Harvest of Shadows, Part 3

October 8th begins with a visit to Windgates Academy, Pumpkin's old school...

Author’s Note: I’m going to post the latest entries by day of occurrence since I’m writing more for each of these sections. One of the latest parts I wrote was over 8k words, so I’m going to break that up a bit!

October 8th

The library of Windgates Academy smelled like it always had—old paper, wood polish, and faint traces of lavender, a calming spell gone stale. It was the sort of place that should have felt like a second home to me after years spent studying in its hushed halls, but it never had. The space didn’t breathe; it loomed. The shelves were too high, the books too heavy with secrets that whispered to those who dared to touch their spines. Yet here I was, surrounded by familiar unease, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Restricted Wing, a mountain of crumbling files and records teetering around me.

The overhead magelights buzzed faintly, casting a pale blue glow across my spread-out notes. My phone lay discarded beside me, its screen showing a clock that mocked me: 3:47 a.m. For a moment, I closed my eyes and let my head fall into my hands. Three days without sleep. That wasn’t a personal record, but my body didn’t care about records. It cared about the fog settling behind my eyes, the tremor in my fingers every time I wrote a note.

“Pumpkin.”

I jumped, scattering papers in all directions, and turned sharply toward the familiar voice. Donovan stood in the doorway of the Restricted Wing, his tall frame leaning heavily on his cane. He looked exhausted, but that didn’t stop the faint frown tugging at the edges of his mouth.

“You’ve been here all night again,” he said, his tone somewhere between concern and exasperation.

“I’m fine,” I replied, though my voice cracked at the edges. I waved him off and started gathering my notes back into some semblance of order. “I’m close, Donovan. I know it. I can feel it.”

“You’ve been saying that for days.” He stepped inside, his cane tapping softly against the polished floor as he approached. “And you look like a ghost. When was the last time you ate?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off before I could lie.

“And coffee doesn’t count.”

I sighed, leaning back against the nearest shelf. “I’ll eat when I’m done. This is important.”

“It’s always important.” He knelt beside me with some difficulty, his movements stiff but deliberate. Donovan wasn’t young anymore, and the strain showed in the lines of his face and the silver creeping into his beard. He didn’t look at my notes; he looked at me. “Pumpkin, I know that look. You’re running yourself into the ground again.”

“I don’t have time to stop.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, and guilt twisted in my stomach when I saw the flicker of hurt in his eyes. “I mean… I’ll rest when I figure this out, okay? I promise.”

He sighed and reached out, placing a warm hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to do this alone, you know. Let me help you.”

I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t help, not really. That the things I saw through my Salemsight weren’t just mine to carry—they were mine to endure. But that would have been cruel, and Donovan didn’t deserve cruelty. So I nodded, forcing a small smile.

“I know.”

Satisfied, if not entirely convinced, he rose to his feet with a groan and leaned on his cane. “Eat something before you collapse, Pumpkin. That’s an order.”

I saluted half-heartedly as he left, and the door swung shut behind him. The silence that followed was oppressive, but it was familiar. I let it settle over me like a too-heavy blanket as I returned to the files.

The first item I reached for was a silver locket, tarnished but warm to the touch. It had belonged to the second victim, the fortune-teller Maribel Rosso. Closing my eyes, I held it tightly in both hands and let the world around me slip away. The Salemsight opened before me like a door swinging wide.

Shadows stretched across my mind’s eye, curling and shifting in strange, serpentine shapes. I could feel the locket’s memories pressing against me, faint and broken, as if they didn’t want to be seen. But I pushed through the haze, focusing until the fragments sharpened.

Maribel had been sitting at her table, shuffling a deck of cards. The room was dim, lit by flickering candles. She’d paused suddenly, her breath hitching, her eyes snapping toward something unseen beyond the veil of light. Then came the whispers—soft, almost melodic, threading through the air like smoke.

“The Architect…”

The voice was distant, distorted, but unmistakable. I let the name settle in my chest like a stone before the vision fractured and faded. The locket went cold in my hands, and I dropped it back onto the table, my breaths shallow and quick.

“The Architect,” I whispered aloud, the name tasting like iron on my tongue.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it tonight. My notes were littered with scraps of connections, half-formed ideas about a figure who had been expelled from the Magus Council decades ago. A practitioner of blood-magic—someone who’d crossed too many lines and paid the price for it.

My hands moved almost on their own as I shuffled through the files, pulling out an old parchment stamped with the Council’s seal. The edges were singed, as though someone had tried to burn it before changing their mind. It detailed the expulsion of a Sorciere known only as the Architect, a name that had been stripped from the records.

“The Architect is responsible for experimentation and rituals deemed… abhorrent…” I read aloud, my voice barely above a whisper. The rest of the document was heavily redacted, entire paragraphs blacked out by enchanted ink.

My head throbbed, and I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to steady my thoughts. This wasn’t just some expelled Sorciere hiding in the shadows. The Architect had been planning something for decades, something that tied together every victim in a tangled, bloody web.

And I was only just starting to see its shape.

I glanced at the locket again, then at the other items scattered across the table. Each one belonged to someone who had died horribly, their lives cut short for reasons I still didn’t fully understand. But now, with the Architect’s name lingering like a curse, the pieces started clicking into place.

The victims weren’t random. They were chosen.

I stared down at the files, the weight of it all pressing against my ribs until it felt hard to breathe. Donovan was right—I was running myself into the ground. But how could I stop now, knowing what I did? How could I rest when the Architect was out there, and Halloween was creeping closer with every passing hour?

I grabbed my pen and started writing furiously, sketching connections, timelines, and patterns across the pages of my notebook. My mind raced, the exhaustion melting away in the face of adrenaline.

The Architect’s expulsion. The whispers in the locket’s memories. The blood-magic.

Three decades of silence, and now, suddenly, a string of murders all tied to the arcane. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was a ritual.

And I had a feeling that whatever the Architect was building, it wasn’t finished yet.