Cold clawed at my exposed wrist. It seeped through the thin fabric of my cassock, a damp chill that promised bone-deep ache. The rear kitchen door of Blackwood Manor stood before us, a slab of old oak swollen in its frame. No more knocking. Just a heavy, suffocating silence from within. "Matrimony," I muttered, my voice rough. "Set it up. Across the corridor. Floor to ceiling, if you can." Caleb nodded, already pulling the heavy leather satchel from his shoulder. His grey eyes, usually so quick with questions, held only grim resolve. He'd seen enough to know some things required no explanation. "Why?" he asked, quiet. His fingers were already working, unwrapping the coiled steel wire. "I'm the only one he might still talk to," I said. It was a half-truth, but the better part of it was a lie I told myself. A monster might speak to a priest, or it might just tear him apart. It was a coin toss I'd made many times before. Caleb offered no argument. He trusted me. A weight settled in my gut, heavier than usual. He began to unspool the high-tension wires, small serrated harpoons glinting under the dim, failing light. The corridor was narrow, perfect for a snare. --- I pushed the door open. It groaned, a deep, wounded sound that echoed through the vast, empty kitchen beyond. Cold, stagnant air hit me, thick with the smell of damp stone and something else – a lingering, acrid scent of burnt fat and stale blood. My lantern, a small, oil-fed square, cast a wavering circle of yellow light ahead. Dust motes danced in the beam. The kitchen was a wreck: overturned pots, shattered crockery on the flagstones, a wooden table splintered down the middle. Everything felt wrong, dead. No sounds. Not even the scuttling of rats. My boots crunched on ceramic shards. I stepped past the wreckage, listening. The house was a tomb, but for one faint, wet sound. A breath, shallow and uneven, coming from deeper within the manor. A child’s breath. Moving through the servants' passages, the air grew heavier. The walls were thick, muffling all external sound, creating a claustrophobic quiet. I passed a pantry, shelves stripped bare, then a scullery, its sink crusted with something dark and dry. Every shadow seemed to stretch, to coil, to watch. Foundations of a grander hall opened before me. Furniture lay on its side, chairs with broken legs, a grand chaise lounge ripped open, its stuffing spilling like entrails. Dead candles, long since consumed, sat in ornate holders on dusty tables. No light entered from outside. The manor was sealed. Wet breathing, closer now, pulled me onward. It was a rasping sound, like a dying bird, punctuated by a low, guttural hum that vibrated through the floorboards. I followed it to a set of double doors, flung wide. I pushed through the doorway. My lantern beam cut across the immense, high-ceilinged room. It was a study, perhaps, or a private parlor, now a wreck of shattered glass and splintered wood. And there, in the center, a dark, hulking mass. Sir Silas Blackwood. He knelt on the floor, immense and grey, cradling something small against his chest. His skin was thick stone, cracked like dry clay, with black-gold veins glinting in the fissures where his flesh had ruptured. His eyes, though, were still human. Red-rimmed, vacant, full of a crushing sorrow. Chains hung from his arms, thick iron links that he had evidently torn from the walls, or from himself, and now lay slack. "Silas," I said, my voice barely a whisper in the echoing space. His head snapped up. A low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound like grinding rocks. He smelled of damp earth and something foul, like a carrion pit. His gaze was clouded, unseeing, focused somewhere beyond me. "You," he croaked, his voice deep and broken, like a stone gargoyle trying to speak. "You finally came." His arms tightened around the small form he held. "He's not ready. He's not strong enough. You promised." My hand instinctively went to Genesis, nestled under my cassock. The warm, round red stone in my pocket pulsed faintly against my thigh. "I am not them," I stated, clear and calm. "I am Father Edmund Greaves. I have come to help." His gaze sharpened, boring into my face. He squinted, searching for a sign, a flicker of recognition or deceit. The stone skin of his face shifted, the fissures deepening. The black-gold veins pulsed brighter. "Help?" he rasped. A bitter laugh escaped him, a sound like pebbles skittering down a slope. "You're all the same. Promises. Lies." He rocked slightly, cradling the figure in his arms. It was his son. The boy’s body was a twisted mockery of human form, shoulders bent at unnatural angles, fingers partly fused, slick with fever sweat. His breath was the wet, desperate sound I'd followed through the house. He was alive, but barely. A failed transformation. "Tell me, Silas," I urged, stepping closer, my lantern held steady. "Who promised you? Who did this?" He lowered his gaze to his son’s malformed face, a profound grief washing over his stone features. "Men," he started, his voice a low