Liston looked toward the shadow-covered stairs. The flimsy wooden frame couldn't hide anything. There was no doubt about it: nothing was there.
Silence fell over the room. Even the owner turned to follow Kraft's gaze, searching the old staircase for whatever he'd indicated in the shadows wavering with the firelight.
In the silence, Lucius glanced at the stairs, then back at Kraft. He was certain Kraft really was pointing over there, watching something invisible. The others, too, seemed spellbound, taking his question as an undeniable statement.
Thinking of Kraft's sudden, unheralded slash—the chilling flash of his blade aimed at a wooden board and an enemy Lucius couldn't identify—Lucius couldn't tell whether this was a delusion or whether something truly invisible had been lurking nearby all along.
"There's nothing there."
Liston was the one to break the spell of their collective watching. "Do you see a fixed spot in your vision? I know that can happen to people who've suffered head injuries."
Kraft didn't seem to be pretending, but Liston genuinely couldn't see anything on the stairs. It made him wonder whether a blow to the head had caused an organic injury. He saw cases like that fairly often at the clinic.
People who suddenly fell or were struck by something heavy might wake up to find they'd permanently lost an ability: their sight, their hearing, or the ability to speak a complete sentence. Sometimes their behavior became strange, too.
Some people explained this as evil things invading the soul, but Liston scoffed at the idea. Evil Spirits couldn't be causing the same symptoms through physical injuries every time. The damage had to be to the Human Anatomy itself; he simply lacked the expertise to draw any firm conclusions.
The incomprehensible drawing and pointing at something invisible probably meant Kraft had