Series Content Advisory
Scriptures of Nokternum is a dark fantasy story involving grief, trauma, violence, death, coercive control, forced experimentation, and bodily alteration. Some chapters address past suicide, abuse, blood, severe injury, and psychological manipulation. Additional chapter-specific warnings are provided when necessary.
Chapter 22: “No One Answered”
Event Date: May 24th, 2010 - 8:34 AM CDT / 6:34 AM PDT, Earth
The beacon clicked once beneath the cloth.
No one answered.
That did not mean no one wanted to. Kaostar’s claws were already out. Silas stood beside the table with one hand hovering near the wrapped object and the other near his toolkit, neither touching either thing yet. Harrow had gone still in the way old doors went still when wind pressed against them from the wrong side.
No one moved.
The cloth did not move. The beacon did not click again.
No rain smell entered the room. No clean metal. No glass-bright memory of rooms that believed sterility meant innocence. No voice came from beneath the fabric. No small, private word wearing Lightstorm’s mouth.
Only the table. The old wall. The sign ledger. The wrapped beacon sitting exactly where Silas had placed it.
Kaostar hated that most of all.
Things that moved could be struck. Things that waited made striking look like obedience. Harrow looked from Kaostar’s claws to the cloth.
“No one touches it bare.”
Kaostar’s eyes snapped to him.
“I know.”
“Knowing is not a rule until someone says it where panic can hear.”
Silas glanced at Harrow. Then nodded once.
“No bare contact,” Silas said.
Harrow continued, “No opening it alone.” Kaostar’s lips pulled back.
“I did not say I was opening it.”
“No. Your hands did.”
Kaostar looked down.
His claws had angled toward the beacon without permission. He forced them still. Harrow’s gaze did not soften.
“No speaking to it. No placing it near the wall questions. No letting it sit by the door. No taking it anywhere that has already witnessed signs unless there is a reason stronger than curiosity.”
Silas’s ears shifted.
“No treating it like a message just because it behaves like one.”
Harrow looked at him.
“Yes.”
Kaostar stared at the cloth.
The beacon remained silent. Harrow said, “Evidence is not instruction.” The sentence struck harder than it should have. Kaostar’s jaw tightened.
Harrow continued, quieter, “The moment we treat it like a mouth, it becomes one.” Silas’s hand lowered away from his toolkit. Not fully relaxed. Deliberately unhurried.
Kaostar noticed.
Hated noticing. Needed to notice.
“What do we do with it?” Kaostar asked.
Harrow looked at Silas.
“Can you inspect it without opening it?”
Silas considered before answering.
“Yes.”
Kaostar’s eyes narrowed.
“Can and should are different.”
Silas looked at him.
“I know.”
Harrow gestured to the table, not the beacon.
“Set your terms.”
Silas glanced down at the cloth-wrapped shape.
“I inspect from outside only. No opening the casing. No battery compartment removal beyond confirming what Arcana already said, unless I can do it without exposing anything internal.”
Kaostar’s wings stirred beneath his skin. Silas saw.
“Or I do not touch the compartment at all,” he revised.
Kaostar said nothing.
Silas continued, “No metal tools at first. Cloth between hand and object. If it clicks again, I stop. If it heats, I stop. If anyone smells rain or clean metal, I stop. If it speaks, we leave it alone.”
Kaostar looked at Harrow.
Harrow nodded.
“That is acceptable.”
Kaostar hated that the word felt like permission.
Silas took a clean strip of cloth from his toolkit, then paused.
“Still allowed?” he asked.
Kaostar stared at him.
Silas’s eyes stayed on the beacon.
“The inspection,” Silas clarified.
Kaostar’s throat moved. He had not expected the question there. That was why it mattered.
“Yes.”
Silas touched the wrapped beacon carefully. The cloth did not shift on its own.
No click.
No pulse.
No voice.
Silas turned it once, slow enough that the table seemed impatient. He leaned close but did not put his ear near it.
“Casing cracked,” he said. “Old crack. Not from today.”
Kaostar watched his hands.
“Battery compartment?”
Silas shifted the cloth.
“Open.”
Harrow’s gaze sharpened. Silas did not touch the compartment directly. He angled the beacon so the underside faced them. Empty.
No batteries.
Kaostar stared into the small dark cavity.
Something in him expected eyes. There were none. The empty compartment was no
reassurance. Silas turned it back.
“No heat.”
He waited.
No sound.
“No smell I can read. Not burnt. Not Arcana’s usual pattern, from what he described. No swollen casing. No fresh scorch.”
Kaostar leaned forward despite himself.
