Wingheart: Luminous Rock

Chapter 1: MorningStar

The air here was dank and musty, like that of a long-abandoned cellar. The basement was the one part of the bookshop that was rarely ever cleaned. Magnus had many times offered to do the task, but his brother was firm to refuse, insisting that he'd take care of it eventually. It was apparent, however, that Drake's workload prevented him from doing a thorough job. In hopeless disarray, books and crates were stacked about the basement floor, matted with dust. A beige rug mottled with inerasable filth was sprawled over the floor. There was no light aside from the few pale rays that managed to penetrate the grimy slits of the windows high up on the wall, and after sundown, it quickly grew dark here.

With the unwieldy crate obstructing his view, Magnus placed his step too far over a stair and stumbled. His heart lurched as he toppled forward and saw the hardwood floor tilt up to meet him. He lost his grip of the crate, which hurtled to the ground, casting its books in twenty directions.

Magnus groaned from the pain of his impact. He pulled himself to his knees and began to collect the books that lay scattered from the foot of the stairs all the way to the farthest ends of the room. After gathering the lot, he took count; he was one book short. Magnus recounted, feeling certain he had scoured the entire basement. Of course, he could have easily overlooked something in such dim light. He had always disagreed with his brother over his refusal to install a lamp in the room. Drake had insisted that because the basement was rarely used, it wasn't worth spending the money—although a desk lamp or two would hardly cost a fortune.

The missing book was nowhere to be found. Magnus snatched a flashlight from one of the decrepit wooden shelves, flicked on its switch, and continued his search. He was close to giving up when the flashlight's beam caught a mysterious bulk underneath one of the shelving units. He lowered his head to the floorboards and aimed his light beneath the unit—there, the book lay.

Magnus set aside the flashlight and blindly reached for the book. To his surprise, his fingertips made contact with ice-cold metal. He flinched, leading his hand to collide with another, duller object—the book, which he quickly retrieved and returned to the box with the others. He reached for the flashlight again.

He flooded the light under the unit to examine the cold metal. On closer inspection, this nook was surprisingly clean for an area of a room that saw so little attention. A thin metal rod winked at him from the base of the wall; it looked as if it had been tossed there quite like the book.

Magnus tried to drag the rod out from under the shelves, but was only able to extract it halfway, as if it were snagged. With greater force, he managed to tug it free. It was, in fact, a short, blunt steel rod; stranger yet, it was welded to a length of heavy chain that appeared to run under the shelving and along into the floor. When Magnus attempted to haul out the entire length of the chain, something chittered beneath the basement rug—a sound like that of a key being turned in a lock.

Magnus lowered the rod and watched it mysteriously retract to its original position under the shelf with a steely clicking noise. Intrigued, he peeled back the rim of the rug to bare the hardwood slats beneath. Magnus' heart thudded into the back of his chest; a trapdoor had opened in the floor where the carpet once was, its fallen wood panel suspended from a hinge on its lip. A ladder was nailed to the rim of the opening, ushering the way into a pitch-dark shaft.

Magnus fell into a shocked stupor. This was the stuff of fiction—a trapdoor concealed so inconspicuously in the basement of his own brother's bookshop. Though he knew he ought to wait for Drake to return before exploring the chamber beyond, he could not resist the lure of his curiosity.

He seized the flashlight, flicked it on, and tilted its head into the hole. Nothing more could be seen than the dull shine of hardwood about seven feet below. With a clammy grip and a hammering heart, he lowered himself into the shaft and descended the coarse wooden ladder. The room above faded while the gloom below consumed him. As he arrived at the bottom of the shaft, he swept up his light.