Apparitions were not real. They occupied no volume, and were made of nothing that ever came up as “molecules” in any number of scientific escapades. Supposedly, they had no way of interacting with the real world. The dark smoke, the tentacle-like monstrous silhouettes — they were supposed to be just an illusion. A trick of the eye.

And yet every time Vincent found himself in close proximity to one, he couldn’t help but feel like everything around him just felt wrong. The smell of the mansion warped from musty, rotting mold to that of a faint memory of spice. His vision wasn't so much obscured by darkness as it was just nonexistent - like the dreamless sleep of exhaustion that seemed to temporarily suspend the sleeper's very existence. The feeling of his clothes against his skin went from dry to wet, and the air felt cold. So very, very cold. Walking through he felt like every muscle in his body was seized and dragged backwards by something that seemed to have all the physical presence of the world.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to bright lights on the other side of the doorway. Candles. Hundreds upon hundreds of candles, arranged in co-centric circles, their weeping wax knotting into sickly yellow tumours, dripping to the tile mosaic of the room’s floor.

 Vincent blinked, taking stock of the situation. Twenty-three children covered in soot stains (Vincent was terrible at figuring out children’s ages, but they were kind of… big, so he figured they had to have been at least eleven) sat in a circle of their own, interspersed between the walls of candles. The bodies of what he presumed to be members of the criminal ring stood tall behind them - but their blank stares and smears of crusty black fluid along their faces indicated that they hadn’t been home in quite some time.

A human criminal ring attempts to hire an Aberrant contractor for some nefarious deed, and the Aberrant contractor double-crosses them in a little scheme of their own. Tale as old as time.

The witch — Vincent was dead-certain she was the witch they’d been looking for — sat at the very center of the meticulous arrangement. Her skin was waxy and pallid, hair a bright rufous red that looked very much like the front label of a box of hair dye. Her skinny legs were splayed out beneath her, small body curled downward, making her appear to be no older than any of the children. Her stare was fixated on her hands, which held a few shards of what Vincent recognized, with a sinking feeling, to be parts of the mirror he’d shattered earlier.

“You wanted to talk?” Vincent felt his lip begin to curl into a sneer, but the twenty-three terrified pairs of eyes on him made him think better of it. “Let’s talk.”

She glanced up at him with yellow, blood-shot eyes. When she smiled, her teeth were black, smeared with the same black soot that covered the skin of the present possessions. How long has she been sucking on the magic teet of her demonic patron? It did not seem like she had much longer to live.

“I can’t hear him.” She said, her voice raspy, ”Can’t — can’t — can’t hear him, but my Lord is still here, I can feel it.” She stretched out a shard to Vincent. “You broke him. You’re going to fix him.”