shelf collapse on him. I’m surprised it took forty years.

Wolfe: [slight laugh] That’s not funny.

Santi: Sure it is. Ready to leave?

Wolfe: Gods, yes. [he stands up]

Santi: Did you mean to leave this running?

Wolfe: Hm? No, you can turn it off.

[CLICK]

Chapter Text

[CLICK]

Jess: -started a month ago.

Morgan: I know. And I was supposed to be here then, but there were travel complications.

Jess: Oh.

[he staples a set of files]

Well, don’t get too comfortable here. We’ve lost twelve Postulants already.

At this rate, there won’t be six students left to fill those spots. Here. 

[he hands her a stapler]

Morgan: What are we doing?

Jess: These are all the statements we’ve discredited, and this pile over here is all the supplemental research. We’re stapling them together.

[papers shuffling, stapling sounds]

Morgan: Are these... bones?

Jess: Damn, thought we got them all. Put them on Portero’s desk, he’s the one who found that bag in the first place.

Morgan: Shouldn’t these be in Artifact Storage?

Jess: Technically, yeah, but this place is a mess. There’s no telling what’s in most of these boxes.

[he staples another set of files]

Bones are pretty much business as usual around here at this point.

Morgan: I see. And the tape recorder?

Jess: What- oh. We use these for recording the statements that don’t do so well on digital. Don’t know what it’s doing here, though.

Morgan: [she picks it up] Oh, it’s on.

Jess: How long has it been running?

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Wolfe: Statement of Kareem Amir, regarding a series of incidents in a glass shop in Amreya. Original statement given July 17, 2022. Recorded July 1, 2031.

Wolfe (statement): This whole thing happened about two years ago, so I’m sorry if some of the details are a bit off. I’ve been meaning to come here for a while, but somehow never found the time until now.

Amreya is mostly a place for factories and refineries, usually not for small, half-abandoned glass shops. So even though the building itself was small and unassuming, it still stuck out like a sore thumb. I noticed it while walking to the train station after work, and since I still had a little time before I needed to be there, I decided to stop and have a look around.

There was no name to be seen anywhere, but the shop’s hours were listed on the door, and the front window displayed mirrors and windowpanes. I couldn’t see anyone inside, and according to the hours on the door, the shop was closed right now. I checked my watch, and saw that I was nearly going to be late for my train. I ran the rest of the way to the station, forgetting all about strange glass shops for the time being.

I like to take the earliest train in the morning, both so that I can be on time to work, and to have a little extra time to walk around. The next morning was no exception, and I found myself retracing my steps back to the glass shop without even thinking about it. The place fascinated me, and even now I still can’t fully explain the hold it had on me. The best explanation I can give is that the shop had a story, and I couldn’t leave it alone until I figured out that story.

Going by the times on the door, it should have been open, but when I tried the handle, it was locked. I looked inside, and again, saw no one.

In that moment, I made a choice that to this day, I don’t know if I regret or not. I had taken the trouble to come back to the shop, so I couldn’t just leave. I had made up my mind that I was going to find some answers, somehow, and that was that.

I walked around the side of the building, wondering if maybe there was another entrance. I found a back garage, with a truck parked outside it, but the garage door was closed, and I drew the line at actually forcing my way in. The lot behind the shop was full of bins and crates and boxes, but they were all empty. Walking around the other side, I saw there was a small hole in the outside wall. I pressed my eye to it, and although it was dark inside, I could make out what looked like a storage space, filled with more mirrors and windows and a few other furniture pieces. I took my phone out of my pocket, turned on the flashlight, and held it up to the hole.

Mirrors. There were mirrors everywhere.

The walls of the storage space were lined with them, and they were all different sizes and shapes. Mirrors hung from the ceiling, and what little I could see of the floor seemed to be made of mirrored tiles. Excess mirrors were stacked in towering piles along the far edge of the room.

