I followed Selene down the hall as she explained things about the staff. "We are Spirit-Bound Constructs, undead homunculi, and blood-marked revenants, crafted by the Vladiscar bloodline during the First True Night War. Each of us were once a loyal servant, noble, or condemned soul who willingly offered ourselves to be woven into the Estate's Heartloom Core—a magical loom that sustains the house and its staff across worlds and time."
She paused in her explanations to correct the position of a tilted picture on the wall. I looked up at it with squinted eyes and tilted my head to the side. The painting was... inhumanly beautiful to say the least. It was of a woman, I'm assuming was my mother. She had the kind of beauty that would unsettle more than it enticed. Her skin was alabaster-pale, veined subtly with "moving" shadows, as though something beneath her flesh still stirred. Her eyes "shifted" between black-red voids and crimson slit-irises, and her hair spilled down her back like liquid night, tipped with scarlet threads that "moved" as if alive.
She wore an elaborate gown of black widow silk, draped like a mourning veil around her body. I'm sure if I heard her voice it would be low, intimate, and threaded with a hypnotic hum.
"Your mother. Mistress Nyxaria was… perfect in her horror. Beautiful in her silence. Like a still lake that drowns kings. I was created by her hand, my porcelain bones shaped by spellcraft and soul-silk spun from the Mistress's own blood. I was formed as a Revenant Homunculus, a Spirit-Grafted Construct. I, like the others, was designed to be a silent extension of the Crimson Widow's will."
She turned and continued to walk through the hallway. "We shall fulfill that role with grace and unwavering obedience."
We turned the corner only to see the walls were bleeding—actually bleeding. It offended the aesthetic integrity!
A tall, cadaverously thin man with impeccable posture and limbs that moved like a grandfather clock: exact, smooth, unnervingly deliberate, stood at the end of the hall with the soft click of polished shoes and composure.
He wore gloved hands clasped behind his back, as he towered over three girls. The girls were identical in height and form: lithe, doll-like young women with skin like ivory parchment and hair spun from silver-white thread. Each wore a long, Victorian maid dress of deep gray-black and a porcelain mask etched with faint runes. The only difference among them: the flower embroidered into their left shoulder.
The one with violet-black petals. was seated cross-legged on the floor playing with a silk ribbon; The one with bone-white blossoms, was sharpening a bone needle against the wall itself; and the one with crimson-red blooms was humming faintly while tracing blooming roses onto the wallpaper with her fingertip.
"My dear... girls," the man's voice settled—like a grave decision whispered to a mirror. All three turned simultaneously, masks glinting like porcelain moonlight.
Violet-black petal girl pouted. It was rather cute. "We were only decorating."
Bone-white blossoms girl just shrugged, "The wall begged for something more interesting."
Meanwhile, Crimson-red blossoms girl turned her head to the side facing the wall opposite of us. "It wanted to bloom, Mister Crowe."
Thaddeus blinked slowly once. "The second floor is not the bleeding gallery. This wing is meant for guests with fragile constitution and still-beating hearts."
He turned his head slightly to the wall the Crimson-red blossoms girl was currently looking at, where a crimson rose was slowly growing—pulsing softly with rhythmic drips.
"Furthermore, the wallpaper is enchanted parchment made from the skin of a forgotten god-scribe. Defacing it with dream-root glyphs and mirth-blooming hexweeds is not 'decoration.' It is sacrilege."
The air stilled. The flames in the sconces bent slightly away from him.
Bone-white blossoms girl spoke in a voice as dry as salt, "We were bored."
Thaddeus stepped forward and knelt beside her, one knee touching the floor. He lifted her chin with the crook of a single gloved finger.
"Then by all means, allow me to assign you to the basement mirror archive. Sealing old regrets with soul-thread should provide… days of stimulation."
Crimson-red blossoms girl quietly mumbled, "We'll clean the wall."
Violet-black petals girl sighed. "We'll rebind the growth."
Bone-white blossoms girl paused but acquiesced "…Apologies, Mister Crowe."
He rose without a sound, adjusting a cufflink with clinical grace.
"See that you do. If the wall weeps again, I shall assume it is from embarrassment—and have it replaced. With one of you."
Without another word, he turned to walk away only to stop when he saw Selene and I watching the scene.
With an amused smirk, I waved. "...Hello?"
Beside me, I heard Selene sigh exasperatedly. Hmm? Do they do this stuff often?
"Forgive me Mistress, I shall begin introductions." She gestured to the man, "this is Thaddeus Crowe, the head butler. He oversees all estate operations: schedules, rituals, guest access, formal correspondence, staff hierarchy, dimensional maintenance, and ancestral pprotocol."
Thaddeus bowed deeply. "It is an absolute pleasure to finally able to greet the Mistress Nocturne. I am at your service if you of need of me."
Thaddeus Crowe had skin the color of old parchment, stretched thin over hollow bones. His eyes were deep-set voids, glimmering faintly with violet-blue soullight. Dressed in a charcoal black tailcoat, silver pocketwatch ticking faintly from his vest, and gloves so pristine they looked sewn onto his hands.
His voice was cold velvet: formal, low, and detached—never raised, even during the earlier reprimanding of the girls. It stayed steady the whole time. In a way it was way worse than yelling.
