The familiar halls of my family home seem so much different splattered with blood and cluttered with corpses. The tempting taste of iron hangs heavy in the still air, but all the bodies that lie scattered on the floor remain silent and unmoving.

There is no crying.

There is no weeping.

There is no rage.

Never again will these rooms or halls be the same. The blood is sinking into the floorboards and the plaster walls, and the screams that echoed through that dark night, now passed, are remembered in the silence that has settled in the aftermath.

My footsteps track dark blood in my wake, and my fingers leave similar marks on the doors as I open them wide to the room that I know as my own. Manners and etiquette demand cleanliness, and even now I dispassionately move to the habits long ingrained.

“No saving it.” The dress I’d been wearing is torn in places, but it’s the blood staining it that reduces its value to that of tinder. A waste. It’s all a waste.

A basin of cold water in the corner of the room provides me all that I need to clean myself up. The chill of it ought to be enough to numb me, but ironically, my flesh is unaffected by the cold while it is my mind that is numbed.

Clean and properly dressed, as a count’s daughter of nearly marriageable age ought to be, I return to wandering the halls.

Outside my door is a footman, dressed in proper servant’s livery, the black of it hides well the blood stains, but his pallid face is not so easily disguised. His eyes are distant, and as I touch his cheek, I can feel the æther unmoving within him.

It calls to me, wishing to be given purpose. An unfamiliar part of me knows what I can do with it, but I refrain. I never had any affection for him, I barely even recall him, but I do not spite him so much as to defile his remains.

My footsteps, no longer tacky with darkening blood, echo out loudly through the estate. I can make out the distant sound of the slaves working the vast gardens as if I were standing amidst them, but there is not even so much as a shallow breath coming from within this home.

I find my family scattered around the dining room. Father hangs from the chandelier, his neck slashed, and a fruit bowl placed beneath him to catch the blood that no longer drips. A twisted, tortured expression still paints his face, even in rigor mortis. His sharp eyes, now glazed, no longer see the world around him, but they’re still gazing desperately toward his wife.

The countess, my stepmother, was a kind woman. She always treated me as she did her own children and she did not deserve this.

None of us did.

Like with the count, she was toyed with, bound to the chair and tormented by…

A chill runs through my body at the thought of the creature, the monster, that did this. It looked like a man, but it wasn’t a man.

My feet take me back to my chair, I stand it up, and I sit at attention with all the politeness and formality that I can wield. My brothers and sisters surround me, thrown about with less care, their throats torn, and their limbs mangled.

I can still see that man, his red eyes glowing, as he grabs me and…

I stand, throwing the chair back. It clatters loudly to the ground, the hardwood hitting stone tile.

Nothing moves.

Turning away from the table, I walk out and away from here. Servants lie dead, scattered about the halls, they were treated far less carefully, their redolent blood scattered heartlessly about.

I lick my dry lips, shivering as I bury the temptation.

Apart from all the madness, I find a chair, a familiar and comfortable chair which is right as I’d left it, facing the windows. The curtains remain closed, no servants having come by to ready the room when the morning sun rose.

Perched on the edge of my padded reading chair, I tug at the curtain, letting light into the dark room.

Dazzling, burning, hateful light.

I shut the curtain.

By far, it’s the most pain I’ve ever experienced… yet… I’m not scared by it. I’m not crying, or whimpering.

Curious—yes, I can still feel curious—I tug the curtain aside, and I let the sun kiss the back of my hand. The pain is unendurable, but I can endure…

My pale skin reddens in moments, as if I’d spent a whole day in the sun. Then blisters start to form, small bubbles rising from my flesh like soup put over a fire, but so much quicker. Then my hand sizzles, the skin flaking away and the flesh beneath burning into black charcoal.

The dark æther flowing through me bursts in the light of the sun, unable to bear it for long. I can feel the way it reacts far more acutely than I’ve ever felt it before, and even the æther wants me to pull away from the light.

Before my hand can fully burn down to ash, I pull it back into the darkness. Instinctually, I flood æther through the veins which no longer cycle blood, and I form magic.

The burn on my hand fades away, the flesh rebuilt from nothing in moments, though I do feel a faint exhaustion from the veins that carried the power through me.

So, this is how the monster healed his wounds… What made him invulnerable.

The curtains have fallen at a slight angle, and I can peek out without being struck by direct sunlight. Through that thin gap, I can see the slaves at work in the gardens, the only people here to survive the slaughter.

