The Talamasca archives were never truly silent. Even when the corridors stood deserted and the lamps burned low above the reading tables, there was always the quiet presence of centuries pressing against the walls.
Paper remembered. Ink remembered. Human fear, above all, possessed a remarkable habit of preserving itself in writing.
My position within the Order was an unusual one. I was neither a full initiate nor entirely external to it. The Talamasca preferred the word consultant, though the term suggested a degree of freedom that did not truly exist. My access was carefully measured and granted only when my particular skills were required.
My academic background lay in art analysis and psychoanalytic interpretation. Unexpected disciplines, perhaps, for an organisation devoted to documenting the supernatural, but remarkably useful ones. I had spent years studying how artists encoded ideology, desire and fear within visual language. The same instinct applied easily to the Order’s work.
Where others saw scattered testimonies, I often saw structure. Behaviour repeating across decades. Patterns of violence and restraint. Obsessions concealed beneath apparent coincidence. The Talamasca collected the evidence. My task was to interpret the mind behind it.
Several weeks earlier, I had been commissioned to produce a psychological profile of a classified subject. Every identifying detail had been removed, leaving only behavioural observations, fragmented witness accounts and patterns of movement gathered across several decades. At first, nothing appeared particularly unusual by Talamasca standards. Then I found the name. It sat within the middle of an otherwise meticulously redacted report, left behind through what I assumed was some minor clerical oversight.
Everyone connected to the order, knew that name, I should have ignored it. Instead, I began searching. Curiosity is perhaps the most dangerous instinct a scholar possesses. We like to pretend our training protects us from it, that methodology imposes restraint. In truth, it only refines the obsession.
The name appeared elsewhere. A marginal note in an eighteenth-century observation from Rome. A passing reference within correspondence between two agents in Venice. An annotation composed in careful academic Latin by a scholar who had clearly assumed his reader already understood exactly whom he meant. Each mention was brief, but together they formed a trail through centuries of Talamasca records. A trail that eventually led somewhere I was not authorised to go. The deeper archival branches required clearance several levels above my own. They contained the Order’s longest and most sensitive observations, files maintained across generations and never intended to circulate amongst consultants. I should have stopped there. Instead, I manipulated the permissions system until it allowed me inside.
The complete Talamasca record on Marius de Romanus was extensive. Centuries of observation. Reports written by generations of scholars who had watched him move through history with deliberate, almost unnerving restraint. There were movements across Europe, associations with artists, collectors and historians, and long disappearances followed by quiet reappearances decades later. The tone of the reports fascinated me. Other supernatural subjects were described through the aftermath they left behind: violence, hysteria, bodies, ruined households. Marius appeared differently. His presence was recorded through intellectual circles, private collections, architecture and art. He emerged not within centres of political power, but within environments devoted to beauty, scholarship and preservation. He did not merely endure history. He appeared to curate his place within it.
I copied the file and smuggled it home to study. My notes spread across the desk of my home office. Dates were mapped against one another, associations traced through centuries, contradictions examined and re-examined. What began as casual reading became analysis, then reconstruction. Certain patterns emerged repeatedly. Long cycles of withdrawal, followed by deliberate re-entry into the world. A consistent gravitation towards intellectual environments rather than social prominence. An apparent avoidance of the impulsive violence commonly associated with the beings the Talamasca observed. That absence interested me most.
Whatever Marius truly was beneath the mythology surrounding him, the reports suggested a mind governed by discipline so profound it bordered upon ritual. Every movement appeared considered. Every identity carefully constructed. Even his disappearances seemed less like retreat than acts of psychological preservation, as though he periodically removed himself from the world before it could alter him in ways he had not chosen.
And yet the control was not absolute. There were inconsistencies buried within the reports. Certain names resurfaced. Certain losses seemed to precede his longest disappearances. The Talamasca recorded events, but rarely understood the emotional architecture beneath them. I found myself increasingly interested in what the reports omitted. Why did a being capable of surviving centuries repeatedly return to human art and scholarship? Why preserve the creations of mortals whose lives must have seemed impossibly brief? Why build identities so carefully if he considered himself entirely separate from humanity? The evidence suggested contradiction. A mind apparently capable of thinking in centuries, yet still drawn towards individual people, objects and places with an intensity the observers seemed oblivious to.
