Victoria's POV

They took Whitmore's body to the east wing.

I watched them carry him up the stairs, wrapped in a sheet like he was already a ghost. Father called it a heart attack. Natural causes. Nothing suspicious. Just an old man whose time had come.

But I'd seen the frost. I'd seen the darkness in the stranger's eyes when Whitmore died. There was nothing natural about it.

"We need to call the police," I said.

Father turned on me. "And tell them what? That our dead son came back and killed our doctor with black magic? They'll lock us all up."

"Then what do we do?"

"We handle this ourselves." He looked at Thomas. "Like we always have."

Thomas nodded. They'd already decided. Already made their plans without me. That's how it worked in this family. The men decided, and everyone else followed.

Except I was tired of following.

I went to Elias's old room. The one they'd locked twenty years ago and never opened. The door was solid oak, the kind that didn't break easily. I tried the handle anyway.

It opened.

The room smelled like dust and memories. Everything was exactly as he'd left it. Books stacked on the desk. Sketches pinned to the walls. His favorite jacket hanging on the back of the chair. Like he'd just stepped out and would be back any moment.

I walked to the desk. His sketchbook lay open to a half-finished drawing. A portrait of Mother, her face soft and kind. The mother he thought she was before he learned the truth.

"I used to come here," a voice said behind me.

I spun around. The stranger stood in the doorway, watching me with those grey eyes.

"After I came back," he continued. "When the house was empty. I'd sit at that desk and try to remember what it felt like to be him. To be human."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. My voice shook. "If you're really Elias, even a piece of him, why hurt us?"

He moved closer. Each step was careful, measured. "Because he's inside me, screaming. All his pain, all his betrayal, all his anger. It's like swallowing fire every moment I exist. The only thing that makes it stop is when I make them pay."

"I didn't kill you."

"No." He stopped a few feet away. "You just watched. You saw what they did and you said nothing. For twenty years, you kept their secret. That makes you guilty too."

Tears burned my eyes. "I was fifteen."

"So was I when they murdered me."

The truth of that hit me like a fist. Elias died at fifteen. Never got to grow up, fall in love, have a life. They stole everything from him.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Sorry doesn't bring him back. Sorry doesn't heal what was broken. Sorry is just a word people use when they want forgiveness they don't deserve."

He turned to leave, then paused. "But you're different from them. You feel guilt. Real guilt, not just fear of getting caught. That's why you'll live longer than the others. I want you to watch them suffer first."

Then he was gone, leaving me alone with Elias's ghosts.

I spent the next hour searching the room. I didn't know what I was looking for. Evidence? Answers? Some way to fix this nightmare we'd created?

I found his diary in the bottom drawer, hidden under old sweaters. My hands shook as I opened it. The last entry was dated three days before his death.

Father barely looks at me anymore. Mother only talks to me when she needs something. Thomas treats me like I'm invisible. Only Victoria still sees me. Still talks to me like I'm real. Sometimes I think about running away. Just disappearing. Would they even notice I was gone?*

I pressed the diary to my chest and cried. Really cried, for the first time in twenty years. For the brother who felt invisible. For the boy who died thinking no one loved him.

A sound in the hallway made me freeze. Footsteps, slow and deliberate. I wiped my eyes and went to the door.

The hallway was empty. But at the far end, near the old servants' stairs, I saw something that made my blood freeze. The door to the chapel stood open.

We'd sealed that door. Bricked it up after that night. No one should be able to open it.

I walked toward it anyway. Each step felt like moving through water. The air grew colder as I got closer. My breath came out in white clouds.

The chapel was dark. Moonlight came through the broken stained glass windows, casting colored shadows on the floor. The altar where they killed Elias still stood in the center. Someone had cleaned it recently. The stone gleamed.

"He died here."

I spun around. The stranger stood behind me, blocking the doorway.

"They drugged his dinner," he said. His voice was flat, emotionless. "Sleeping pills crushed into his food. He didn't even fight when they carried him down. Just mumbled, confused, asking why."

He walked to the altar and ran his hand across the stone. "They stripped him. Painted symbols on his skin with something that burned. Mother spoke words from a book so old the pages crumbled when she turned them. And Father just watched. His own son, and he just watched."

"Please stop," I begged.

"Why? Does it hurt to hear? Good. It should hurt. They poured oil in a circle around him. Thomas lit the torches. And when Elias woke up, when he realized what was happening, he screamed. He begged. He called for his mother."

The stranger's voice cracked. For just a moment, I heard Elias in it. The real Elias, trapped inside this thing.

