thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The heavy oak door of Suite Thirteen clicks shut behind me, severing the stifling, molten heat of the blind spot. I stand alone in the West Wing corridor. The ambient air is freezing, smelling of ozone, ancient dust, and the sharp, metallic tang of the blood dripping down my forearm. The jagged scrape Cassian’s stone ring tore into my skin weeps steadily, hot drops of crimson splashing against the dark hexagonal threads of the carpet. The hotel notices me instantly. The low, rhythmic thrum vibrating…-
22.8 K • Completed
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Thirty Minutes Before the House Opens Blackbriar House has no front door until I lie to it. I stand on a cliff above the winter sea with seven strangers arranged behind me like badly chosen mourners. There is nothing ahead except rain, darkness, and a wall of thorn vines climbing into empty air. Yet the invitation in my coat insists the inheritance contest begins here at midnight. The parchment is warm against my ribs. It has been warm since it arrived in a locked room with no windows. One of the…-
23.3 K • Completed
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The rough iron rope of the truce bell shreds the skin of my palms as I drag my weight down on it. High above us, swallowed in the vaulted, ribs-like shadows of the chamber, a heavy bronze clapper strikes. One resonant, bone-rattling chime vibrates down my spine, traveling through the soles of my boots into the obsidian floorboards of Blackbriar House. One hour. For exactly sixty minutes, the sentient architecture of this cursed mansion goes blind and deaf to this single room. The grinding of gears…
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23.3 K • Completed
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MARA The heavy iron door of the Truce Room groans open, vomiting us back into the belly of Blackbriar House. The air in the hallway hits my flushed skin like a sheet of ice. It smells of old blood, damp masonry, and the faint, bitter metallic tang of ozone. The one hour of guaranteed safety is dead. The surveillance magic of the house has snapped back into place, a heavy, oppressive weight pressing down on the back of my neck. I can feel the architecture watching us. I pull the edges of my leather armor…
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23.3 K • Completed
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MARA The colossal mechanical eye stares at us through the fissure in the obsidian wall, its brass iris contracting with a wet, rhythmic click. I remain perfectly still, my breathing shallow, my spine pressed hard against the cold stone of the sub-vault. Beside me, Dorian is a statue carved from shadow and tension. The audio feed bleeding through the architecture is faint, but the acoustics of the vault catch every syllable of the refined, monstrous murmurs echoing from the other side. "…fifty…
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23.3 K • Completed
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The heavy iron key burns against the skin of my palm. I crouch in the jagged shadows of the mirror gallery’s outer corridor, listening to the distant, mocking laughter of the nobility bleeding through the architecture. Fifty paces down the east wing is the service stairwell. Freedom. Survival. The absolute certainty of walking out of Blackbriar House alive, leaving the demon architect to the mercy of the aristocracy who want him dead. My left shoulder throbs, a deep, rhythmic ache where Dorian burned…
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23.3 K • Completed
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DORIAN The pale, circular indentation on my left ring finger is not a battle wound. For ten years, I have ignored it. I convinced myself it was a remnant of my family’s massacre, a burn from the night my ancestral home collapsed into ash. The night the little curse thief betrayed me. But as the seven mirrored panels of the Truce Room fade back into heavy, impenetrable obsidian, the silver light dies, plunging us back into the dim glow of the gas lamp. The reflection of the iron wedding band is gone.…
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23.3 K • Completed
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MARA The fine, grey ash of the False Will slips through Dorian’s fingers, drifting to the metal grate floor of the Blueprint Vault. Around us, the ancient, circular chamber is suffocating. The ghostly blue light that had guided us down here is dead, replaced by a violent, arterial crimson glare bleeding from the thousands of brass schematic tubes lining the walls. The house is not dormant. It is awake, and it is gorging itself on the colossal surge of truth we just fed it in the Truce Room. The game…
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23.3 K • Completed
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MARA The Blueprint Vault is screaming. Thousands of brass schematic tubes rupture along the circular walls, vomiting a storm of jagged metal and ancient parchment into the crimson air. The metal floor grate beneath my knees heaves, a violent, structural convulsion driven by the sheer volume of agony I just fed into the architecture. I am paralyzed, staring at my own hands. For ten years, I have possessed a nervous habit. Whenever the silence in a room grew too heavy, or a heist went slightly wrong, I…
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23.3 K • Completed
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MARA The silence that follows the end of the world is deafening. I open my eyes. My lungs burn, expanding against a thick layer of pulverized stone and ancient ash hanging in the air. I am lying on my back on a floor made of pale, flawless marble. I turn my head. The heavy brass doors of the ninth room have been blown completely off their hinges, lying warped and smoking a few feet away. Beyond the threshold, Blackbriar House no longer exists. The vaulted ceilings, the obsidian corridors, the…
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23.3 K • Completed
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