*
Of Untold Tongues And Unmade Masks
*

Something flickered—no, shifted—in Callum’s eyes, like a veil pulled tight for just a second too long. His smile remained, warm and easy, but there was something in the curl of his lips, in the shine of his gaze, that made Rostin’s chest clench with unease. He could have sworn—just for a moment—that Callum’s face was wearing the wrong emotion, like a mask fitted too snugly.

But then the moment passed, smoothed over by Callum’s calm voice as he stepped further into the room.
“The register, mate,” he said casually. “Your address was there in the register.”

Rostin blinked. Right. The university register.

At Cambridge, the student registry maintained essential information—academic records, enrolled modules, tutor details, and yes, addresses. Meant for emergencies and departmental correspondence, it was usually off-limits to students unless a tutor or administrator shared it directly. However, students could make a special request for privacy—shielding their personal information from general access. Rostin had done that. Or at least, he thought he had. The memory felt murky now, like a chalk line blurred by rain.

He didn't question Callum just yet. Instead, he closed the door behind him, quiet but deliberate, eyes still on the other boy as he padded into the living room. Callum was already seated on the edge of the old velvet couch, elbows on knees, fingers loosely clasped together, as if trying not to look too comfortable.

Rostin moved to the open kitchen—a luxury corner lined with deep porcelain shelves and glass utensils—and began preparing tea with practiced movements. His fingers trembled only slightly as he pulled down a ceramic tin, the one Xenelov had always ignored with a scoff about “boiled leaf water.”

As the kettle hissed, he arranged a few slightly stale biscuits on a porcelain plate. The book—Journey of Zefress—still clung to his side, tucked under his arm like a limb he couldn’t quite part with. He returned to the living room, placed the plate on the low table between them, and then finally lowered himself onto the armchair opposite Callum. The book now rested on his lap, his right hand lying possessively over it. In his left hand, he held his cup.

Steam curled in the air between them.

Callum reached for his tea, sipped, then exhaled. “How are you now?” he asked, voice gentle but laced with intent.

Rostin looked up at him, eyes shadowed and slightly sunken, as if he hadn’t slept in days. His lips parted slowly. “Yeah. I am fine,” he murmured, though his voice lacked conviction.

He watched Callum over the rim of his cup, his knuckles white on the book. Fine. That was the word people used when they were anything but. His heart still thundered with questions—about Emma, about Xenelov, about erased pages and rewritten fates.

But for now, he sipped tea, the heat grounding him even as a chill pooled in his spine.
And across from him, Callum smiled. And the echo of that smile felt like a ripple from something not quite human.

The silence in the room was the sort that gnawed—unseen, but relentless. It coiled between them like a thing with teeth. The warm light of the room seemed to flicker, casting long, crawling shadows over the edges of Callum’s face, making his smile look carved—like it was stitched onto his skin rather than born from any true feeling.

Rostin cleared his throat. The sound, dry and meek, barely disturbed the air. Still, it echoed too loud in his ears. He had to speak. The weight of the unspoken sat like a stone in his chest. This was too strange, too awkward—and something about Callum’s presence, tonight of all nights, gnawed at the edges of his nerves.

Carefully, Rostin lowered his cup onto the table with a clink. But the words had not yet found him when Callum’s voice cut through the moment like a blade through silk.

“Rostin Winford,” Callum said, tilting his head slightly, that familiar schoolboy charm now oddly theatrical. He still held his teacup, one hand wrapped gently around it, the other folded across his chest as if in a gesture of refined scrutiny. “This place is amazing. You live quite lavishly. I heard your father is a business tycoon.”

The words struck strange. Cold. Not the sort of thing Callum would say in jest, nor in compliment. Rostin’s brows knit, and he swallowed.

“Uh… Callum?” he ventured cautiously. “We’ve been friends for a while now…” He trailed off, eyes scanning Callum’s expression for any flicker of the boy he knew. Why was he speaking like this—so distantly, like a stranger wearing his friend's face?

Rostin rose slowly to his feet, book clutched tightly to his chest as if its pages could offer some strange form of protection.

Callum, still seated, only smiled wider. “Rest easy, mate,” he said, eyes never blinking. “Just confirming the facts.”

Rostin’s knuckles whitened around the leather spine. “I… don’t think you need to do that…” he replied, voice barely above a murmur. His legs felt unsteady beneath him.

Callum lifted the cup to his lips again and took a long, deliberate sip. The tension twisted tighter, like invisible strings drawing taut around Rostin’s throat.

Then, in a tone that pretended at casual, Callum murmured, “Hm. This is not quenching my thirst. Do you have something else?”

Rostin’s brow furrowed. “You… need water?” he asked, uncertain. A fragment of ease bloomed in him—that, at least, was familiar. Callum always asked for water after tea, claiming the tannins made his tongue feel like sandpaper.

But the comfort lasted only seconds.

