Asylum: Veil of Death
First Draft (edited) of Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE
They say memory is a strange thing. It distorts, softens, rewrites itself with every recollection, turning sharp edges into ghosts of things that once were. But I remember that moment with the clarity of an oiled blade catching a spark of light. I can smell the stale air of my room, feel the grit of charcoal under my nails. The sun in its descent cast long, creeping shadows over the glass. As if the trees were reaching out with gnarled fingers to grab hold of my window. Shadows danced and swayed in red and orange light, moving like a thief preparing to strike.
I was in my dorm room, sitting at my easel, creating something special. The final image, an accumulation of my learned skills channeled into a collection of my tormented desires. I peered again outside, past the white birch trees, and across the manicured grass to Holmes Dining Hall where a woman far more significant fueled my concentration.
The coal cut a thick line in the parchment paper, overlaying my previous works. I’d convinced myself it was love, but Samael knew the truth. I admired the black lines bathed in amber sunlight hanging before me. It was nearly complete. The warm paper consumed my crafted lines and shaded curves—Daisy Nixon’s face had been drawn from memory, from obsession, and now completed while she conversed outside the dining hall. Her existence mingled with a deeper desire that I dared not explore.
I smudged the shadowing beneath her lips, giving them an organic depth, a whisper of parted breath. It had to be perfect. It needed to feel real.
Daisy, her face a model of soft lines and robust cheeks. Her hair needed to flash with hints of red fire from the sunlight, giving her an allure of danger and ferocity. I stole another admiration through the tinted panes of glass. She sat with perfect posture, exuding confidence and grace, while Leah Hamilton, a pale ghost, tilted toward her. Their laughter echoed across the void of my self-doubt and insecurity which cursed my social life for years.
Samael stirred inside my head, his voice a dark slither against the walls of my mind. ‘Too many variables,’ he whispered, a reminder that I never was alone with my own thoughts.
I ignored him.
‘This spell you’ve been crafting is twisted even for your perverted mind.’
“I’m not casting a spell,” I muttered under my breath. “I’m experimenting with some ideas to see how they might play out if I set it in motion.”
Samael didn’t laugh, not exactly, but I could feel the amusement curling at the edges of his presence. ‘Didn’t you learn anything from your last ‘experiment’?’
I examined the picture.
I had learned. My last attempt may have been rushed, uncontrolled. A miscalculation of timing that resulted in the wrong reaction. This time, it would be different. I had mapped it all out, adjusted the elements, controlled the pieces. This time, she would notice me. We would exchange our first kiss.
It had to work.
My attention was forced again outside the window to drink in her beauty. I admired Daisy as she tucked a strand of that deep auburn hair behind her ear, oblivious to the fact that somewhere, not too far away, fate would start turning the gears in our direction. I laid my hand against the drawing, closed my eyes, and imagined the moments ahead. The situation. The correct arrangement of my previous works laid beneath my palm, our path toward romance. I sifted my intentions through Samael’s essence. His magic shifted the world’s perception of our reality into a gift he returned to me.
I traced a delicate symbol into the air, a gathering of energy beneath my fingers, a shimmer of something unseen. Samael was a conduit, pulling memories and emotions like threads of silk from the layers of charcoal smudged parchment. He weaved my collection into a tapestry of longing and desire. Every image and feeling I offered to him fed the sigil I drew in the air. It grew brighter, like the sun breaking over a dew-covered field. The last threads of my past were spun into magic. I felt a surge of anticipation to release it into the atmosphere.
‘You mean to turn her into your whore,’ Samael mocked me, exposing the truth of my impatience. ‘Give me this lustful meal you’ve had me create.’
My pulse quickened. My mouth felt dry. I had done it, created a dark desire, a wrongness hidden within lust.
I let the spell simmer in limbo. Listening to it speak, taunt me with my urges while it probed inside my fragile virtue.
‘You’ll possess only her body and flesh.’
“No, she will love me.”
‘Patience, Marcus, grant me this festering beast to swallow. I know her soul.’
I felt the sigil’s energy. It pulsed with the chaos of a rabid tiger set loose in a village populated by tasty fat peasants. Samael’s observation was right. He had been my shadowy companion since I was in Yvonne’s womb. He acted as both father and mother while Victor and she abandoned me to private boarding schools and this university. They discarded me while treasuring my younger brother Chadwick.
Samael often betrayed their thoughts to me. He and my uncle wished for me to inherit the Veil of Death from my mother. Even though she distanced me from herself. They conspired together to train me in the duty of my family’s heritage as a Keeper of the Fallen. My birthright and position to claim a seat on the Council of Four.