Someone tapped my shoulder, and I spun around with a yell of surprise, dropping my phone. Standing behind me was a man with curly blond hair and very long fingers. He smiled and asked me what I was doing. I stammered out that I was just looking to see if the shop was open, a ridiculous excuse, I know, but it was the best I could come up with on the spot.

The man laughed, and there was something wrong with the sound. My head pulsed with a sudden pain, and I took a step back, away from him. He told me he was the owner of the shop, that his name was Michael, and that the shop wasn’t quite ready yet. I nodded, then glanced at my watch. I was going to be late for work if I stayed here any longer. I gave him some vague excuse, and hurried away.

That evening, I deliberately took a different route to the train station, not wanting to run into Michael again. I avoided the shop for a few days, thinking that I’d come back when it was actually open. My encounter with Michael had unsettled me a little, but my curiosity was undiminished, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the shop alone entirely.

About a week later, I took the train to Amreya on my day off. I went directly to the glass shop, double-checked the hours, and tried the door. This time, it opened, and I went inside.

It was smaller than I was expecting. The storage space in the back must have been easily twice the size of the actual shop. Like the storage space, though, it was almost entirely filled with mirrors. The only windowpanes were the ones displayed at the front- the aisles of the shop all contained mirrors of various shapes, sizes, and styles. I spent a few minutes just wandering, looking at the way each of the mirrors seemed to subtly distort my reflection. On the far side of the shop, there was a small office space, the door of which was closed, but I could see that it was empty through a window in the door. It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually seen a cash register, or price tags on any of the mirrors. Was this place even a store?

I had some other errands I needed to run, so I ended up leaving after only spending about half an hour in there, but I came back the next day. And the next, and the day after that.

I know how that sounds. Writing it down, it seems so obviously stupid, but I was addicted to the mystery of it all. I wanted to know everything about the place, and I was even brave enough to ask Michael a few questions once.

I certainly never learned everything about the shop, but I did find out a fair amount of information. The mirrors were in fact for sale, but only on request. Michael handled the actual payments in his office. The shop also functioned mostly as a place for Michael to store his mirror collection, as he seemed reluctant to actually sell any of the mirrors.

I only ever saw him make one sale. A young woman bought a small, round mirror, and the whole time the two of them were discussing the price, Michael’s fingers kept twitching, like he wanted to grab something. I could never figure out if he was trying to grab her, or the mirror. I watched carefully, but nothing out of the ordinary happened when the woman paid, except that Michael seemed oddly sad about losing the mirror. 

I mentioned earlier that the mirrors distorted my reflection. But that wasn’t all they did. The shop itself looked different in different mirrors. Looking in the full-length mirror with the pale wood frame near the back of the shop, I saw a desk in the corner that wasn’t there when I turned around. A simple, oval-shaped mirror showed the front door as made of wood and painted yellow, instead of being made of glass and having the shop hours on it. A silver-framed hand mirror showed entire aisles that didn’t exist outside of its reflection.

One day, after about six months of this, I came into the shop before work, and saw Michael propping up a new mirror against the wall. It was full-length, taller than he was, with an ornate fractal pattern carved into the dark wood of the frame. In its glass, Michael’s reflection was distorted, but much more so than in any of the other mirrors. In this one, his hair was longer, and moving on its own, the ends twisting and twirling into spiral patterns. His fingers had too many knuckles, and ended in sharp points.

I stood frozen in the doorway, watching as Michael adjusted the mirror, stood back to inspect it, and turned on his heel and walked away into the office, apparently unfazed. As soon as he disappeared behind the door, I walked forward and examined the mirror. Nothing about the shop’s reflection seemed off. All the shelves and aisles were reflected just as they were, and I could see people walking past in the street outside… Except the streets were quiet and empty this early in the morning.

I watched as a young woman walked up to the front door of the shop in the mirror, and was surprised to find that I recognized her as the only person who I had seen buy a mirror from Michael. As I was turning around to check if she was really there, something dug into my shoulder.

