Death Touched Catacombs Location Novels & Stories

A voice slid through my bones without touching my ears. “You were not supposed to do that.” My heart slammed against my ribs. Slowly, I turned. Nothing. Only darkness. The cold faded, but my nerves refused to settle. “That is enough horror for one night,” I muttered. I looked down. The Death card now sat in the exact center of the table. I had not put it there. The ink shifted. The word DEATH thinned and dissolved like smoke. New letters formed, slow and deliberate, as if written by an unseen hand.

“Marcus was adamant. And the truth is, there were fewer than ten of us there. Some of those people are already dead.” I closed my eyes tightly. It was terrible that word had gotten out about the catacombs. “Let’s not waste any time,” said Nalia. “Find the horn, seal this place, and let’s get out of here. We don’t know if someone set a trap outside, on the tree, to alert them when someone entered.” That made me curse, so I ran toward my mother’s grave.

There was a air to it which had her skin prickling with fear. The guard which had seen to them at the door, led them through the Ministry’s main rooms and deeper down into the catacombs. The limestone walls were grey with slimy green mold growning on them. A scent of water hung in the air, wet and sour and the underlying scent of copper made Serenity's stomach churn. It was the scent of blood... “Charming place. Wonder where the skeletons are kept?”” She muttered under her breath, earning a chuckle from Noah. Serenity smirked as they walked, listening to the drip of water somewhere deep in the catacombs.

When our whole family saw the death timer for my sister will end on her sixteenth birthday, she became the most important person in the family. She suddenly took priority in everything, from food to dresses, and even bedtime stories. I felt for her, but I was also jealous that she was given everything. However, a day before her sixteenth birthday, my parents locked me up in the storeroom in fear that I would make a mess of things. I kept hammering the door, crying, "Mom, let me out! I'm having a fever, and my head hurts!" Mom didn't believe me. "Just stop! Your sister will die in just a day, and you're playing sick to gain our sympathy?! Don't you understand anything?!" "No…" I tried m

Now I breathe deep, and the air tastes like rain and ozone and the salt of my own skin, and I let it fill my lungs until my ribs ache. The map Nonna Carmela gave me is still in my notebook. I pull the notebook from my pocket and set it on the small table by the bed. I do not open it. I know what is inside. I know which doors are wired and which corridors are watched and where the chapel vault is, marked with a cross that Nonna Carmela drew with a hand that has been holding secrets for fifty years.

I feel like I’m descending into the Bottomless Pit. “Where are we going?” I whisper. “The catacombs,” JP whispers back. “The what?!” I exclaim. The only thing I know about the catacombs is what I saw in a horror movie from a couple of years ago, called As Above, So Below. In it, an archeologist leads her group of expendable co-stars into the 200 miles of tunnels below Paris, where they encounter mass graves and the gates of Hell. I’m pretty sure the gates of Hell part isn’t real.

She didn’t know much about the Crescent Hill Catacombs, but she knew for sure that it wasn’t that old. What cemented this feeling for Kat was the sight of the thin mist forming on the floor, sheer and shifting but hard not to miss. “Is this fog a part of your magic, Thisbe?” “What fog?” the three Hellborns asked simultaneously. Kat opened her mouth to explain, but she barely strung a coherent description when she saw what was at the end of the hallway they were in.

I whispered. I didn't go alone. Killian, Marcus, and two Frost-Guard elites followed me into the sub-levels of the city—the Catacombs of the Elders. This was where the city’s plumbing and ventilation systems met the raw granite of the mountain. It was dark, damp, and smelled of ancient earth. I held the vial out in front of me. The amber liquid was calm for the first few hundred yards. Then, as we approached the main ventilation shaft, it began to boil.

The air down here was wrong. I could taste it the second time my boots hit the slick stone steps, the way rot and ash twisted together into something that didn’t belong in a wolf’s lungs. It wasn’t just the stench of decay, it was the bite of warding magic, the kind that chewed at the edges of your senses until you questioned if the shadows were crawling or if your eyes were betraying you. The catacombs under The Thorne were not on any official maps. That’s what made them perfect for hiding things like secrets, bodies, weapons too dangerous to leave in daylight. My bet was on all three.

“But there is no doubt about it. This is the place I need to go if the rumours are true.” Taking a few paces forward, the man frowned deeply, noticing the door to the catacombs was open. He hoped that this was not a bad omen and that any dangers within had not found their way outside just yet. The rumour that had led him to this area, had been one of an ancient spirit of an old God. One that had the power to raise up corpses as an undying army. Apparently, this God had been trapped away deep underground by the Goddess of Death: though one could never really know the truth without asking the Goddess directly, and that was no easy task.