"She didn't stop," he whispered. "She just kept chanting while he burned. His own mother, and she watched him die."

I couldn't breathe. The room spun around me.

"You saw it," he said. "Through the crack in that door. You were supposed to be in bed, but you followed them. You watched the whole thing."

"I didn't know what to do. I was just a child."

"So was he."

He moved closer. The temperature dropped so low my teeth chattered. "Do you know what happens when you burn alive? Your nerves scream so loud you can't hear your own voice. Your skin splits. Your blood boils. And all you can think is why. Why are they doing this? What did I do wrong?"

"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I'm so sorry."

"You're going to be." His eyes went completely black. "Before this ends, you're all going to understand what he felt. What I feel. Every. Single. Moment."

The door slammed shut behind him. I was trapped in the dark with the thing wearing my brother's face, and I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to die in this room. Just like Elias did.

But then he walked past me, heading for the door. "Not yet, Victoria. You still have a role to play. You're going to help me destroy them."

The door opened by itself. He disappeared into the darkness beyond.

I collapsed on the floor, shaking so hard I thought my bones would break. Above me, on the ceiling, I saw something that made me scream.

Scorch marks. In the shape of a body. Arms spread wide like an angel. That's where they hung him to burn. That's where my brother died.

And now something wearing his skin had come back to make sure we all joined him.

Victoria's POV

I didn't tell anyone about the chapel. What would I say? That the ghost of our murdered brother showed me where we killed him? That he promised to make us suffer?

They already knew. They just didn't want to admit it.

Breakfast the next morning was a silent affair. Mother didn't eat. She just pushed food around her plate with shaking hands. Father pretended to read the newspaper. Thomas typed on his phone, trying to maintain some illusion of normalcy.

The stranger didn't join us. I didn't know where he was, but I felt him. Like a weight pressing down on the house.

"We need to leave," I said finally.

Father looked up. "Excuse me?"

"We need to get out of this house. Go somewhere he can't follow."

"And look like we're running away? Absolutely not. The Ashbourne family doesn't run."

"The Ashbourne family murders children," I snapped. "I think our reputation can handle a little cowardice."

Thomas slammed his phone down. "Enough, Victoria. You're not helping."

"I'm not trying to help. I'm trying to survive."

Mother stood up suddenly. Her chair fell backward with a crash. "I can't do this anymore."

We all stared at her.

"I can't sit here pretending everything's fine when our son is back from the dead seeking revenge. I can't keep lying. I can't keep hiding."

"Margaret, sit down," Father ordered.

But Mother was already moving. She walked out of the dining room like a woman in a trance. I followed her, ignoring Father's angry calls.

She went to her bedroom. I'd rarely been inside. Mother kept it locked, her private sanctuary. Now she threw open the door and went straight to her closet.

She pulled down boxes from the top shelf. Old boxes, covered in dust. She dumped them on the bed and started going through them frantically.

"Mother, what are you doing?"

"Finding the truth," she muttered. "Finding proof. Finding something."

Papers scattered across the bed. Old letters, photographs, documents. She dug through them like a woman possessed.

Finally, she found what she was looking for. A leather-bound book, small and ancient. The cover was stained with something dark that might have been blood.

"This is it," she whispered. "The book. I lied when I said I burned it. I couldn't. I needed to know if the ritual was real or if I'd just murdered my son for nothing."

She opened it. The pages were yellow with age, covered in handwriting that looked centuries old. Strange symbols filled the margins.

"Here." She pointed to a page near the middle. "The Binding of Souls. That's what I used. It promised wealth and power in exchange for innocent blood. It promised the sacrifice would be quick and painless."

"It wasn't," I said.

Her face crumpled. "I know. I hear him screaming every night. For twenty years, I've heard him. I take pills to sleep but they don't help. Nothing helps. He's always there, burning, calling for me."

She looked at me with wild eyes. "But it worked, Victoria. That's the worst part. The money came. The business thrived. Everything we touched turned to gold. The ritual worked."

"Then why is he back?"

She flipped through more pages. "There must be something here. Some clause, some condition we didn't fulfill."

I heard footsteps in the hallway. Heavy, deliberate footsteps. We both froze.

The stranger appeared in the doorway. He looked at the book in Mother's hands and smiled.

"Ah. The instruction manual for murder. I wondered if you'd kept it."

Mother clutched the book to her chest. "Stay away from me."

"Why? Afraid I'll do to you what you did to me?" He walked into the room. "Don't worry, Mother. Your death won't be quick either. I learned from the best."