monotone, recounting a nightmare. "They came after the landslide. Said the ground was cursed. Said a plague would follow." He paused, a shudder rippling through his massive frame. "They wore dark vestments. Like priests. Spoke of immunity. Of long life. Of becoming... more." His eyes, still human, filled with a raw, agonizing regret. "They marked us. With black stitches. All of us. The housemaid first. She changed before our eyes. Then the others. Then... my boy." Maeve Hart had told us only that the house had turned wrong, that the other servants had stopped speaking. She had run before they reached her. But the housemaid Silas meant was another woman. The one we had already put down in the Blackwood wood. The one wearing Iona's face. I did not say it. "He was so sickly," Silas continued, his voice cracking. "They said he would be strong. Immortal. They promised he would heal." His gaze fell to his son's twisted limbs. "He changed. But not like them. Not like they said. He just... broke." A tear, thick as oil, traced a path down a fissure in his stone cheek. It evaporated before it reached his jaw. "I changed last," he said, his voice flat with despair. "They watched. They waited. Then they left." His stone hand, huge and cracked, gently stroked his son's pale forehead. "It was all a lie." My heart ached, a dull, familiar throb. This was the cost of their dark alchemy. Not power, but monstrous grief. "Who were they, Silas?" I pressed again. "What were their names? Their order?" He shook his head, a slow, heavy movement. "No names. They dressed like priests, yes. But their vestments were too clean. Too dark. One had hands... too smooth for a bishop. No calluses. No age." He stopped, thinking. "And their sign. On their rings. It crawled." A crawling sign. Like the stitches on the succubus. Like the marks of something ancient and unholy. The pieces clicked into place, cold and sharp. This wasn’t some wild cult. This was an organized, methodical group, mimicking the Church to prey on the desperate. Silas looked up, his eyes suddenly catching on something. My pocket. The outline of Genesis. The faint warmth, perhaps, emanating from the blood-red stone I'd found. His stone features tightened. The grief twisted into something else, something primal and furious. "You," he growled, the sound rattling the very floorboards. "You carry their mark. You carry their tools. You've come to finish him. To take him from me." His grip on his son tightened, almost crushing. The black-gold veins on his skin pulsed like molten metal. He was wrong. Utterly, tragically wrong. But in his grief and his transformed state, no reason would penetrate. "Silas, no," I started, stepping back, hand on Genesis. "I am not with them. I swear it." "Lies!" he roared. The sound was a deafening blast, shattering the last remaining glass in the room. He lumbered to his feet, a mountainous figure of grey rock and raw fury. His son, jostled, let out a weak, wet cry. The chains hanging from his arms, which had been merely decorative moments before, suddenly tautened. With a bellow that shook the manor’s foundations, Silas tore them clean from his body. The sound was a screech of tearing metal, a crack of breaking stone. The links flew, embedding themselves in the far wall. He lunged. Not with grace, but with the unstoppable force of a landslide. His immense stone fist smashed into the spot where I had stood moments before. The floor buckled. I stumbled back, withdrawing Genesis. My bitten hand ached, raw and throbbing. Every muscle screamed in protest. This was not a monster to be reasoned with. This was a father, betrayed, consumed by grief and a terrible, false immortality. Retreat. That was the only option. I spun, scrambling over the overturned furniture, my lantern swinging wildly. The grey behemoth was fast, faster than his bulk suggested, driven by a terrible, desperate love. His roar reverberated, a wave of pure sound that vibrated in my teeth. He smashed through a heavy oak table, sending splinters flying like shrapnel. I could feel the tremor of his footsteps through the stone floor, a relentless pursuit. Down the long, dark hall I fled. Overturned chairs became obstacles for me, but mere dust for him. He crashed through them, indifferent, gaining on me with every heavy stride. The smell of dust and burnt wood filled the air, mingling with that sickly, metallic tang of his presence. My lungs burned. My legs were exhausted, each step a struggle. But Caleb. Caleb was waiting. Matrimony. I risked a glance back. Silas was a grey blur in the gloom, his black-gold veins glowing faintly in the dimness. He was closing the distance. The kitchen doorway loomed. I burst through it, into the familiar wreckage of the kitchen. A heavy, old shelving unit, laden with iron pots and copper pans, stood against the wall directly beside the doorframe. I fired once into the shelf. It came down hard behind me, dust and dead wood filling the hall. The troll screamed. I ran, boots sliding on the stone, and shouted, "Caleb! Now!"

Chapter 13: Stone Father