Silas glanced at him.
Stopped.
Kaostar froze.
Silas did not accuse him. Only waited.
Kaostar sat back.
Silas continued. “The click sounded mechanical.”
“It has no power.”
“I know.”
“Then it was not mechanical.”
Silas looked at the beacon.
“Or something wanted mechanical to be the language.”
The cave seemed to narrow around the sentence. Harrow folded his arms.
“What does that mean?”
Silas rubbed his thumb against the cloth.
“It wants to be handled like a broken thing.”
Kaostar’s eyes narrowed.
“It is broken.”
Silas looked up.
“That is not the same.”
Kaostar’s claws curled against the table. Silas set the beacon back exactly where it had been. Still wrapped. Still silent.
He moved his hands away.
“External inspection only,” he said. “Nothing else today.”
Kaostar looked at the object.
Part of him wanted to rip it apart simply to punish it for being able to wait. Another part remembered Arcana’s voice. Answering is not always words. Harrow turned the sign ledger toward Kaostar.
“Add it.”
Kaostar looked at him.
“We know.”
“Write it.”
“Why?”
“Because the list is where signs go when we refuse to turn them into orders.”
Kaostar stared at him.
Silas looked down. The sentence had landed there too.
Kaostar took the pencil.
The one that had not yet broken. He wrote beneath the last entry.
Dead beacon. Batteries removed. Clicked twice at cliff. Clicked once upon return to cave under cloth.
He stopped. The pencil hovered. Harrow waited. Kaostar’s hand tightened.
Then he wrote:
No answer given.
The words looked strange. Like an action. Like a wound left unopened. Like restraint had become an event worth recording.
Harrow pointed to the final phrase.
“That belongs on the list too.”
Kaostar’s jaw tightened.
“Nothing happened.”
“Exactly.”
Kaostar looked at the paper.
The old Kaostar would have hated that answer because it seemed small. This Kaostar hated it because it was not. Silas sat slowly, angled toward the door again.
“The first slow move was warning Arcana,” he said.
Kaostar did not look away from the ledger.
“Yes.”
“The next?”
Harrow answered before Kaostar could pretend not to know. “Moonleaf.” The word entered differently than Arcana had.
Arcana was a person.
Moonleaf was a place.
A table. A window. A door. A back room.
A panther owner with terrible humor and better instincts than most armed guards. Silas went still. Only slightly. Only enough for Kaostar to see because Kaostar had started learning the difference between statue-shaped and weapon-shaped.
Silas was neither now. He was door-shaped. Closed, but with someone inside bracing the frame.
Kaostar looked at him.
Silas did not meet his eyes immediately.
That told him more. “Moonleaf witnessed signs,” Harrow said. “Lights. Condensation. The watch. The door. The room itself may have been used as part of the path.”
Kaostar’s teeth showed.
“Moonleaf is not part of this.”
Silas’s gaze lifted. He said nothing. Harrow did.
“Then warn it before the pattern disagrees.”
Kaostar looked toward the wrapped beacon.
“We are not taking that.”
“No,” Harrow said.
Silas’s shoulders eased by a fraction. Harrow noticed. So did Kaostar. The beacon clicked once beneath the cloth, everyone froze. Kaostar’s claws extended again before he could stop them. The beacon went silent.
Harrow did not look at it. Not immediately. That was an act of war. He kept his eyes on Kaostar instead.
“Add it,” Harrow said.
Kaostar’s breath came sharp. He looked at the beacon. Then at the ledger. His hand shook once before he wrote.
Clicked once during discussion of Moonleaf. No answer given.
The pencil did not break. The cave remained intact. Silas exhaled carefully.
Kaostar looked at him.
“You still choose to go?”
Silas looked toward the door. Then at the table. Then at the folded cloth around the beacon.
“Yes.”
“You do not have to.”
“I know.”
“Moonleaf is yours.”
Silas’s expression shifted. Not much.
Enough.
“It is not mine.”
Kaostar held his gaze.
Silas looked away first. Then corrected himself.
“It is one of the places that did not make me explain before letting me sit down.”
Kaostar understood more than Silas had said.
Harrow’s voice softened.
“Then that is enough reason to warn it carefully.”
Silas nodded.
Kaostar stood.
Harrow turned toward him.
“You go to Moonleaf. You warn. You do not make it a fortress. You do not make it headquarters. You do not bring back every chair because it has emotional relevance.”
Kaostar stared.
“That last one was unnecessary.”
Silas murmured, “Debatable.”
Kaostar looked at him.
Silas looked very innocent. Poorly. Harrow continued, “You tell the owner what may happen. You let him decide what Moonleaf does with that warning.”