By midnight I had begun writing a profile I had never been asked to produce. It started clinically. Notes on psychological restraint. Identity formation across centuries. The effects of prolonged existence upon memory, attachment and self-construction. But the document soon became something more intimate. A portrait of a man who had lived long enough to watch civilisations become ruins, yet continued to surround himself with the evidence that humanity had once created something beautiful. By the time dawn began to bleed through the curtains, I had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. The profile had grown far beyond any legitimate academic exercise. If the Talamasca discovered it, there would be questions. Not polite ones.
I encrypted the document immediately. Biometric access. External monitoring. Alerts for any attempt to open, duplicate or remove the file. Once secured, I concealed it within an isolated folder and convinced myself that the entire affair had been nothing more than scholarly indulgence.
For several days, nothing happened. Then, late one night, my phone vibrated beside the bed. The sound woke me instantly. It was not my usual notification tone, but the one assigned to the encryption system. I stared at the screen.
External duplication detected.
The file had been accessed and copied onto a remote external drive.
Worse still, the access had not come through the Talamasca network. Someone outside the Order had found it. A mortal possessing that information would be dangerous enough. The profile was not folklore or speculation. It was an analysis constructed from centuries of Talamasca observation. Anyone with the proper instincts might begin asking questions the Order had spent generations preventing people from asking.
But another possibility followed immediately. What if it had not been a mortal? A psychological profile could become a weapon in the wrong hands. It revealed patterns, motivations and vulnerabilities. I had written it with the detached curiosity of a scholar, but someone with a grievance could use it as leverage. And the subject was not some anonymous creature buried within the archives. It was Marius de Romanus.
“I am so royally fucked,” I whispered to myself in the dark.
For the next week, I barely slept. I returned to the archives each morning pretending nothing had happened, while every vibrating phone and passing colleague sent a fresh current of dread through me. I read and reread reports without absorbing them, lost track of conversations and watched the doors as though someone might enter at any moment and quietly ask what I had done. Eventually, I decided I had no choice but to confess.
I arrived early, rehearsing what I might tell my supervisor, only to stop the moment I reached my desk. A cream-coloured envelope rested upon the blotter. My name had been written across it in an elegant, deliberate hand. Beside it sat a small box. The archive was empty. None of my colleagues had arrived. The air conditioning system hadn’t even kicked on yet. I was completely alone. I opened the letter.
The writer did not threaten me. He did not accuse me of theft, trespass or extraordinary stupidity. Instead, he calmly acknowledged my interest in his history. Several of my conclusions, he wrote, had been intriguing. Others might benefit from clarification. There was something almost courteous within the phrasing, but beneath it lay the unmistakable knowledge that he had read everything. Every observation. Every interpretation. Every private conclusion I had drawn about the architecture of his mind. He wished to discuss them with me.
Near the bottom of the page was a final, politely worded remark. That I should take greater care not to lose this again. The this, being a flash drive that sat in the small box that accompanied the envelope.
“I am so royally fucked,” I said to myself.
Marius leaned back against the heavy wooden table in his private studio and closed his eyes. He removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose to soothe the ache gathering behind the cobalt blue of his gaze.
In order to maintain the illusion that he was mortal, he wore a slightly powered set of hand-tinted readers that dulled the iridescence of his preternatural vision and created just enough imperfection around his eyes to make their use seem necessary. Along with this, he maintained the time-honored tradition of smudging a mixture of ashes, blood, and, now, the occasional drop of concealer over his face and hands.
It was all it took to blend seamlessly into human society.
It did not, however, come without minor physical irritation.
There was something strangely comforting about the inconvenience. The ache behind his eyes, the slight pressure of the lenses, the necessity of pretending that his body required assistance—all of it made him feel, in some small way, more human.
This time, Edinburgh had called to him.
Six months earlier, the Conservation Studio had contacted him regarding a collection of eleven paintings scheduled for exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, alongside examples of buon, secco, and mezzo frescoes on loan from museums and private collections around the world. At least four of the paintings were in dire need of conservation, restoration, and repair before they could safely be displayed to the public.