It was my freshman year when I noticed Daisy.
Samael agreed she had a familiar soul and promised to keep her our secret. He would not divulge to Yvonne, my uncle, nor Chadwick her influence over me. He understood the forbidden fruit, the temptation, and eventually the judgement of my desire for her. He would share tales of his wife, Lilith, and how their love doomed him to be shackled inside our family bloodline.
I found myself torn between the relentless pull of my desires and the need to protect my vulnerable heart. I decided to dissolve the spell’s influence and send it raging back to Samael for his consumption and not risk the discovery of my obsession.
A loud knock shattered the moment. It broke my concentration like a rock smashing through glass, forcing me to turn and face the intrusion at my door.
My heart ripped open. Another pounding knock, harder this time.
I felt the symbol’s magic escape from my grasp.
“Shit,” I cursed, stood, and crossed the room. The second I opened the door, I knew.
Gabriel.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He stood in the hallway like a bad omen dressed in a black suit. His left eye a hollow, glossy orb, like a dark pearl plucked from the ocean's depths and lodged in his socket like a twisted offering. In its reflection, I saw myself, warped and distorted, a reminder of my own fractured existence. He held a manilla envelope, a package, containing my next training manual. A series of graphic novels created by my uncle to instruct me on the way of a Keeper.
“I was instructed by the Council of Four to oversee a request for a resident wishing a transfer into your room,” he stated, pressing the envelope firmly against my chest. “Joseph MoonWater also tasked me with the delivery of his latest publication, Asylum, issue 89,”
I swallowed.
“Roommate? What kind of a lunatic would want to share a room with me?”
Gabriel’s eye flickered from me toward the easel, the broken charcoal, and the layers of pictures. His expression didn’t change, but something in his posture shifted. He knew.
“What have you done?” he asked.
I glanced behind me to the drawing. The sigil had burned a tan mark into the upper left corner of the parchment. Then outside, across the quad, I saw Daisy's eyes wide as she scanned the windows of my dormitory, her hair whipped around her face in the wind. She rubbed at her chest as if feeling the impalement of my spear.
"Nothing," I lied. If he knew I’d constructed a spell on my own, with Samael’s guidance, he may inform the council. "It's just a drawing. I was practicing."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed as his gaze pierced through my feeble attempt at deception. He stepped into the room uninvited, his presence filling the space with an oppressive weight. I could feel Samael stirring again, agitated by Gabriel's intrusion.
"You know better than to lie to me," Gabriel said, his voice low and dangerous. He moved towards the easel, and I felt a surge of panic rise in my chest.
"Wait!" I exclaimed, but it was too late. Gabriel's hand brushed against the parchment, and I saw him flinch as if struck by an electric current. His eyes widened, and for a moment, I saw amusement flicker across his face.
"Marcus," he said with a knowing grin. "Your uncle would be proud.”
Gabriel's words caught me off guard. I had expected anger, disappointment, perhaps even a threat of punishment. Instead, his eyes gleamed with a pride that made my skin crawl.
He may be an ally.
"You've been holding out on us," he said, flipping the paper upward to examine my previous creations. “Open the envelope. It appears you're already ahead of the curve.”
I tore open the envelope and held the graphic novel in my hands. The cover art seemed to shimmer, the intricate details of Asylum's painted white face morphed subtly as I tilted it in the light, revealing black runes etched in his skin.
I thumbed through the pages and stopped at a section entitled "Emotional Variables in the Manifestation of Reality." The drawing was complex, peppered with diagrams and arcane symbols that made my head spin. Everything hidden within the comic was about an arcane necromancer named Asylum.
Joseph MoonWater’s cryptic name for Samael.
"This quarter's focus is on adjusting for emotional variables when creating a new reality," Gabriel explained, his voice taking on the tone of a lecturer. "It's quite advanced stuff, really. Your uncle struggled with keeping the symbol positioning correct in this issue.”
"So," Gabriel drawled, peering out the window with an air of casual amusement, "you thought you'd skip ahead and craft a little love spell? How adolescent." His lips curled into a smirk that made me burn with embarrassment.
"It's not—" I began, joining Gabriel at the window as he cut me off with a wave of his hand.
"Spare me the excuses, Marcus. We both know what you’re trying to do." He gestured back toward the portrait while we watched Daisy settle back into her conversation with Leah. “You’re powerful and curious about sex. My concern is how much of this is you and how much is Samael.”