Something Red

LINKS & SYMPTOMS

The day began too quiet.

Belmorra was never loud — just steady. The creak of wooden carts. The grind of pickaxes echoing from the deepshaft mines. Children’s voices between crumbling alleyways. But today… the stillness felt stitched in. Heavy. Like someone had dragged a blanket over the sky.

The boy noticed it before his eyes were fully open.

He blinked against the pale morning light leaking through cracks in the walls of his loft. Dust floated in long ribbons, unmoving, even in the breeze. He sat up, rubbing sleep from his face.

Then he heard it.

A sound — faint, distant, sharp.

Ding.

Just once. Not metallic. Not like a bell. Not really.

But it rang.

He walked to the window.

Nothing. Same cracked rooftops. Same smoke spiraling from the lower furnaces. Same distant outline of the Link Guard watchtower, sitting far beyond the edge of town like a dead tooth.

But still — the sound lingered in his skull.

⸻

Outside, the world wore grey.

No rain. No wind. Just a colorless morning, stretched thin over cobblestone and soot. The boy walked toward the southern square, past empty stalls and shuttered windows. Even the cats that usually lounged near the bakery were gone.

That’s when he saw it.

A thread of red.

It fluttered against the side of the old notice post. Just a scrap of cloth — long, torn, nailed into the wood at an angle. Its edges were frayed, but the red was rich and warm, like fresh blood.

Nobody else looked at it.

A man walked past with a coal bucket, didn’t glance up. A girl skipped near the post, didn’t pause. A Link Guard crossed the square, armor clinking, and didn’t turn his head.

Only the boy saw the red.

He stepped closer.

The cloth pulsed. Or maybe it breathed. There was no wind, and yet… it moved.

He reached out to touch it.

But as soon as his fingers got close — ding.

The sound again.

Behind his ribs this time.

He jerked his hand away. The red cloth stilled.

⸻

That night, the boy didn’t sleep.

Every time he closed his eyes, the bell rang — sometimes once, sometimes twice. And not with sound, but in sensation. Like someone tapping the inside of his skull with a fingertip made of glass.

He rose near midnight and left the house.

Belmorra at night was a different creature. The streets had teeth. Shadows from broken chimneys twisted like arms across rooftops. But he felt pulled — not by fear, but curiosity. Like a thread was wrapped around his spine and drawing him forward.

He followed it down into the mining zone.

The shafts had long been sealed since the cave-in two years ago, but the air still smelled of ash and old water. He stepped over fallen beams and shattered rails, stopping when he reached the collapse.

And there — above the wreckage — it hung.

A red bell.

Small. Iron. Hanging from nothing.

It rotated slightly in the stillness.

His breath caught. His legs locked. He had no memory of walking here, no sense of how he’d found it. He only knew.

It was the same red.

The bell didn’t swing. It shimmered — not physically, but in idea. Like it was hovering between being real and remembered.

The boy blinked.

The bell was gone.

And something else was there instead.

⸻

A shape — tall, human-shaped, but bent wrong. Arms too long. Shoulders too high. Wrapped in what looked like parchment and ash. No eyes. No face. But it turned toward him.

And smiled.

Not with a mouth. But with presence.

The boy stumbled backward. His foot slipped on gravel. He caught himself on the edge of the minecart rail.

The shape didn’t move.

Instead, it raised a single hand.

In it — a page. Blank. At first.

But as the boy stared, words wrote themselves:

“Red before the Gate.

Red before the Fall.”

The paper burned in silence.

And the shape vanished.

⸻

Across the ocean, in a city not marked on any map, a man in silver robes stood before an enormous sphere of light.

The Link Ministry’s High Monitor narrowed his eyes.

“Mark it,” he said. “Red Event confirmed.”

Clerks scrambled. Machines whispered. Glyphs rotated above their heads like halos of ink and fire.

From the side, a voice rasped:

“Unauthorized proximity… Gate X-F.”

The man turned. “Where?”

The reply came without hesitation.

“Belmorra.”

He nodded. “Dispatch the Roxiors.”

Someone near the wall hesitated. “But—sir—the last Roxior sent to Symptom F never returned.”

The man didn’t blink.

“It’s beginning again,” he said. “This time, we’ll end it early.”

⸻

The boy didn’t tell anyone.

He walked home in the dead hush of 3 a.m., pulse still loud in his throat. No one was awake. No one had seen the bell. No one would believe him.

But he knew what he saw.

He didn’t sleep that night either.

Because every time he blinked, he saw the shape’s smile.

⸻

And far beneath Belmorra, beyond the veins of old stone and coal…

…the Gate stirred.

And behind it — watching — something with a red essence opened its eyes.

Eyes..that were purple.

Next chapter coming on 4th July!