Owen, though an expert in his field, had decided that the collection required a specialist in Italian Renaissance painting.
Marius Romano was precisely that.
A noted fresco artist and art conservationist, Marius had been living under the alias and working quietly in Genoa for as long as anyone could remember. His private studio had also become a school for particularly gifted students with a passion for the old methods of creating art—the techniques that had survived centuries only because someone, somewhere, had cared enough to teach them.
Times had changed considerably since Marius had gathered assistants and apprentices into his palazzo, drawing from Venice's seemingly endless population of boys and young men in need of structure, education, discipline, and purpose.
Yet the desire to teach had never left him.
Neither had the desire to preserve what humanity was in danger of forgetting.
He wanted to bring those ancient techniques into the modern world while saving the artworks that were already on the verge of being lost.
After countless hours of evening conversations and meetings conducted through his smartphone with Owen and the staff at the National Galleries, Marius had temporarily shuttered his business in Genoa and set out for the cultural heart of Scotland.
A month before his arrival, he had negotiated through a real estate company for the purchase of an 1860s Baronial villa called Avallon, designed by the same architect responsible for Balfour Castle. Located on Clinton Road in Edinburgh, it was ideal for the privacy he required. The property even contained a separate lodging house that had been converted into a private studio.
By the time Marius arrived, every inch of the grounds had been renovated and furnished to his specifications.
There were only a few details he had insisted on choosing personally.
The sarcophagus, purchased from an antiques dealer and installed in the lower storage cellar of the estate in case he required emergency shelter from the day.
Another private studio, this one closer to the National Gallery and The Conservation Studio.
And, of course, the Aston Martin Vantage coupe, finished in precisely the same shade of blue as his eyes, which he used to travel between them.
For the moment, however, Marius was resting in his studio near the National Gallery.
His assistants had left only moments ago, and the silence that followed their departure seemed to envelop the entire space. Around him, Renaissance paintings rested upon easels in various stages of restoration, their damaged surfaces emerging slowly from centuries of neglect beneath the careful hands of conservators.
The studio was deliberately kept dark, protecting the fragile pigments from unnecessary exposure to light.
His mark on Edinburgh's artistic culture was not the only one present in the city.
He was well aware that Edinburgh housed a Talamascan archive and satellite motherhouse only a few meters from the museum and university. More importantly, his various electronic methods of keeping tabs on the sometimes meddlesome organization had recently alerted him to something that piqued his interest.
Someone had been digging around in the restricted archives.
Nothing contained within the Talamasca could truly surprise Marius. The organization had been, in essence, founded by his maker, Teshkamen, for the very purpose of observing him.
He looked back fondly on his friend, Raymond Gallant, and his brief tenure with the Lorwich Motherhouse.
Over the centuries, the Talamasca had accumulated extensive documentation on Marius: his bloodline, his associates, his movements, and even many of the works he had created during his years in Venice and beyond.
What surprised him was the renewed interest.
More specifically, the sudden attention of a contracted associate working here in Edinburgh.
He slowly lowered the hand holding his glasses, letting them dangle from his fingers while his other hand flattened over the dried marks of paint on the table.
The renewed interest and probing into his many lives and his history, even as he was physically present in the city, could not be mere coincidence.
This Rowan girl had written a full profile on him.
What had started as purely neutral observations had shifted into something far more personal—a curious, almost tender portrait of who he was and how he had lived.
A soft smile curved the edges of his wide lips.
She was also due any moment for a visit.
He had made no secret of his current location. In his letter, he had jotted his studio address beside the warning at the bottom of the parchment. If the Talamasca had been unaware of his proximity before, they were certainly aware of it now, assuming Rowan was being watched as carefully as he suspected.
The gift of the flash drive had been additional proof that it was truly he who had accessed her file.
They would take the letter into their archives as well.
Another piece of evidence.
Another fragment of Marius de Romanus to be preserved for posterity.
And this mortal woman, who had begun her investigation from the safe, distant fringes of the Talamasca's attention, would soon find herself thrust into its very center.
Perhaps she had no idea what she had just uncovered.
Perhaps that was the most interesting part.
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