Prologue: The Echo of the Forgotten
The night was still. Too still.
The moon hung low over Bellhaven like a guardian in silence—bright, round, and glowing with a soft breath of silver. It was one of those evenings where the air seemed to listen, where even the trees dared not whisper too loudly.
Evren Guerra stood at the edge of his living room, hands resting on his hips, eyes fixed on the antique violin now resting near the fireplace.
“It’s older than it looks,” Mateo Elías had said earlier, wiping sweat from his brow after helping carry it in. “She said it came with the house. Been there since her grandmother bought it over a century ago. And not a single string has ever been replaced.”
Evren hadn’t been looking for it. He went to the estate sale to find an old chair. But when he saw the violin—delicate, dust-worn, and humming with something unseen—he felt it in his chest. A pull. A recognition. Like an echo whispering back to him from a dream he couldn’t quite place.
Now, in the quiet of his home, the violin sat still.
Evren couldn’t sleep. Something about the violin—its weight, its silence, the way the moonlight clung to its curves like it knew a secret—made his bones itch.
So, barefoot, in sweats and a worn t-shirt, he approached it. Just a quick glance. Maybe a touch.
He sat beside it, fingers brushing the air before one landed gently on a single string.
He plucked it.
Vrrrrrrmmmmm.
The sound wasn’t loud—it was soft, like a breath exhaled through wood—but it sent a vibration through the soles of his feet, rising through his legs, winding up his spine, until it pressed against the base of his skull.
Look Inside: The Lost Key of 1903
His eyes widened.
A second later, the violin tipped. Just slightly.
Startled, Evren reached to steady it—and that’s when he heard it:
Clink.
A soft drop. Like something small falling inside the base.
He crouched low, heart suddenly quickened. His fingers reached beneath the violin’s belly, searching… and there, tucked deep within the wood, his hand touched metal.
Cool. Smooth. Etched.
He pulled it out carefully
It looked like a skeleton key at first—but thinner, more elegant, carved with strange, ancient notches. It had no teeth… but a hollow center, like a tiny flute. A whisper of something sacred.
He turned it in his palm.
A soft wind stirred the window.
Blow into it. The thought wasn’t his own.
He raised it to his lips, unsure why— And blew.
The sound was barely audible. Not even a sound. A pulse.
The floor beneath him hummed. The walls. The windows.
And far, far away—beyond the trees, beyond the town, beyond the veil of time—three figures lifted their heads to the sky.
Charlie. Thunder. Toto.
And somewhere in a forgotten decade, seated in a room that shouldn’t exist, a woman’s eyes flew open. Her heart surged as a single name echoed across the vibration.
Evren.
