Friday the 13th: The Nocturnis Arc – 1988
#4: Friday, May 13, 1988 – The Inheritance: Legacy of Lies
The perpetual twilight of Nocturnis seemed even heavier than usual, casting long, accusing shadows across the dust motes dancing in "Uncle Lewis's Odd 'n Ends." After the… disappearance… of our Uncle Lewis, the shop, a strange blend of antique store and macabre museum, had fallen to me, Micki, and my cousin, Ryan. We stood amidst the bewildering inventory, a collection of brass automatons that occasionally twitched, paintings with eyes that followed you, and trinkets that hummed with an inexplicable cold. We'd known Lewis was eccentric, maybe a little shady, but this? This was beyond understanding.
"What even is half this stuff?" Ryan muttered, nudging a porcelain doll with unsettlingly lifelike eyes. "And why did he leave it to us?"
Just then, a figure emerged from the deeper shadows of the shop. He was tall, dressed in a sharp, old-fashioned suit, with eyes that held the ancient wisdom of his Azatar heritage, yet sparkled with a lawyer's keen intellect. He introduced himself as Gabriel De La Cruz, a childhood friend of Lewis, and—as he explained with a wry, melancholic smile—a trained Templar Knight, a legal scholar, and an expert in antiquities.
"I tried to warn him," Gabriel began, his voice a low, resonant rumble. "Lewis and I, we shared a fascination with… powerful artifacts. My aim was to collect them, to understand and secure them. To keep them from unwary hands, to vault them away safely." He gestured around the shop, his gaze lingering on the items with a profound sadness. "Lewis… his ambition was different."
And then, the truth, cold and sharp as a Nocturnis downpour, hit us. Gabriel spoke of Lewis's deal with Mammon, the Archdemon of Greed. He described how Lewis sought not to protect, but to profit—to gain immortality, power, and instant wealth by selling these cursed objects to unwitting patrons. Each sale, each victim's misfortune, fed Mammon, solidifying Lewis's corrupt bargain. The strange 'accidents,' the 'disappearances,' the creeping madness that had always plagued certain corners of Nocturnis—Lewis hadn't just been a part of it, he’d fueled it.
"He broke the pact," Gabriel concluded, his voice heavy with a sorrow older than the city itself. "Mammon claimed him. And now, the items he sold, the ones Mammon allowed to scatter when the pact was broken, they are active. Each one a ticking time bomb of malevolence."
The shop wasn't just an inheritance; it was a grim legacy. The bizarre inventory wasn't just peculiar; it was dangerous. And our task, Gabriel made terrifyingly clear, wasn't to sell these things, but to retrieve them, to contain the horror Lewis had unleashed. Our lives, and perhaps the fate of Nocturnis itself, depended on it.
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