To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 334

Chapter 334: SOS 1

CIAN

I opened the door to my study and shut it behind me with enough force that the lock caught on its own. The click was quiet but just as final. I stood there for a second, my hand still on the brass handle, letting the silence of the room settle over me like a second skin.

Then I moved.

The desk was where it always was. Heavy oak, dark enough to swallow light, positioned at an angle that gave me a view of both the door and the window. I had sat behind it a thousand times. I had signed documents there. Made decisions that changed lives. But today I wasn’t interested in paperwork.

I pulled the drawer open. The middle one, second from the left. The wood slid smooth and silent on its tracks. Inside were the usual things. Pens. A letter opener I never used. A few folded documents I hadn’t gotten around to filing. And beneath all of that, tucked into the corner where no one would think to look twice, was a small panel built flush into the bottom of the drawer.

I pressed my thumb against it.

It warmed under my touch. Then it clicked. A soft mechanical sound, barely audible, and the panel lifted. Beneath it was a compartment. Narrow but deep and just wide enough for what I had put there.

Madeline’s phone was there.

I picked it up. The screen was dark and cold in my hand. I slipped it into my pocket without looking at it. Then I reached for the pin I kept on the inside lip of the drawer. Small thing. Silver. Sharp enough to do what I needed it to do.

I pressed the tip into my palm and dragged it across the skin just hard enough to break through. The pain was bright and immediate but I didn’t flinch. Blood welled up in the cut, a thin line of red that pooled in the center of my hand before it started to drip.

I closed the drawer. The glass panel sealed itself again with another soft click.

I walked toward the bookshelf on the far wall. It was tall. Floor to ceiling. Filled with books I had read and books I never would. The spines were leather and cloth and some were so old the titles had faded into illegibility. But I wasn’t looking for a book.

I stopped in front of the third shelf from the bottom. Right where the corner met the wall. There was a spot there. No mark. No indication. Just a place where the wood was slightly smoother than the rest. I pressed my bleeding palm flat against it.

The blood soaked into the wall.

It practically drank it. The red spread from where my hand touched, crawling outward in thin tendrils that began to spin. They moved with purpose, curling and intersecting, forming shapes that looked almost like letters but weren’t. Runes. Old ones. The kind that didn’t belong to any written language I had ever studied but that I understood all the same because they were part of this estate.

The patterns glowed faint and red. Then they pulsed once. Then twice.

The wall shimmered.

It didn’t open. It didn’t slide or swing or fold. It just changed. It was solid one moment. Translucent the next. I could see through it now. I could see the darkness on the other side, the beginning of a staircase that led down into the earth beneath Skollrend.

I stepped forward.

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