I turned back to face the mirror, and saw Michael standing directly behind me, hand on my shoulder. The hand touching me seemed normal enough, but in the reflection, the sharp points of his fingers were embedded in my skin. I pointed to the mirror and started to ask why the woman was coming back, but Michael just shook his head. “She made her choice,” he said. “Whether she knows it or not.”

I took a step back, and my shoulder began to bleed freely from five small puncture marks. Michael smiled at me, and I felt nauseous, though that could have just been from the pain. “I think you should go now,” he told me, and I nodded and ran for the door.

I didn’t mean to come back, I swear. I told myself I was done with that place, and for about a week, it worked. But then, as I was waiting for the train home, I suddenly turned and left the station, my feet moving of their own accord. I knew where I was going, and I fought my body every step of the way, but it did no good. I was standing in front of the fractal mirror before I knew it.

I walked through the shop aimlessly for a few minutes, my legs taking me on a winding path up and down the aisles. Eventually, I was able to stop, and I took a moment to think through what had just happened. I’d definitely missed my train by now, but if I walked back to the station, there was another one in half an hour. I’d be home later than usual, but I live alone, so it’s not like anyone would be waiting up worrying for me. I headed for the door.

Except it wasn’t there. I turned the corner and found another aisle of mirrors. I doubled back, tried going the other way, but only found another aisle I was sure I had never seen before. I hadn’t started to really panic until now; even with everything that had happened, at least I still knew where I was. How on earth was it possible to get lost in such a tiny shop?

I don’t know how long I spent trapped in that place. Every turn just revealed more and more unfamiliar mirrors, and I got desperate enough to try to find my way using the reflections. If anything, that made my situation worse, as I quickly got to a point where I couldn’t tell the difference between reflection and reality.

At some point in my wanderings, I came across a small, round mirror frame. The mirror itself was shattered, and the glass shards embedded in the head of the woman who had purchased it months ago. I screamed, but of course no one heard.

She was obviously dead, and suddenly I wondered if that was what it took to escape. Perhaps if I died in what I had come think of as the mirror world, I would return to the outside world. But I would have to break the right mirror. The woman had smashed her head through the mirror she’d bought, but I didn’t own a mirror from the shop. So which one...

The one with the fractals carved into the frame. I can’t quite explain how I knew the answer, but all that matters is that I found it, eventually.

I approached the mirror- and stopped. Call it cowardice or delayed self-preservation instincts, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my head through the glass. Instead, I raised a fist, and punched through the middle of the mirror, cutting my hand badly but barely noticing. I lost my balance, and fell back through an open yellow door onto the sidewalk outside.

I lay there on the pavement, my hand bleeding, my shoulder wound throbbing with fresh pain, and my head reeling. I don’t know what happened after that, but someone must have called an ambulance, because the next thing I remember is being in the hospital.

Apparently, I had been missing for two days, and one of my neighbors had gotten the Garda involved. Since then, I’ve stopped taking the earliest train, and just try not to think about it too much.

It’s weird, though. Every so often, I’ll look at my reflection in a mirror, or window, or even water, and behind me, I’ll see that yellow door the oval mirror showed me, the one I fell out of.

Wolfe: Statement ends.

Postulant Brightwell tried to contact Kareem Amir, but he hasn’t been seen since July 23, 2022, less than a week after giving this statement. Amir did provide an address for this mirror shop, however, and Postulants Schreiber and Seif investigated it, along with Niccolo Santi from Artifact Storage. I would have gone myself, but the terms of my position are quite clear that I am not to leave the Archives unless I receive specific instructions from the Artifex Magnus. I-

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[sigh]

The shop was almost entirely empty, except for a few mirror fragments that Santi took to Artifact Storage. Asking around revealed that no one in the area knew anything about any mirror shop that might have been there nine years ago. Another dead end. 

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Chapter Text

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Morgan : Statement of Julieta Ayala, originally given on April 13, 2025. Statement concerns her work hunting monsters in and around Alexandria. Morgan Hault recording on July 9, 2031.

