GRAVEHOOK

Chapter 2: The Bell Tower Corpses

“Don’t touch the walls.”

Malgraves kept the lantern raised as they moved deeper through the crypt. Fresh blood covered the stone in thin handprints that stretched toward the lower tunnels. Some were human. Some clearly were not.

Draeven walked ahead of him with Mournhook lowered at his side.

Sylveth was gone.

No footsteps. No opened passage. No trace except the pressure she left behind in the air.

The twisted hunters remained motionless now, collapsed across the crypt floor like discarded puppets. Black fluid leaked slowly from their mouths and pooled between cracked stones.

Draeven stopped beside one of the bodies. Its face had begun sinking inward already, flesh shriveling around exposed teeth.

Fast decay. Wrong decay.

He crouched and tore open the creature’s church coat. Deep beneath the ribs, carved directly into the sternum, sat a symbol burned into the bone itself.

A circle crossed by three vertical lines. Malgraves lowered the lantern slightly when he saw it.

“No.”

“You recognize it.”

The priest stayed silent for a moment too long. Draeven looked up at him.

“Malgraves.”

The older man swallowed and rubbed tired fingers across his beard.

“That symbol belonged to a restricted archive,” he admitted quietly. “Old church records. Ritual studies. Most were destroyed decades ago.”

“Most?”

Malgraves avoided his eyes.

“That mark was tied to resurrection trials.”

Draeven rose slowly. The cathedral above them groaned faintly as winter wind pressed against the old stone.

“You said resurrection was forbidden.”

“It is.”

“But the church still tried.”

Malgraves gave a bitter smile.

“The church forbids many things publicly.”

The whisper inside Mournhook stirred again.

He still hides pieces.

Draeven ignored it and moved farther into the crypt tunnels.

The deeper passages were older than the cathedral itself. The architecture changed gradually from carved church stone to rough black rock reinforced by ancient support beams. Water dripped steadily somewhere ahead.

Then the smell reached them. Burned flesh. Draeven tightened his grip on the scythe and rounded the corner first.

The chamber beyond looked nothing like a burial crypt.

Iron tables lined the walls. Rusted restraints hung from chains bolted into the stone. Shelves held cracked jars filled with blackened organs floating in cloudy liquid.

Experiments. Malgraves went pale.

“God…”

Draeven stepped toward the nearest table. Straps. Blood grooves. Scratch marks deep enough to split iron.

One restraint had been ripped free recently.

A leather journal sat abandoned near the corner beside dried candle wax. Draeven picked it up carefully.

The pages were warped from moisture, but the writing remained readable.

Specimen survived fourth transfusion.

Subject displays accelerated aggression after exposure to preserved blood.

Divine compatibility remains unstable. Draeven turned another page.

Most of the entries were signed with church seals. Then he reached the final entry.

Subject M-17 remains alive despite complete corruption.

Possible bloodline resonance confirmed.

Recommend immediate transfer beneath Brașov Cathedral before senior clergy intervention.

Draeven’s expression hardened.

“Bloodline resonance.”

Malgraves stared at the page.

“I’ve never seen these records before.”

“That makes two of us.”

The priest stepped closer slowly.

“There were rumors years ago. Hidden chambers beneath the cathedral. Hunters disappearing after difficult missions.” He looked around the room with growing disgust. “I thought they were stories meant to frighten initiates.”

“They weren’t.”

A low creaking sound echoed from overhead. Both men looked up instinctively. Then came footsteps. Fast. Multiple.

Draeven extinguished the lantern immediately. Darkness swallowed the chamber. Voices drifted faintly from the upper crypt stairs.

Church soldiers. Malgraves cursed under his breath.

“They sealed the square before we entered.”

“Apparently not well enough.”

The footsteps stopped above them. A man spoke sharply.

“Search every chamber.”

Draeven moved silently toward the far wall where a narrow drainage tunnel disappeared into darkness.

Too small for armored soldiers. Big enough for them. Malgraves eyed the filthy tunnel with open disgust.

