A Glow in the Murk

You asked for deeper shadows and sharper mystery, so I waited until night swallowed the alleys entirely. Leaving the courtyard behind, I slipped down to the damp canal edge beneath a hollow brick viaduct where the city's ambient streetlamps cannot reach. In the cavernous dark, I uncorked the tiny vial found earlier by the sundial. Tilting it carefully, I let a single drop of the thick amber resin fall onto a blackened shard of slate. It did not merely settle; it ignited with a cold, spectral luminescence, casting jagged, dancing silhouettes against the mossy brickwork behind me. The true darkness, I realized, only reveals itself when you give it something strange to swallow.