Statement begins.

Morgan (statement) : I’ve been doing this for, oh, must be about forty years now? I started when I was twenty-two, and now I’m sixty-four, so yeah, a little over forty years. During that time, I’ve killed fourteen monsters of various types, and there have been eleven that I’ve hunted down and let live. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot for forty-two years, but monsters that you can actually track down and kill are rarer than you’d think, and I need to gather substantial evidence before I actually start hunting one. I could probably give your Institute dozens of statements, but I’ll stick with how I got started with this work. 

I originally came to Alexandria at the age of eighteen, as a Postulant, though I was studying history, not the supernatural. I was dismissed after only three weeks of class, but I had already fallen in love with the city, and there was no way I was going back home. So I decided to stay. My parents were furious; they hadn’t wanted me to take the exam in the first place, and demanded I return. I told them where they could stick their “I told you so”s, and started renting an apartment.

I’d been living in Alexandria for four years by the time this happened. I had just turned twenty-two, and was working at a cafe in Mahatet El Raml. I’m afraid I don’t remember the name, but if you look up “Mahatet El Raml cafe fire”, it should be pretty easy to find. It was almost the end of my shift, when a man came into the cafe and ordered a black coffee. He was short, with messy light brown hair, and what looked like identical burn marks on the backs of both hands. I didn’t bother asking for his name, since he was the only one there, and when I handed him his drink, my fingers touched his. It was like sticking my hand in boiling water. Sudden, blistering heat shot through my fingers, and I hissed in pain and nearly spilled the coffee. The man didn’t seem to have noticed anything. At the time, I assumed I must have burned myself on the cup.

I went home and almost forgot all about it, until the same man came back the next day, this time with a tall, badly sunburnt woman. I took their orders (black coffee for both of them), and asked for their names. The man told me his name was Seth, and the woman said hers was Bianca. This time, when Seth took the coffees, I deliberately let our fingers brush together, and again I burned my fingers.

This time, through the pain, I noticed that his skin sort of… gave way beneath my touch, like it wasn’t quite solid. It had an odd texture, too. Come to think of it, his hand reminded me of candle wax. Ever touched a lump of it before it’s fully dried? It’s started to take on a definite shape, more than just a molten blob, but still pliable.

And very hot. I pulled back from Seth abruptly, already feeling blisters form on my fingers. He gave me an odd look- I can’t say I blame him- but made no comment, just took the coffees and walked back over to Bianca.

Over the next few weeks, Seth came back nearly every day, often as part of a group. If he wasn’t there, one of his friends would be. I didn’t try touching him again, or any of the others, but sometimes I would accidentally, and they all had that same candle wax feeling to their skin. They all also seemed to have some sort of burn injury. I’ve already mentioned Seth’s hands, and Bianca’s sunburn. There was a man with an acid burn on one side of his face, a woman with cigarette burns up and down her arms, and an elderly woman whose fingers were perpetually red and blistered, as though she had just touched a hot stove. At the time, I decided that they must be some sort of burn victim support group, though why I clung to that idea for so long after it was clear there was something unnatural going on is beyond me.

After about a month of this, I got brave enough to start paying attention to what they were talking about. Most of their discussions seemed to focus on some sort of ritual, and debating when it should be held. They talked a lot about worship and sacrifices, too, so I theorized they were associated with some church.

The first hint that these people were actually dangerous, not just weird, came a week later. It was nearly closing time, and I was cleaning the counter, when a dark-haired woman holding a heavy-looking book came in. She walked straight past me and back to the table where Seth sat with a handful of others, talking in hushed voices. As she approached, they all went silent. She said a few words to them that I didn’t quite catch, but whatever it was, Seth didn’t like it. He stood up and told her that the two of them could settle this out back. To my surprise, she agreed, and they left.