Kaostar’s jaw tightened.
“Warned. Not recruited.”
“Yes.”
“Warned. Not claimed.”
“Yes.”
Harrow nodded toward the beacon.
“I stay with the list.”
“And that.”
“Yes.”
Kaostar’s eyes narrowed.
“If it speaks—”
“It will not be answered.”
“If it moves—”
“It will not be chased.”
“If it uses Lightstorm’s voice—”
Harrow’s face changed. Only for a moment. Then became steady again.
“It will not be believed without proof beyond wanting.”
Kaostar went quiet.
Silas’s gaze lowered. Harrow held Kaostar’s eyes.
“I know the rules.”
Kaostar looked away.
“Yes.”
Harrow’s voice gentled by one degree.
“Bring the warning. Bring yourselves back.”
Silas picked up his toolkit.
Kaostar opened a threshold.
Black and rust-red folded the cave air, deliberately away from the table. Away from the beacon. Away from the wall questions. The opening looked toward Los Angeles morning.
Damp pavement. A narrow alley. The back of Moonleaf. Silas stepped through first this
time.
Kaostar noticed.
He followed. The threshold closed behind them. The alley smelled of wet concrete, old tea leaves, and city air pretending it had not been awake all night.
Los Angeles was still early enough to be less loud than it wanted to be. Delivery trucks grumbled somewhere beyond the buildings. A gull made an ugly sound overhead. The sky held a thin gray-blue pallor between night and commerce.
Moonleaf’s back door stood shut.
No light leaked beneath it.
Silas stopped three paces away.
Kaostar stopped beside him.
Not too close.
“Still choose?” Kaostar asked.
Silas looked at the door.
“Yes.”
Kaostar studied his face.
“You became very calm when Arcana was in danger.”
Silas’s ears shifted.
Kaostar continued, “You are not calm now.”
Silas’s mouth flattened.
“Moonleaf has porcelain.”
“That is not why.”
“No.”
Silas looked at the door. The confession arrived quietly.
“It is one thing when danger follows people who move. Places are harder.”
Kaostar waited.
Silas rubbed his thumb against one claw.
“Places are supposed to stay where you left them.”
Kaostar looked at the door.
The cracked table inside. The corner booth. The tea set down halfway. The bell that had chimed without opening.
The window that had taken condensation from something on the wrong side of reality.
“Nothing stays untouched because we needed it to,” Kaostar said.
Silas glanced at him.
“That sounded like Harrow.”
Kaostar’s mouth twitched.
“I am grieving the resemblance.”
Silas almost smiled. Then raised his hand and knocked. Three ordinary knocks. Kaostar’s body went rigid at the rhythm.
Silas noticed immediately.
“Too many?”
Kaostar breathed.
“Ordinary.”
“That was not an answer.”
“It can remain ordinary.”
Silas lowered his hand. The door opened. The panther owner stood inside wearing the same robe from earlier, now accompanied by a scarf and the exhausted expression of someone who had briefly attempted sleep and been personally betrayed by morning. He looked at Silas.
Then Kaostar. Then the air behind them.
“No extra universe?” he asked.
Kaostar stared.
Silas said, “Not this time.”
“Excellent. I am low on floor cleaner.” He stepped aside.
“Come in before the alley decides it has opinions.”
Moonleaf was dim inside.
The chairs still rested upside down. The counter had been wiped. The cracked table remained in the back corner, empty and waiting. The window above it showed no condensation now. The lamps were ordinary lamps. The bell above the front door hung still.
Kaostar hated how relieved he felt.
The owner noticed. Of course he did.
“Good,” he said. “You’re both making the face.”
Silas frowned.
“What face?”
“The face of people hoping furniture has not become prophetic.”
Kaostar looked toward the cracked table.
“Has it?”
“Not before coffee.”
“You serve tea.”
“That explains the trouble.”
Silas exhaled through his nose.
Kaostar stepped into the room but did not sit.
Not yet.
The owner folded his arms.
“This is not a social visit.”
“No,” Kaostar said.
“Good. Social visits require me to pretend I am pleasant.”
Silas looked at him.
“You never do that.”
“And yet people keep returning. A business mystery.”
Kaostar’s patience thinned.
“Moonleaf witnessed signs.”
The humor fell away. Not vanished. Set aside. The owner looked toward the back corner.
“Yes.”
Kaostar continued, “Lights may flicker in patterns. Condensation may form where it should not.
Watches or clocks may move without cause. You may smell rain indoors. Clean rain. Wrong rain. You may hear taps. Voices. Words.” The owner’s eyes sharpened. Silas added, “Do not answer.”