Even without the whipmaster, they attend to their duties, though curiosity has slowed them. One of them, a girl of about my own age turns to the manor house, and by fortune, ill or fated, her gaze meets mine.

She bows her head and keeps working.

Behind her, the gates creak open, and a small army of soldiers, led by armoured knights, march into the estate. With them is a familiar, pale-faced, young boy. A servant I saw around once or twice. He stares up at the silent manor house, trembling in fear.

I close the curtains and ready to greet the visitors. I should put on some tea.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Miss Christina Greystone, I understand that you lived through an awful tragedy last night, here in this estate, is that right?” The man who stands by the fireplace has a long scar down the right side of his face, but he is otherwise quite unlike the favourable image that I imagined of his sort.

He is not charming nor handsome, but rather he has more grey in his hair than colour and his portly belly protrudes out from his guts. Even so, he wears a grim confidence about him that fits his character nicely, and the weariness in his bearing tells of his long experience in matters of quite poor taste.

“I would certainly agree to consider it a tragedy,” I say, sitting up properly and meeting his eyes as a lady should. My legs crossed and my hands resting over them, I wear a proper black dress as substitute for mourning clothes.

It would be a terrible lie to say that I’m in mourning, but proper procedure and manners must always be observed.

“Yes, well there are a few things that bother me about this, and as one of the only surviving witnesses I had hoped you could shed some light on the matter.” His badge shines dull, but it seems no forgery. The man is certainly a reeve, a proper law-man, but perhaps in all the rush, they found a man of the streets rather than the estates.

“I was unconscious for most of it, so I can’t offer you much insight, I’m afraid,” I reply, thinking back to that dinner, and the red eyes.

“That was at the time of dinner, yes?” He asks, and I nod. “Well, there’s just one issue with that. The boy who left this estate, calling for help, he left a good hour after that initial incident. The servants were mostly alive at that point in time, yet he claims that your entire family, yourself included, were all dead. The perpetrator missing.”

“So, I was mistaken for dead?” I ask, tilting my head and trying to reach the right conclusions to unravel this little mystery. “With all the nature of the incident, it wouldn’t be surprising at all for me to appear as dead. It was rather a mess. Then the perpetrator made their return to finish the servants after the boy left?”

“A decent supposition.” The reeve says, clearly not believing it to be fact. “But the nature of the killings were very much different. The servants were slaughtered in far more… beastly of a fashion. I would suggest it was the work of a separate killer.”

“Interesting…” drawn into the puzzle, I tap at my lips, staring down into the tea that tastes like sour spit. “I would consider one of the slaves, but I think you’d have found evidence by now if it were one of them. Perhaps there are clues in the strange nature of the initial killer?”

“Can you describe them to me? The initial killer, that is.” The man asks. I still haven’t gotten his name, but it seems improper to ask for it now. It would only be taken as a distraction from the topic at hand.

“I… He had red eyes.” Even now I can feel them staring at me, demanding that I bow. I try to think of the man, the monster, but my lips cannot find words to speak.

“That’s all you remember of him?” The reeve asks, sounding quite sure of himself in that assumption.

“You know of him already?” I ask. The only logical reason for his terribly accurate assumption. I can’t think of the man, only his red eyes.

“Miss, may I ask if you’ve ever heard of monsters. The sort that live in the darkness. They look like fine men, or women, dressed up and charming, but unlike us, they cannot bear the sunlight. What’s more, this demon, through some sick perversion or dark hunger, it seeks human blood. Not satisfied simply to feast on the blood, they express themselves through twisted acts of torture. I suspect it isn’t just the blood that they are after, but the fear as well.

“Do you know of such things, Miss Greystone?”

His eyes are dark, and his stance steady. The hand on his jacket ready to draw something from within, a dagger perhaps.

“Miss Greystone, is there a reason that all the curtains are closed?”

“I don’t believe that I’ve gotten your name,” I say, picking up the tea and sipping. It’s utterly revolting, but a lady must maintain her proper form even in such situations as this.

“Reeve Lewark,” He says, steady even at this admission that he isn’t a Grand Reeve.

“Well, Mister Lewark, I don’t know how you found your way into this estate, but I’m quite glad that you did,” I say, setting down the tea. “I would very much like to assist you in your investigation.”

“That won’t be necessary.” The man who interrupts us is no one other than my own uncle. The stately suit he wears is unable to fully cover the greasiness that pours from his every sweat gland. The musk that he pours over himself, unable to fully repair the smell that clings to him.

My sharpened senses are already making for quite the cruel curse.