Callum’s smile spread—not just across his lips, but up into his eyes. They glittered now, too bright, too sharp, like glass with light behind it. He shook his head slowly.

Then, he let the porcelain slip through his fingers.

Time seemed to move in languid horror.

The cup hit the floor and shattered with a shrill crack, ceramic fragments skittering like beetle shells across the porcelain floor. A shard spun to rest near Rostin’s foot, reflecting the dull, lamplight glow like a blade.

Rostin flinched. His whole body jerked, the sound tearing through his composure. He stumbled back a step, the book now clutched so tight to his chest it pressed into his ribs.

Callum rose from the couch with unnatural grace—fluid, languid, like a marionette moved by invisible strings. His smile remained, but his eyes…

Dead.

Flat.

And then he spoke again.

“Oh dear…” he cooed, voice soft—but not his. “How clumsy of me. That must have startled you, dear.”

It wasn’t Callum’s voice. Not anymore.

His mouth was moving. The shape of his lips, the rhythm of the cadence—it all looked like Callum. But the sound… the sound was wrong.

It was velvet and silk, yet filled with thorns. Feminine. Alluring. A voice steeped in centuries and sorrow. It wrapped around the room like smoke, coating the walls and crawling down Rostin’s spine.

Callum’s eyes—if they were still his—gleamed, and from those lips, the voice continued:

“So then. Who is the Vampire who was your supposed Contractor?”

Rostin’s blood turned cold.

How—

His breath caught. His eyes widened, throat working uselessly. His knees nearly buckled beneath him.

How did Callum know that word? That truth?

He backed up, knocking into the edge of the tile rattling his limbs and face slightly. The air felt different now. Thicker. Copper-sweet, as though the very shadows held the memory of blood.

The thing that wore Callum’s face tilted its head again. Bones cracked with the motion—slow, echoing pops that made Rostin's stomach churn.

This wasn’t Callum.

It had never been Callum.

Callum approached Rostin slowly as Rostin backed up quickly, spine uncoiling like a serpent stretching from its coil. He arched his back with a soft sigh, arms lifting above his head in an unnervingly graceful stretch. Then, in one smooth movement, he reached up, removed his glasses with two delicate fingers, and let them fall.

They didn’t clatter.

They landed—light as a feather and wrong in every way—as though the floor bent slightly to cushion them, accommodating their descent. The sound that followed was not the expected crisp shatter of glass and metal, but a wet, almost organic thud, like flesh touching stone.

“Ah… much better,” he murmured, voice silk-soft and soaked in sweetness, but not a sweetness one could trust. There was poison in it. Wine too rich. Sugar turned sour.

“I can see so much better now…” He tilted his head in Rostin’s direction and smiled—too slow, too knowing. “Rostin, dear… do you have something else I can drink?”

Rostin stepped further back instinctively, his heel brushing against the edge of the rug in the middle of the entrance of the living room. He wasn’t sure when he'd moved. His breath quickened, fingers digging into the fabric of his book like it could still serve as a shield. This—thing—looked like Callum, wore his face, mimicked his posture, but whatever stood before him was not his friend.

It was wearing Callum.

His lips parted slightly, unsure whether to scream or speak or beg. But then that voice came again.

“Ah. Are you afraid?”

The tone was tender. Mocking. Soft like satin slipping from the skin. The creature’s face molded into an expression of concern so fake it glistened with rot. Its eyes gleamed like wet pearls—wrong, wrong, wrong.

The air shifted.

The sweetness in the voice vanished, melted down to something harsher. Still feminine. Still elegant. But now sharpened to a deadly point. A voice that could seduce kings and gut them with the same breath. The words curled like smoke laced with venom.

“Who was your Contractor? Yurellion?”

Rostin’s body seized.

Yurellion.

That name hit like the crack of a whip. The vampire who had appeared like a shadow at the university, all elegance and rot. The being that had stolen Emma from him—taken her and left behind silence and crimson stains. Supposedly dead. Or so he’d told himself.

His foot slipped as he stumbled backward. His legs failed him entirely.

He hit the ground hard.

The book thudded beside him.

Pain spidered across his spine and elbow, but it was distant, like his body no longer belonged to him. His mind reeled. That fear—the paralyzing kind that robbed even the air from his lungs—wasn’t like anything he’d felt before.

Why am I not this afraid of Xenelov?

That question burst in his mind, useless and wild. Why am I only terrified now? What is this thing in front of me?

Callum—whatever was pretending to be him—smiled wider. And then… his face twisted.

Literally.

The mouth stretched impossibly wide, jaw unhinging with an audible snap. Skin tore. The human illusion melted like candle wax under a cruel flame. The form imploded.

And in its place, only the head remained.

Floating.

Grinning.

Detached from any body, the head hung midair, swaying gently as though suspended by invisible thread. The neck was torn open—not clean, not surgical. This was carnage. Flesh unraveled like ribbon, veins dangling, arteries pulsating, dripping thick, black-red ichor that reeked of rot and iron.