The owner looked at him.
“With words?”
Kaostar’s voice was low.
“With anything.”
Silas nodded.
“Do not follow. Do not touch. Do not gather people around it. Do not let customers make it entertainment.”
The owner glanced toward Kaostar.
“That sounds like it has happened before.”
Kaostar’s face hardened.
“Yes.”
The owner accepted the answer without asking for the story.
“What else?”
Kaostar took a breath.
“No touching strange electrical failures barehanded. If lights pulse, shut off power manually if it can be done safely. If the back corner window marks itself again, keep people away from it. If a voice uses a name it should not know, that does not make it trustworthy.”
The owner’s gaze moved between them.
“Metatronas?”
Kaostar went very still.
Silas said, “He heard enough.” The owner lifted one hand.
“You said the name before. Not today. Earlier. With the expression of someone biting down on a live wire.”
Silas murmured, “Accurate.”
Kaostar ignored him.
“Yes,” he said.
The owner absorbed that. Then nodded once.
“So the usual emergency plan,” he said, “but with ghosts, weather, and no touching the ominous appliances.”
Kaostar stared.
Silas closed his eyes briefly. The owner looked at him.
“What? I can make it sound worse if that helps.”
“It does not,” Kaostar said.
“Then we are efficient.”
Silas looked toward the cracked table. The owner followed his gaze.
“No customers in the back corner if anything happens,” he said.
Silas looked surprised. The owner shrugged.
“I listen while appearing insufferable. It is called management.”
Kaostar said, “This does not make Moonleaf mine to use.”
The owner’s eyes returned to him.
“Correct.”
Silas went still. The owner continued, “It makes you a very alarming customer with a warning.” Kaostar’s mouth twitched despite the room.
“That is acceptable.”
“I should hope so. It is the best offer you are getting.”
Silas looked relieved.
Kaostar saw it.
The owner saw Kaostar see it. He said nothing. That was kind in his particular, grating way. Instead, the owner moved behind the counter and pulled out a notebook.
Thick. Stained. Already half full. Silas frowned.
“You already have an incident log?”
“I own a tea shop near several alleys, three unreliable musicians, one emotional repair creature, and whatever he is.” He nodded toward Kaostar. “Of course I have an incident log.”
Kaostar looked at Silas.
“Emotional repair creature?”
Silas’s ears went back. The owner opened the notebook.
“New section,” he said. “Weather, ghosts, and related nonsense.”
Kaostar stepped closer.
“This is not nonsense.”
“No. But if I call it that, I can write it down without giving it a chair.”
That stopped him. Harrow would like this creature, Kaostar thought with immediate irritation. The owner wrote quickly.
“Rules,” he said aloud as he wrote. “One: no one follows sounds, lights, rain smells, or voices alone. Two: customers away from back corner. Three: if lights pulse in sequence, breaker off manually. Four: no touching failed devices barehanded. Five: no repeating names spoken by unknown phenomena.”
Silas said, “Six: no crowd.” The owner wrote.
“No crowd.”
Kaostar looked toward the front window.
“What signal if Moonleaf is unsafe?”
The owner tapped the pencil once against the notebook.
“Window sign.”
“No lights.”
“I was not going to use lights.”
Silas muttered, “Everyone says that now.” The owner ignored him and walked to a drawer near the register. He pulled out a small chalkboard sign and set it on the counter. One side already read:
CLOSED FOR REPAIRS
The owner flipped it over and wrote beneath the words in smaller letters: TABLE HELD.
Silas went very still.
Kaostar looked at the sign.
The words hit somewhere neither dangerous nor safe. Useful. Not like a tool. Like a table.
The owner held up the sign.
“If this is in the window, the place is closed but intact. If the sign is missing, do not enter from the front. If the sign is upside down, whatever happened involved more than broken porcelain.”
Silas stared.
“You made that up very quickly.”
“I have been waiting for my life to justify this level of planning.”
Kaostar studied him.
“You are not afraid enough.”
The owner’s gaze lifted. The humor thinned.
“I am very afraid.”
The room quieted.
“I am simply not offering fear to the first strange thing that knocks.”
Silas’s expression changed.
Kaostar looked away first.
Good.
The owner placed the sign by the window, not in it yet.
“Contact?”
Silas took the paper map corner Arcana had marked from the low-profile outer utility pocket he had designated for compromised evidence and copied the leaf symbol onto a scrap from the owner’s notebook.
“This mark,” Silas said. “Leave a note at the east alley brick gap. Not inside. Not under lights. If urgent, chalk the leaf near the side door and leave.”