I thought about following them, but decided that was a step too far, and instead simply listened, trying to hear what they were saying. After about a minute, I heard screaming, and knew I needed to do something.

I ran out the door and sprinted around the back of the cafe, but when I got there, there was no sign of the woman, only Seth standing in the middle of the alleyway, the burns on his hands looking fresh, beside a pile of ash. I stood there, frozen in terror and confusion, staring at him for at least two minutes, until at last he said, “Perhaps it would be better if you could forget about this evening.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“She’s gone,” Seth replied.

“You killed her.” It wasn’t a question.

Seth shrugged, a fluid, nonchalant gesture. “You can make all the accusations you like, but you can’t prove any of them. Now, as I said, it would be best for us all if you were to put these events from your mind.”

I agreed, but that night I went home and called one of the few friends I still had from my Postulant days. She knew someone who worked in paranormal research, and I asked her to have them look into any fire-related statements.

It took a few weeks, but eventually I had reports of several encounters with people similar to Seth. People who seemed to burn from the inside out, who could reduce others to ash if they held on long enough, whose faces melted like candle wax.

I’d never killed anyone before, but as soon as I heard that first statement, I knew I was going to kill Seth. He and others like him had done terrible things, and would continue to if I didn’t stop him.

It took me only a week to find out where he lived, and once I had done so, I watched him for another week. He didn’t kill anyone in that time, but I saw enough to be convinced he had to die. Whatever Seth was now, he was no longer human.

I stabbed him. Maybe you were expecting something more unusual, more supernatural, but these people didn’t seem to have any unusual weaknesses I could take advantage of, and a sharp knife did the job just fine. I killed him in his living room; I broke a window, stabbed him once as he was turning to see what the noise was, and stabbed him three more times in the fight that followed. He left his mark on me as well, grabbing my arm and leaving me with that scar your assistant won’t stop staring at. For all his strange powers, Seth bled out like a normal human- actually, no, not entirely. His blood, when it came out of him, was boiling, and gave me blisters where it touched my skin.

You might wonder how it was no one caught me. I’ve got Seth to thank for that, oddly enough. The couch caught on fire during our fight, and it was a simple matter to let it consume house, knife, and evidence once he was dead.

Of course, his friends burned down the cafe in retribution, but by that point, I had quit my job there. I’d found a better calling.

You can report me to the Garda if you like, but by the time you get around to processing this statement, I’ll be long gone. I’ve heard Petra’s nice this time of year.

And full of things that need to be killed.

Morgan : Statement ends.

Julieta Ayala appears to have been this woman’s real name, as there is a record of her as a dismissed Postulant. However, any trace of her vanishes shortly after the events of this statement. It looks like an archival assistant did report Ayala to the Garda, but they were never able to find her.

This statement does match up with death of one Seth Roemer, who died in a house fire in 1983. There were suspicions of arson, but nothing was ever proven, and ultimately it was ruled an accident.

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Khalila : Thomas?

Thomas : [surprised gasp]

Khalila : You’re up late.

Thomas : Oh, it’s just you. Sorry, I didn’t realize you were there.

Khalila : It’s all right. What are you doing?

Thomas : Remember that statement about the worms from two weeks ago?

Khalila : Yes… why?

Thomas : I’m trying to figure out if Jane Prentiss has been seen anywhere since.

Khalila : Is that the glass shop?

Thomas : Someone told me they saw a woman in red with “holes in her legs” in the area a few weeks ago.

Khalila : So that’s why you wanted to look around for so long. I didn’t think it was to find that yellow door.

Thomas : Not my best excuse, I’m afraid. Do you think Santi suspected anything?

Khalila : I think he was more worried about those mirror pieces. Do you want any help with this?

Thomas : …Actually, yes. [shuffling of files] These are all photos from nearby security cameras, and I’m looking for pictures taken in the last month or so. It’ll go faster with two people.

Khalila : All right. [sits down] Did you mean to leave this running?

Thomas : I didn’t even known it was there.

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