Graffita Neova's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

Vandal's warning still rang in Graffita's ears. She followed the dark until she found the red door. It stood in a bare stone wall, already sliding shut. Behind it a boy pressed his hands against the gap. Paint stained his fingers, blue and pink and green. This was Morphy, the trapped painter Vandal spoke of. His voice was thin. "It's closing. Please." Graffita reached for her method. Start dark, climb slow, one shade at a time. It kept the shadow-people whole. But it took hours, and the door had seconds. She pressed her darkest wrist blot to the stone beside the frame and dragged a black line up. The door slid faster. Her slow climb would never reach the latch in time. "Faster," Morphy said. "There's no time to climb." A wispy black shape drifted from the dark. Red and yellow eyes glowed in a face with no features. Graffita froze. "Who are you?" "Lord Pyra." His voice was flat and plain. "I watch this door. I have watched it a long time." "How do I open it?" "Not with your slow way. The lock feeds on dark. Feed it fuller." He drifted toward a shelf against the wall. On it sat three oversized bottles, their black glass webbed with cracks. "Pure black. No climb. Pour it on the seam." Graffita hesitated. Her whole method built up from black. She had never used black alone. "It might erase them. The people inside." "They are behind the door," Pyra said. "The dark cannot erase what dark already holds." The gap was a hand wide now. Morphy's fingers slipped. Graffita grabbed a bottle and yanked the cork. The ink poured out, thick and true black. She flung it across the closing seam. The door shuddered. The black soaked into the wood and the wood drank it. For a breath nothing moved. Then the door groaned and slid back open, all the way. Morphy stumbled out onto the stone. Behind him the doorway gaped empty. The trapped people were gone from the frame. Just an open dark hall where the door had been. "Where are they?" Graffita asked. Morphy stared into the empty doorway. "Still inside. The door opened. They didn't come out." He wiped his stained hands on his shirt. "The black freed the door. It didn't free them." Graffita looked at the open dark. She had won and lost in the same moment. The door no longer trapped Morphy. But the others were deeper now, past a threshold that swung wide on nothing. Lord Pyra's eyes dimmed a shade. "You opened it. Good. Now someone must go in." He looked at her without blinking. "And someone must hold me here, or I fade before they return." Graffita held the empty bottle. Two problems stood where one had been. She had learned her slow climb could break, and that speed cost more than time.