I didn't know what to say so I simply nodded my head. That seemed to be good enough of a response because even though his facial expressions didn't change at all, his eyes definitely brightened and I swore there was extra prep in his steps as he moved down the stairs.
I moved onto the three lookalike girls that were looking at me as if I was some kind of celebrity.
Selene gestured at them, "these girls are your hallway attendants and message runners. They deliver messages, notes, whispers, and even memories on your or my behalf. They oversee the shifting architecture of the Nocturne Estate. Certain doors only open when they pass. They also manage the Clockwork Locks, enchanted mechanisms laced into the walls, mirrors, and shadow paths of the house."
She pointed to the girl with violet-black petals, "this is Hemlock. She is the most talkative of the triplets. She's observant, clever, and fond of making poison metaphors in casual conversation. She often knows who's lying before they speak. It is a uncanny ability."
Selene then moved on to the girl with the bone-white blossoms, "this is Hellebore, the quietest and cruelest. She has a habit of simply appearing behind people without speaking."
Cruelest?
She moved onto the last girl, the one with crimson-red bloom. "And lastly this is—."
The girl in question interupted Selene and justed in. Bouncing up and down she exclaimed, "I am Hyacinth! Nice to finally greet you Mistress Petal. My sisters and I have waited for so long to serve you."
Hyacinth's enthusiasm was… a lot.
She practically vibrated with excitement, hands clasped behind her back as she rocked on her heels like a wind-up doll too full of spring. Her voice had that musical quality that teetered between adorable and deeply unsettling—like a music box you find in the attic that still works after a hundred years and shouldn't.
"We've already prepared your rooms," she said with a delighted hum. "Dusted the drapes. Brushed the shadow-moths from the curtains. Rewound the dreams in your pillow."
"…Rewound the what now?"
"Dreams," Hemlock chimed in, eyes behind her mask tilted slightly as if amused. "The Estate stores memories in the fabric of rest. Yours were a little tangled. So we sorted them."
"For comfort," Hellebore added, completely monotone. "You'd scream in your sleep otherwise."
"Oh," I said, blinking. "Cool. Totally normal."
Selene placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. "The Estate is alive, in a sense. It responds to your presence. Now that you've awakened, it is reshaping itself to accommodate your soul-thread. The triplets are attuned to its more… volatile tendencies."
"Volatile," I repeated, deadpan. "That's reassuring."
Without waiting for a reply, Hyacinth spun on her heel and skipped ahead. "Library's this way! But mind the gallery—if the portraits start to breathe, don't look away. That's how they notice you."
Hemlock and Hellebore followed after her with far more grace, shadows rippling at their feet like obedient pets.
Selene began walking beside me again, her voice returning to that quiet calm. "You'll find the library an excellent place to begin understanding this world. Its tomes are protected, but not restricted to you. There's also a records wing—should you wish to learn more about Mistress Nyxaria, or Lord Azekhael's fall."
"I do," I muttered, gaze flicking back to the bleeding hallway we'd left behind. "Eventually. Right now I just need to not feel like a corpse with amnesia."
We passed through an arch of wrought bone and etched obsidian, and the temperature shifted. Cooler. Still. The torches here burned with blue flame, casting the stone walls in shades of sapphire and moonlight. I felt it before I saw it—that prickling hum at the edge of my mind. Something old was watching.
Then we stepped into the library.
It was cathedral-sized—vaulted ceilings vanishing into darkness, bookshelves spiraling upward like twisting staircases made of ink-stained wood and carved fangs. Some shelves moved slowly. It felt like it was breathing, even. A few staircases walked themselves into new positions, and the chandeliers swung with the rhythm of an invisible wind.
At the center of the room sat a reading table carved from black glass, veins of gold and red pulsing faintly within it like a heartbeat.
On the far wall, a massive mural—part mosaic, part living magic—depicted a flaming figure with skeletal wings standing over a battlefield of ash and stars. Azekhael, my grandfather, I presumed. I was a little surprised that his weapon wasn't a sword, but a brand of divine judgment, crackling with fire that licked into both angels and demons alike.
Hyacinth spun in a circle in the middle of the library and exhaled a dreamy sigh. "Isn't it wonderful? I used to sneak in and read stories about the Hollow Flame before I even knew what love was."
Hellebore touched the spine of a thick tome gently. "Knowledge is stacked like bones here. Pick the wrong one, and the whole skeleton collapses."
Hemlock just looked at me. "So, Mistress. What is it you wish to know first?"
I stared up at the shelves, at the ever-moving staircases, the breathing walls, the pulsing mural of fire and silence.
What did I want to know first?
As I contemplated this a towering and skeletal woman, her body wrapped in layered mourning robes of raven-black silk embroidered with faded runes of memory and loss. She was carrying withered and old scrolls in her hands. Hands that were thin bone wrapped in translucent parchment-flesh, elongated fingers ending in quill tips of obsidian and silver.
Her skull-like face was half-covered by a veil of pages—each one blank. Her eyes glowed faintly with candlelight, sunken but ever-watchful.
When she walked, her footsteps were silent, but the sound of scratching quills echoed faintly behind her.