When he returned the map, he closed the low-profile pocket immediately, keeping it separate from the repaired charm and loose repair pieces carried elsewhere in the jacket. The owner examined the mark.
“A leaf.”
“Moonleaf,” Silas said.
“Subtle.”
“Do you want dramatic?”
The owner looked toward Kaostar.
“No. We have enough dramatic.”
Kaostar bared his teeth slightly.
The owner drew the leaf twice to memorize it. Then slid the paper into the notebook.
“Done.”
Silas looked around the room again.
Kaostar saw the movement.
The owner did too.
Moonleaf had become a possible target.
Silas was calm until the place could be hurt. That knowledge entered Kaostar quietly and did not ask to be used. The owner leaned against the counter.
“This warning does not recruit me, correct?”
Kaostar’s eyes lifted. The panther’s stare was dry and exact.
“I believe that is the phrase of the week.”
Silas looked at Kaostar.
Kaostar exhaled once.
“Correct. Being warned is not the same as being claimed.”
The owner nodded.
“Good. I refuse to be claimed before inventory.”
Kaostar stared at him.
Silas looked down and almost smiled. The owner continued, serious beneath the edge, “This place remains a tea shop.”
“Yes,” Kaostar said.
“Good. I dislike career changes before noon.”
Kaostar gave a faint, unwilling breath.
The owner continued, “I will protect my shop, my staff, and my customers. I will pass on information if it happens here. I will not chase your impossible rain into an alley with a broom.”
“Good,” Silas said.
“I said broom because sword sounded irresponsible.”
Kaostar looked at him.
“Do you have a sword?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Define sword.”
Silas sighed.
Kaostar did not ask.
The bell above the front door chimed once. All three froze. The door had not opened. The bell moved gently.
Once. Then stopped.
No second chime.
No third.
The owner looked at the bell. Silas’s hand went to his toolkit. Kaostar’s claws extended.
No rain smell.
No condensation.
No voice.
The front window remained clear. The cracked table held. The owner’s jaw tightened. Then he turned his back on the bell and wrote in the notebook.
Front bell chimed once. Door closed. No answer given.
Kaostar stared.
Silas’s breath left him slowly. The owner did not look up until he finished the line.
“What?” he said.
Kaostar’s mouth opened. Closed.
Kaostar had seen soldiers fail slower tests.
Silas answered for him. “That was correct.” The owner looked at the bell again.
“I know.”
His voice was quieter now. The fear was there. Held. Not offered.
Kaostar looked toward the sign.
CLOSED FOR REPAIRS
TABLE HELD.
Ordinary chalk. Ordinary board. Ordinary warning. The kind of thing a world might ignore until it mattered.
“We return to Harrow,” Kaostar said.
Silas nodded. The owner closed the notebook.
“Door stays unlocked when safe,” he said. “Locked when not. Sign decides which.”
Kaostar looked at him.
“Do not make the sign heroic.”
“I would never burden chalk with destiny.”
Silas looked at him.
“You would.”
“I absolutely would. Not today.”
Kaostar moved toward the back door.
Stopped.
Looked once more at the cracked table. It stood where it had before. Not protected by magic. Not safe.
Warned. That was all. For today, that had to count. He opened the threshold in the alley, not inside Moonleaf.
The owner approved with a small nod that pretended not to be approval. Silas stepped through after Kaostar. Los Angeles vanished. The cave returned.
Harrow sat at the table alone. The sign ledger lay open before him. The beacon remained wrapped beneath cloth, exactly where they had left it. A second sheet rested beside the original.
Harrow had copied each line carefully. Not improving Kaostar’s handwriting. Preserving it. He looked up when they entered.
His gaze moved over Kaostar. Then Silas.
No injuries.
No pursuit.
No panic.
Only then did he ask, “Moonleaf?”
“Warned,” Kaostar said.
Silas added, “Not recruited.” Harrow nodded.
“The owner?”
“Competent,” Kaostar said, as if the word offended him.
Silas said, “Annoyingly.”
“Good,” Harrow said.
Kaostar looked at the copied sheet.
It already held one new line beneath the others:
Clicked once while Kaostar and Silas were away. No answer given.
His eyes lifted to Harrow. Harrow did not explain. He did not have to. Then the beacon clicked beneath the cloth.
Once.
No one moved.
Harrow did not look at it. He dipped the pencil again and wrote carefully beneath the last entry on the copied sheet:
Clicked once after return. No answer given.
The beacon did not click again. Harrow kept his hand steady.
~ To be continued ~