"What do you want?" she cried.

"I want you to read the rest of the ritual. The part you skipped because you were in such a hurry to kill your son."

He grabbed the book from her hands. She didn't fight him. Just collapsed on the bed, sobbing.

He flipped to a page near the end. "Here. The consequences. Every ritual has them, but people never read that far. They just see the promises and jump in."

He started reading aloud. His voice was cold, matter-of-fact. "The binding shall hold for twenty turns of the sun. Should the sacrifice be unjust, should the innocent cry out in their death, the entity shall consume all parties to the contract. At the end of twenty years, the debt comes due. All who prospered shall pay."

The room went silent.

"Twenty years," I whispered. "It's been exactly twenty years."

"To the day," the stranger confirmed. "Father's sixtieth birthday. The same date you killed me. The entity waited, let you enjoy your blood money. And now it's come to collect."

Mother looked up at him. "Then you're here to kill us."

"Not me. The entity. I'm just the messenger. The collection agent. The thing you bound to your son is hungry, and it's going to feed."

"There has to be a way to stop it," I said. "Some loophole, some counter-ritual."

He laughed. "You want to ritual your way out of a ritual? That's very Ashbourne of you. Always looking for the easy way, the shortcut, the deal that lets you keep your hands clean."

"Please," Mother begged. "Please, Elias, if any part of my son is in there, please forgive me. I was desperate. I was foolish. I didn't know what else to do."

"Your son forgave you," the stranger said softly. "Even as he burned, he called for you. He thought maybe you'd save him at the last second. That's who Elias was. Gentle. Trusting. Stupid."

He bent down close to her face. "But I'm not Elias anymore. I'm what you made him into. I'm the consequence of your choices. And consequences don't forgive."

He dropped the book on the bed and walked toward the door.

"Wait," I called after him. "If the entity is going to kill us anyway, why the games? Why not just do it?"

He paused in the doorway. "Because Elias wants you to suffer first. His pain is my pain. His rage is my rage. And before you die, you're going to feel every ounce of what he felt. Every betrayal. Every moment of terror. Every second of agony."

"How long do we have?"

He smiled. "Until the entity is satisfied. Could be days. Could be hours. Depends on how much guilt you're carrying. The more you suffer, the stronger it gets. And when it's strong enough, it will take you all at once. Drag you down to whatever hell it crawled out of."

"And you?" I asked. "What happens to you?"

For just a moment, something flickered across his face. Fear? Regret? "I go back down too. Back into the dark. Back into the screaming. But at least I won't be alone this time. I'll have you."

He left us there. Mother curled up on the bed, clutching the book like it might save her. I stood by the window, watching snow fall on the gardens.

Somewhere in the house, Father and Thomas were plotting. Planning some way to fight back, to survive this. But I knew the truth.

We were already dead. We died twenty years ago in that chapel. We just hadn't stopped moving yet.

The only question now was how much we'd suffer before we finally fell down.

Victoria's POV 

Thomas didn't believe in supernatural things.

Even after everything we'd seen, he kept insisting there had to be a rational explanation. The stranger was a con artist. Whitmore died of natural causes. The cold spots and moving shadows were just old house problems.

I envied his denial. It must be nice to ignore reality when it didn't fit your worldview.

I found him in Father's study that afternoon, going through files. He'd been at it for hours, searching for something that would prove the stranger was fake.

"You won't find anything," I told him.

He didn't look up. "There's always something. A paper trail, a connection, some proof he's not who he claims to be."

"He knows things, Thomas. Things no one else could know."

"Then someone told him. A servant, a business rival, someone with access to family information."

I sat down across from him. "Do you really believe that?"

Finally, he looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale. "I have to believe it. Because the alternative means we're all going to die."

"We are going to die. The book said so. Twenty years, and then the entity collects."

Thomas slammed his fist on the desk. "I refuse to accept that. We didn't survive this long just to give up now. There has to be a way out."

"Maybe we don't deserve a way out."

His face hardened. "Don't start with the guilt again, Victoria. What we did, we did for the family. For survival. I won't apologize for that."

"You should. Elias deserved better than what we gave him."

"Elias was weak. He would have destroyed everything Father built. He had no head for business, no ambition, no drive. He wanted to be an artist, for God's sake. What kind of Ashbourne wants to paint pictures?"

The casual cruelty in his voice made me sick. "The kind that didn't deserve to burn alive."

Thomas stood up. "This conversation is over. I have work to do."

But before he could leave, the lights went out. All of them, throughout the entire house. The only illumination came from the grey winter light through the windows.

