Read Chapter 10: Breaking Glass

The radio crackled on his belt, and Eamon almost jumped out of his skin. Maggie’s voice came through, tinny and tired.

“Cole, you alive down there? You’re late back from break.”

He keyed the mic, his throat dry. “On my way up. Maintenance tunnels are a maze.”

“Tell me about it. Don’t get lost. Big Ben’s about to chime three, and the night’s only half done.”

Eamon pocketed the diary, its worn leather corners pressing against his thigh like a second heartbeat. Wainwright’s crescent blade. The woman’s voice. Danny’s body in the Thames. It all swirled in his skull, a slurry of half-truths and warnings. He needed to see the Codex again, with fresh eyes. Not as a threat. As a key.

He took the stairs two at a time, emerging into the cool, stale air of the Egyptian gallery. The security lights cast long, amber pools across the polished floor, and the statues—gods and pharaohs and beasts—stood in patient silence. But something was wrong. A faint, high-pitched hum vibrated through the soles of his boots, like a tuning fork struck against the stone.

He rounded the corner toward the central display.

The glass case was shattered.

Shards glittered across the floor like spilled ice, catching the light in a thousand fractured stars. The pedestal inside stood empty. The Codex was gone.

Eamon’s breath hitched. His hand went to his radio, but he stopped. *Who would he call? Maggie? For a stolen artifact, when he’d just learned the artifact wasn’t even the real trigger?* But a theft was a theft. Protocol said—

A flicker of light caught his eye.

Across the gallery, in the long row of Egyptian antiquities, a statue of a seated cat—a sleek bronze Bastet, eyes closed in eternal slumber—was glowing. A soft, sickly green luminescence bled from its seams, like liquid moonlight trapped under its skin. The hum grew louder.

Eamon took a step toward it. Then another. The air grew thick, charged, as if a storm were pooling in the room. The cat’s eyes snapped open. Not bronze. Not stone. *Amber.* And they were looking at him.

“You see it too,” a voice murmured, barely audible over the hum.

Eamon spun. No one. The voice had come from his radio, a breath of static that almost shaped words. The spectral woman. She was watching.

A crash echoed from the far end of the gallery—the Chinese collection, beyond the glass partition. Eamon didn’t think. He ran.

He burst through the partition doors, the hum now a distant drone behind him. The Chinese gallery stretched ahead, a forest of jade and porcelain, silk screens and bronze vessels. Shadows pooled in corners, stretched by the low emergency lighting. And there, at the far end, a figure.

Humanoid. Tall. Thin. It moved with an unnatural, shambling gait, dragging one foot behind it like a puppet with a broken string. It was silhouetted against a glowing lacquered screen—a huge, ornately painted folding screen depicting dragons chasing pearls across a midnight sky. The screen was lit from within, golden light bleeding through the cracks in its lacquer.

The figure stopped. Turned.

It had no face.

Where a face should have been, there was only a smooth, dark void, like a mask carved from obsidian. But it *looked* at him. He felt its gaze like a pressure in his skull, a cold weight behind his eyes.

“Stop!” Eamon shouted, his voice echoing off the high ceiling.

The figure didn’t run. It tilted its head—a slow, deliberate gesture, almost curious—and then it reached out a long, thin arm. Its fingers brushed the surface of the glowing screen, and the lacquer rippled like water.

Eamon lunged forward, closing the distance. He was twenty feet away. Ten.

The figure stepped into the screen.

It didn’t pass through like a ghost. It *sank*, the way a stone sinks into still water, the lacquer closing over its body without a ripple. One moment it was there. The next, the screen stood empty, its dragons writhing in the golden light, the pearls they chased now glowing like tiny suns.

Eamon skidded to a halt inches from the screen. He stared at his own reflection in its polished surface—a man, pale and wide-eyed, hair plastered to his forehead. He reached out a hand, hesitated, and touched the lacquer.

It was cold. Solid. Ordinary.

But the glow was fading, the dragons dimming, the pearls dying to embers. The hum in the air cut off with an audible snap, leaving a ringing silence in its wake.

Eamon stood there, his hand pressed against the screen, his breath ragged in his chest. His mind was a scramble of images: the empty pedestal, the glowing cat, the faceless thing walking into a painting.

“Cole?”

Maggie’s voice, sharp over the radio. He hadn’t realized he was still holding it.

“Maggie—the Codex. It’s gone. The case is shattered.”

“What? I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything.”

He didn’t respond. His eyes traced the carving on the screen’s border—a repeating motif, a curved, sickle-like shape intertwining with lotus blossoms. He’d seen that shape before. In Wainwright’s diary. The crescent blade.

His heart lurched.

*The Codex wasn’t the trigger. It was never the trigger.* The blank-faced thing hadn’t taken the Codex for its power. It had taken it to *hide* it. To redirect. To buy time.

The spectral woman’s voice echoed in his memory: *Wainwright was preparing you.*

Preparing him for what? For a theft? For a shadow that walks through screens?

He pulled out the diary from his pocket, its pages now creased from his grip. He flipped to the final page, the drawing of the blade, and held it up to the screen. The motif matched. Almost exactly.

A soft chime rang through the museum. Big Ben, three in the morning.

And then, from somewhere deep below—below the galleries, below the archive, below the stone door that was grinding ever wider—came a sound that wasn’t grinding at all. It was a song. Low. Many-voiced. A chorus of stone throats awakening.

The statues were singing.

Eamon felt the floor vibrate beneath him, the hum returning, stronger now. Not a tuning fork. A heartbeat.

Maggie appeared at the end of the gallery, torch beam cutting through the dark. Her face was tight with alarm.

“Cole, what in God’s name—”

He cut her off. “Maggie. Do you believe in gods?”

She stopped, frowning. “What?”

“Old ones. Forgotten ones. Ones that got locked away because they were too dangerous to let out,” he said, the words spilling out. “Because I think the museum isn't just a museum. It’s a prison. And the locks are failing.”

Her eyes flicked to the glowing screen, then to the diary in his hand. For a long moment, she said nothing.

Then she spoke, her voice low and grim. “I know what Wainwright believed. And I know why they sent him away.”

Eamon stared at her. “You knew him?”

“Everyone knew him. He was the best guard we ever had.” She glanced at the screen, at the fading glow. “And he was right about one thing. When the night of many gods comes, there’s only one way to survive it.”

She looked at him, and her eyes were not the eyes of a tired security veteran. They were the eyes of someone who had seen the dark before.

“You have to pick a side. And you have to hope you picked the winning one.”

Below them, the stone door groaned, and the singing grew louder.