Blood gushed like a heartbeat.

Rostin gagged, bile crawling up his throat. He shoved himself back with his heels, palms scraping against the floor, eyes wide with horror as the monstrous head floated closer.

This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t—

The head tilted slightly.

Then—

POP.

Both eyes burst.

Twin geysers of blood sprayed outward like a sudden monsoon, thick and fast. The liquid hit the floor with sickening splashes and drenched the air in a heavy metallic stench. It struck Rostin’s chest, arms, legs—not his face, thank God—but soaked through his clothes.

And then came the sizzle.

Smoke rose from the fabric of his shirt, from the cloth over his thighs. The blood burned. Ate. It hissed against his skin as though the creature’s very essence was acidic, wrong in the way things from a dead world might be.

“AAARGG!!” Rostin screamed, clutching his chest as the sting ignited his nerves. The searing pain crawled like flame beneath his skin.

The floating head only laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

A chorus of voices—hundreds? Thousands?—laughed in perfect unison, as if one voice split into endless shards. Male. Female. Child. Elder. All of them laughing together, echoing, warping into one endless haunting note.

The walls blurred.

The ceiling twisted like liquid glass. The floor rippled as though the very house were being devoured. Black mist bled from the corners of the room, slithering in through cracks in the wood and stone. Woods and stone. His house now turned from a porcelain finished shelter to this with no such intentions. The world spun, dark hues smearing like charcoal dragged across damp paper.

Then—

The voice came again.

Not from the head. From everywhere.

“Tell me who your Contractor is.”

It was empty now.

Devoid of any gender. Any life. It echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once—cold and absolute. A voice that didn't care if he lived or died. That didn’t care if he screamed or begged.

It just wanted an answer.

And Rostin… couldn’t breathe.

The head floated mere feet above him, blood still trailing from its shredded neck like ribbons from a cursed crown. Its grin remained grotesquely stretched, frozen in a mockery of joy. Its empty eye sockets wept thick, coagulated trails of black-red, and the air around it quivered with a silence so loud it screamed.

Then, without warning—
The lips burst open.

A violent rupture, not a movement. The skin at the corners of its mouth tore upward toward its cheekbones as though invisible hooks pulled at it from within. The split revealed rows of jagged teeth—more than any mouth should possess—each one crooked, blackened, and rotting. From the ravaged mouth exploded another horrific torrent of blood. Not a spray. A detonation.

It came fast.

Rostin didn’t think. He couldn’t.

His body, purely on instinct, pulled the book to his chest, like a holy relic against hell’s fury. His fingers clenched the spine, arms trembling, eyes sealed tight.

Then—
Light.

A pulse, radiant and silver, flared from the book’s surface. It wasn’t like fire. It was pure. Divine. Cold. The silver light surged out like a wave, forming a dome that snapped into place around Rostin just as the blood struck.

But the blood did not burn him this time.

No.

It never touched him at all.

Instead, it evaporated—contact with the silver shield turned the toxic fluid into harmless wisps. Black steam hissed away, twisting like vanquished spirits, disintegrating before they could even drip to the floor.

Inside the dome, Rostin remained hunched, breathing hard, eyes still squeezed shut. His hands ached from gripping the book too tightly. His heart thundered in his ears like war drums.

Only when he felt no burning did he dare peek.

He opened his eyes slowly, like a child afraid of what monster might still be under the bed—and then gasped.

The dome glowed around him, a perfect hemisphere of silver light, pulsing gently like a heartbeat. It was translucent, but the air inside was calm. Safe. He saw his reflection, flickering and ghostlike on the dome’s surface—eyes wide, face streaked with sweat, lips parted in disbelief.

He was untouched.

Not a single drop of that acidic blood had kissed his skin.

For the first time in a long while, something close to relief found its way to his chest. Shallow. Fragile. But real.

Outside the shield, the head convulsed midair.

It trembled, as though some invisible hand had reached inside it and twisted. The long red hair behind it lashed like tendrils in water, painting the air with streaks of blood. Then—

POP.
Its ears exploded, each one rupturing in a gruesome burst of cartilage and gore.

CRACK.
Its forehead split down the middle like rotten fruit, and from the wound came another surge of blood—thicker this time, syrupy, chunks of tissue clinging to it as it sprayed in chaotic arcs.

The silver dome held firm.

Every ounce of blood that met it sizzled away, dissolved on impact. The whiffs hissed around the barrier like fog licking glass.

Rostin could only watch in stunned horror as the convulsions slowed.

What remained… was pitiful.

The head no longer smiled. The features sagged like wax. Its ears were gone, torn ruins of flesh. The forehead? A gaping crevice, the bone beneath exposed and leaking. Its red hair—long, damp with gore—floated weightlessly behind it, swaying as though caught in a breeze that did not exist.

It hovered there, suspended in suffering.

No body. No voice. Just that monstrous, mangled head.

And Rostin…
Was still breathing.