“You cannot be serious.”

Draeven handed him the journal.

“Move.”

The priest muttered several blasphemies under his breath but crouched into the tunnel first. Draeven followed while footsteps thundered into the chamber behind them.

Light flooded the room. Someone shouted.

“Down here!”

The tunnel narrowed quickly.

Cold water soaked through Draeven’s gloves as they crawled through mud and centuries of rot beneath the cathedral foundations. Behind them, armored soldiers tried forcing their way inside, but the passage bottlenecked sharply.

Steel scraped stone. Then came screaming. Draeven stopped.

Not from the soldiers ahead. From behind them. Wet tearing sounds followed. Malgraves looked back once.

Immediately wished he had not.

Something inside the tunnel with the soldiers was killing them.

Fast.

One scream ended with a crunch. Another dissolved into choking blood. Draeven kept moving. The priest crawled faster beside him now.

“What in God’s name was that?”

Draeven’s face remained cold.

“Not ours.”

The tunnel eventually opened into an underground cistern beneath the eastern district of Brașov. Ancient water channels stretched beneath arched stone ceilings while freezing runoff flowed black beneath narrow walkways.

They climbed out silently. For several moments neither man spoke. Then Malgraves held up the journal again.

“If these records are real, the church wasn’t experimenting on monsters.”

“No.”

“They were experimenting on hunters.”

Draeven stared into the dark water beneath the walkway. His reflection looked wrong tonight.

Too pale. Too thin.

The black veins beneath his throat had spread farther. He could feel them moving under the skin now whenever he used magic. Like roots searching deeper.

Mournhook whispered softly.

You are getting worse.

He wrapped the scythe tighter across his back.

“I know.”

Malgraves looked at him carefully.

“You answered it.”

Draeven said nothing. The priest’s expression darkened with concern.

“How long has the weapon been speaking clearly?”

“Long enough.”

“That thing inside the blade is dangerous.”

“So am I.”

The answer ended the conversation. They climbed out into the city shortly before sunrise.

Brașov looked half-dead beneath the winter fog. Smoke drifted from chimneys while church bells echoed faintly through the streets. Few people were outside this early, but those who saw Draeven quickly crossed to the opposite side of the road.

A patrol of church guards marched toward the cathedral square ahead. Malgraves pulled his hood lower.

“They’re already locking the district down.”

“They know we found something.”

“Or they know someone escaped.”

Draeven’s eyes narrowed slightly.

The woman in the crypt. The blind survivor. She was gone before the soldiers arrived. Not dead. Gone.

That bothered him more than the monsters. They reached the stable district near the outer wall where Draeven had left the horses.

Only one remained.

His black warhorse stood restless inside the stable, stamping nervously against the frozen floorboards.

Malgraves immediately noticed the blood.

A stable boy lay crumpled against the wall nearby with his throat torn open.

Fresh.

Draeven stepped closer carefully. No feeding marks. No signs of struggle. The boy held something tightly in one frozen hand.

A strip of black cloth. Veil fabric. Malgraves stared at it.

“She was here.”

Draeven took the cloth slowly. A symbol had been stitched into the fabric using silver thread.

The same mark from the crypt. Then he noticed something else.

Words written inside the cloth in dried blood. Not random. A location. Blackwater Monastery. Carpathian Mountains. Below it sat a final line.

Come alone, Gravehook. Malgraves looked up sharply.

“That’s three days into mountain territory.”

“She wants me there.”

“She wants your bloodline there.”

Draeven folded the cloth carefully and slid it into his coat. The horse suddenly jerked backward in its stall.

Mournhook vibrated against his spine. The whisper returned colder this time.

We are being watched.

Draeven slowly turned toward the stable entrance. A young boy stood outside in the falling snow. Thin. Half-starved. No older than sixteen.

His green eyes locked directly onto Draeven. Then the boy spoke through chattering teeth.

“They took my sister into the mountains,” he said. “And the thing wearing her face came back.”