Crowley hadn't exactly convinced her. Not with logic, anyway.
He'd said something about a ruin tied to the history of the manuscript. About a monk who set himself on fire. About echoes of time. Mallory had stared at him for a long moment, weighing skepticism against the memory of the Codex breathing beneath her fingertips, but he'd said all the right things to lure her inner book nerd to follow him.
She shouldn't have taken it. The Codex belonged to her client, and even if he was secretive and shady, he had paid for her expertise, not her theft. But Crowley had shown her a second manuscript - a duplicate so convincing it made her stomach flip. Same stitching. Same worn edges. Same cover sigil pressed in gold and blood-dark ink.
"They'll never know it left," he said.
That part made her uneasy.
Crowley was still a mystery. Charming, strange, and unsettling in a way she couldn't quite pin down. Mallory didn't trust him - not really. But something in his voice, when he talked about the Codex told her he wasn't lying. At least, not about this.
But the real reason she went? The way the Codex had exhaled. The way the name etched into its vellum still flickered behind her eyes.
She needed to know what she was holding and what she had been asked to examine.
The drive took them almost two hours, mostly in silence. Crowley hated motorways and stuck to back roads. Mallory didn't complain. She sat with her coat zipped high and a notebook balanced on her knee, flipping through Latin glyph charts like it was bedtime reading.
By the time they arrived, the sun was bleeding out behind the trees. The woods here were dense - oak and ash and something older. The monastery appeared only after the last turn, its roofline jagged against the horizon, walls half-collapsed, the bell tower leaning like it regretted everything.
Mallory climbed out of the car, boots crunching on gravel and frostbitten leaves. Her breath plumed in the cold. She shoved her gloved hands into her coat pockets and stared at the ruin.
"This place looks... wrong," she said quietly.
"Good," Crowley muttered, slamming the driver's door. "That means we're in the right spot."
He led her through the rusted gate, boots scuffing against ancient flagstones, now cracked and overgrown. The main doors of the monastery had long since rotted away. Inside was a shell of broken pews, scorched frescoes, and moss. The air was still - too still, like it was listening.
Mallory paused just over the threshold.
Crowley glanced back. "You alright?"
"I don't like the way this place feels."
"That's not your fault. It doesn't want to be remembered."
He produced a small, black glass vial from his coat. The liquid inside shimmered strangely.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Something nasty," Crowley said. "In case we run into something nastier."
Mallory scanned the walls, eyes sharp. "This place wasn't abandoned naturally."
"No," Crowley agreed. "There was a sealing. Not done well." He gestured to a half-buried altar stone. "Another group tried opening the Codex, back in the 1600s, used this place. They got as far as the invocation. Then it turned on them."
She walked slowly to the altar, crouching beside the stone. There were marks on it - not carved, but scorched into the rock. Symbols layered over one another until they tangled into near-madness.
"I've seen some of these," she murmured. "In the Codex. But they weren't this distorted."
"They weren't written under possession, either."
Mallory looked up. "Were they trying to… control it, or something?"
Crowley crouched beside her. "Human instinct. You find something powerful, you try to harness it." He looked at her, the edge of his sunglasses catching a faint sliver of light. "You're not thinking about doing that, are you?"
She didn't rise to the bait. "I don't think I'd know how to even if I wanted to. But I do want to understand it."
Crowley's mouth twisted. "The ones who opened it here wanted that, too."
A sound echoed in the far end of the ruin. Soft. A whisper. Not the wind.
Mallory turned sharply. "Did you hear-?"
"Yes."
Crowley rose in one smooth movement, coat swinging. "Don't follow it."
"What is it?"
"This place is echoing memory. And it remembers… being afraid."
They moved deeper into the ruin, into a chapel that had collapsed in on itself. Broken stained glass littered the floor like gemstone confetti. A single piece of wall remained upright, bearing a faded mural of a robed man writing in gold-leaf ink. His face had been scratched out.
Mallory stared at it.
"Gregor Ansel," Crowley explained. "The first person to copy the Codex. Claimed he was receiving divine dictation. The monks here followed him. Until the visions started." He walked around the mural. "The records say he lit himself on fire. Smiling."
Mallory didn't answer. She was looking at something near the floor, where the paint had flaked away to reveal a smaller image, hidden beneath. A woman, face pale, eyes empty. Hands clasped around something blurred. Something burning.
Crowley's voice was low. "Do you see her?"
Mallory nodded slowly. "She's in the Codex too. On the last page, I think."
He took a step toward her, eyes narrowing. "That's not just a witness. That's the seal."
Mallory frowned. "What does that mean?"
Crowley's expression darkened. "It means we need to leave."
The air dropped. A pressure settled. The mural creaked, the stone shifting as if it were breathing. The woman's burned hands seemed to pulse under Mallory's gaze.
Crowley grabbed her wrist - not rough, but urgent. "Now!"
Mallory snapped out of it, stumbling back as the mural groaned and cracked.
They fled the chapel as part of the wall collapsed behind them, throwing up dust and ash like breath exhaled too late.
Back in the car, Mallory sat with her hands curled in her lap. She hadn't spoken since they left the ruin. But her silence wasn't empty. It pulsed.
She wasn't sure what disturbed her more-the crumbling monastery, or the fact that she hadn't wanted to leave it. It wasn't belief. Not yet. But something about that mural…
And Crowley. She still didn't trust him - not entirely. There was something theatrical about him. Too smooth, too sharp, like he was always three sentences ahead. But for all that, when the ruin started to turn, he hadn't just run. He'd grabbed her first.
She turned to him, voice low. "I know this sounds ridiculous, but it felt like the woman in the mural… saw me."
Crowley's jaw clenched. "Yeah. I thought she might."
Mallory swallowed. "What is she?"
Crowley put the car in gear. "We're going to find out."