Flash Fiction February 2026 Day Nineteen: Warning Signal (Lukas)

 Flash Fiction February 2026 Prompt: Warning (a solution introduces a new problem immediately) 

How exactly we found ourselves in Necrom is a series of events I cannot remember with reasons to justify the trip being even less though if I had to guess I would bet that Fyr may just want to talk to some old friends of his. Of course, if that is in fact why we’re stuck here in the city of the dead, he would drag us along for the ride. Really I should just ask Naomi but she seems to be otherwise engaged in poking around the strange city and recording observations. Maybe the trip was her idea, which makes it marginally less terrible…though not by much. The architecture is unusual compared to other cities I’ve been in. That should be expected I suppose since all other cities I’ve ever been to have been made by and for the living and not the dead. Fyr and Naomi look around interested in everything the unnerving city has to offer. Simon and Elisheva stick close to me both just as anxious as I am. Liat, on the other hand, trails curiously after her sister. Not close enough to directly engage with any of the buildings or other objects of Naomi's investigation, but close enough to observe from a distance. A few spirits wander through the city here and there ignoring the living. That is until we get to one who stops dead in its tracks, no pun intended, and stares at me for a very long time. With night beginning to fall more and more spirits begin to appear as the formerly quiet city comes back to life, in a very much undead way. Suddenly a heavy wool cloak is thrown over me before I can react otherwise. While I’m busy trying to find my way out from under the cloak I hear a sigh of relief and Fyr calls out “It’s gone!” from somewhere nearby. I assume it was him who threw the cloak over me. The relief is short-lived as the call is followed by a significantly less pleased noise shortly after. Once I finally manage to get the heavy garment off I can see what the commotion was about. On the place where the strange spirit had been standing is a circle that looks as if it had been burned into the ground with what looks to be writing. We congregate around the odd marking in the attempt to figure out what in the world just happened. Fyr kneels to further inspect the ash-like residue and makes another noise signaling something between curiosity and displeasure before giving me a long hard stare. I don’t like when he does that. I know he’s just thinking, but the intense eye contact is unnerving, and I dislike even regular eye contact at the best of times. Liat I notice pulls out a book from her pack and begins to look through it. “Well it appears that it’s a good thing we came to visit. Something's afoot, and I intend to find out what, starting with this.” Fyr tells the group as he gets up, pointing to the odd burned mark. “Why the ancestor spirit left a marking like this is quite unusual. And why it reacted that way in the first place, disappearing only when Lukas was made to be out of its sight, however rudimentary that solution was, even more so.” he explains, taking a moment to thank Elisheva for lending her cloak in a time of need. 
“Isn’t that supposed to be some kind of omen?” Liat pipes up from the back of the group referencing a page in the book she had been flipping through that has some rather scary looking illustrations. Just our luck. Of course the solution to the current mystery problem turns out to be some sort of warning insight into a much larger, much more dangerous, very likely supernatural problem. That’s just wonderful. Why do I agree to get dragged into these adventures again?