The vision collapsed into dark lacquer, leaving Stellan gasping, fingers jammed against ivory. He saw his own reflection in the polished ebony, a pale, wide-eyed ghost. Dread churned low in his belly, beneath which a stubborn ember still smoldered.
Then cool air brushed his temple. Alisa gathered around him, her mind broadening out from the bone instrument until her thoughts settled against his skin like morning mist. There was no anger, no accusation, only a profound weariness, and a nascent, fragile hope.
*“You played it,”* her voice murmured through his inner ear, bringing cedar-scented warmth where the entity had left frost. *“Not for me, not for them. For yourself.”*
Stellan swallowed, the taste of ash in his mouth. “It showed me what it intends to take,” Stellan said. “My voice. My skin.”
*“It thrives on isolation,”* she said. *“Yet you struck the chord. You held.”*
He withdrew his hands, facing the silent keyboard. “I’m sorry, Alisa. About my ancestors. About everything.”
Her voice grew thin and grey with sorrow, before settling into hard quiet. *“Regret repairs nothing,”* she whispered. *“You must witness what happened. Not what your ancestor inked in his ledgers, but what broke that night.”*
The threshold between their minds slackened, smooth and deliberate. *“Are you willing?”* she asked, her hesitation pressing sharp against his ribs. *“You will see through my eyes. You will bear what I bore.”*
“Yes,” Stellan said, without hesitation. “Show me.”
The gas lamps smeared into copper streaks and died. The music room vanished beneath the smell of frozen pine needles and wet loam. He stood on the boundary ditch of the grounds in another body, century-old air stinging his throat. The manor rose above bare oaks, black against bruised clouds. Her breath plumed white.
A wool satchel dug into her collarbone. Down in the valley, hounds bayed near the timber cottages, and women's voices rose in an evening lament. She moved with steady purpose, reading the subterranean hum running through bedrock and root, determined to force the encroaching rot back into the earth.
She slipped past the iron gates, threading a deer run through knotted blackthorn. A ravenous pull leaked from the cellar walls. The Choir had already settled in the foundation masonry, thickening the draft, swollen beyond the mastery of whoever had summoned it.
Beneath the floorboards, in an unmapped crypt, Ignati Varik wheezed upon a canvas cot. The space smelled of wormwood, tallow, and powdered lime. Bowls of river gravel and charred effigies ringed his pallet. His flesh hung grey over prominent cheekbones, his ribs rattling with an unnatural hum.
*“It grows,”* the dying noble rasped, staring into corner gloom. *“The pact was a slaughterhouse.”*
Alisa knelt, setting two fingers to his wrist. *“Power always collects its debt. Your bloodline invited it. Now we drive it into the root.”*
She drew charcoal lines across the packed dirt, seating dried roots and lead weights at the cardinal points. At the center rested the newly framed bone instrument, its keys gleaming pale against the loam.
*“The keys,”* Ignati coughed, reaching toward the wood frame. *“The song will hold the lock.”*
*“And your blood completes the seal,”* she answered. *“You open your chest to anchor the cage you broke.”*
Her chant started low, shaking dust from the ceiling rafters. The air grew sharp with ozone. Power funnelled into the keyboard, dragging the formless howling from the walls down toward the sounding board.
Her hands traced runes in the dark. Strings inside the instrument hummed in sympathetic vibration, siphoning the entity's roar. Ignati slumped, breath rattling as his life bled out to seal the seam.
A cloaked silhouette stepped from the doorway arch. The man held an open cedar box. Before Alisa could turn, he flung a spray of glittering grey powder directly onto the central circle.
Alisa’s shriek ripped through Stellan's skull as the circle cracked. The vortex snapped inward. The entity lunged, not backward into the earth, but into her throat, dragging her marrow, breath, and soul straight into the instrument's soundboard alongside the howling beast. Ignati turned to ash where he lay.
Through blinding pain, her sight caught the intruder as his hood slipped back. A servant's livery, black slicked hair, and narrow, flinty eyes sneered down at her. Stellan recognized the bone structure instantly: an older groundskeeper from estate records, Kaspian, whose grandson Laszlo delivered produce to Oskar at the kitchen gate every Tuesday. The vision shattered. Stellan hit the parquet floor of the music room on hands and knees, sweat stinging his eyelids, knowing the betrayal was never just ghosts—it was flesh and bone, still living three miles down the road.