Crimson Inquiry Rite

The circle thrummed like a bronze bell in a cavern, though no metal rang here—only shadows coiling around four figures bent toward a question carved in raw pigment. Someone had traced the words with obsessive certainty, each letter drinking the dim glow like embers underwater. Their robes hushed against stone, their gestures choreographed between reverence and rebuke: one knife catching the residue of some earlier devotion, another pair of hands clawing at unseen choirs above. Amid their silence, blood’s scent fused with an imagined hum, as though iron could sing when marrow surrendered. Local murmurs long warned: “To ask in silence is to summon the hollow.” Yet this gathering chose the bolder road, shaping absence into an invocation. The phrase on the floor pulsed louder than any oath—Where Vojta?—as if the ground itself yearned through them. Nothing in their posture promised an answer. He remains an echo in the deepest hinge of the door, slipping further each time light attempts to find him.