"Power outage," Thomas muttered. "I'll check the breaker."

"Don't." I grabbed his arm. "Please don't leave this room."

He shook me off. "Stop being dramatic. It's just a power failure."

He opened the door and stepped into the hallway. I followed him, my heart pounding.

The hallway was freezing. Our breath came out in white clouds. Frost covered the walls, creeping across the portraits of dead Ashbournes. Their painted eyes seemed to follow us.

Thomas pulled out his phone for light. The beam cut through the darkness, showing empty corridor ahead. We walked toward the main staircase.

That's when we heard it. Footsteps above us. Slow, deliberate footsteps moving across the ceiling.

Thomas shone his light up. Nothing there. Just old wooden beams and shadows.

The footsteps stopped. Then they started again, faster this time. Running. They moved directly above us, keeping pace as we walked.

"Just the house settling," Thomas said. But his voice shook.

We reached the staircase. Thomas started down toward the basement where the electrical panel was. I stayed at the top, watching his light descend into darkness.

Halfway down, he stopped. "Victoria, there's something down here."

"Come back up. Please."

"No, wait. I see it. There's someone standing by the breaker box."

My blood went cold. "Thomas, get out of there. Now."

But he kept going. His light bobbed as he descended the last few steps. I heard him reach the bottom.

Then he screamed.

Not a yell of surprise or fear. A real scream, the kind that comes from pain so intense your body can't contain it.

I ran down the stairs, nearly falling in my panic. My hands scraped against the cold stone walls.

The basement was pitch black except for Thomas's phone lying on the floor. Its light pointed at the wall, illuminating nothing useful.

"Thomas?" My voice echoed. "Thomas, where are you?"

A sound came from the corner. Wet, gurgling breaths.

I picked up the phone with shaking hands and pointed it toward the sound.

Thomas lay on the floor. His body was covered in burn marks. Not fresh burns, but old ones, scarred and terrible. The kind that took years to form. His skin looked like melted wax.

But that was impossible. He'd been fine thirty seconds ago.

His eyes rolled toward me. His mouth opened but only a croak came out.

The stranger stepped out of the shadows behind him. "Hello, Victoria."

"What did you do to him?"

"Nothing he didn't deserve. I'm just showing him what Elias felt. Every burn, every moment of agony. Twenty years of pain condensed into thirty seconds. His body is remembering what his mind tried to forget."

Thomas convulsed. More burns appeared on his skin, spreading like wildfire.

"Make it stop," I begged. "Please, he's my brother."

"He was Elias's brother too. That didn't stop him from holding the torches. From lighting the oil. From watching him burn without mercy."

I fell to my knees beside Thomas. His hand reached for mine. I took it, feeling his skin crack under my fingers.

"I'm sorry," Thomas whispered. Blood leaked from his mouth. "I'm sorry, Elias. I'm sorry."

The stranger tilted his head. "Interesting. That's the first time any of you have actually meant it."

Thomas's body went still. His eyes stared at nothing. The burns covered every inch of his skin.

I looked up at the stranger through my tears. "Are you satisfied? Is this what you wanted?"

"This?" He laughed. "This is just the beginning. Thomas got off easy. He died in minutes. Elias burned for hours."

He walked past me toward the stairs. "Two down. Two to go. Tell Father and Mother I'm coming for them soon. Let them feel what it's like to wait for death. To know it's coming and be powerless to stop it."

"And me?" I asked. "When do I die?"

He paused on the stairs. "You're different, Victoria. You actually feel guilt. Real, genuine remorse. That's rare in this family. So you get to live a little longer. You get to watch them all fall first. Consider it a gift."

"Some gift."

"Better than what they gave Elias."

He disappeared up the stairs. The lights came back on, harsh and sudden. I was alone in the basement with my brother's corpse.

His eyes were still open. Still staring. The burns on his skin smoked slightly, like he'd just been pulled from a fire.

I don't know how long I sat there. Time became meaningless. Eventually, I heard Father calling my name from upstairs.

I left Thomas in the basement and climbed the stairs on shaking legs. Father stood at the top, his face grey.

"Where's your brother?"

"Dead." The word came out flat. Empty. "Thomas is dead."

Father pushed past me and ran down the stairs. I heard him scream when he found the body.

Mother appeared in the hallway. She looked at my face and knew. Just knew.

"How many more?" she whispered. "How many more of us have to die?"

I thought about the ritual book. About the words the stranger had read. All parties to the contract. Everyone who prospered from Elias's death.

"All of us," I said. "Every single one."