The week since their deaths had passed like a funeral march, slow and heavy, each day dragging Sunny deeper into an abyss he could not escape. The Willhem household, once a sanctuary of warmth and order, had turned cold and silent, its every corner haunted by echoes of the lives it once sheltered.
In the daylight, Sunny moved mechanically, completing tasks that felt meaningless under the weight of his grief. At night, the house seemed alive in ways it shouldn't have been. Shadows stretched too far, and faint creaks whispered through the stillness, as if the house mourned alongside him.
Alwin Willhem, the man who had stood unyielding on battlefields and in the face of bureaucracy, was gone. Beatrix, her sharp reprimands softened by the warmth in her eyes, was now no more than a memory. Sunny had buried them, but their deaths remained unburied within him, gnawing at his resolve and leaving him hollow.
Yet, grief was not the only force at work. There was something else—something that gnawed at the edges of his mind with cold precision. The bloodstains, though scrubbed and scoured, lingered in his vision. No motive, no culprit, no leads. It was not grief, but the unanswered why that kept him from sleep.
Sunny found himself in the study again, seated before his father's desk, the weight of the room pressing down on him. Alwin had always kept it meticulously organized, each paper, pen, and ledger placed with military precision. Now, it was chaos. Sunny had overturned every drawer, searched every hidden compartment, hoping—praying—for some piece of evidence.
All he had found were fragments.
There were letters from old military comrades, correspondence with academic circles discussing alchemy, and reports from the war—detailing troop movements and defensive strategies. They painted a picture of an intelligent man, disciplined, and loyal. But nowhere in these papers was there a hint of the danger that had crept into their home that night.
Except for one thing.
A single envelope, sealed with a symbol Sunny didn't recognize. It had been tucked away inside a hollowed-out section of the desk, its presence as deliberate as its concealment. The seal bore a strange insignia: a serpent coiled around a scale, its head devouring its own tail. It was embossed in wax the color of tarnished silver, and the sight of it sent a chill crawling up Sunny's spine.
He stared at the envelope for what felt like hours, his thoughts a maelstrom of fear, curiosity, and dread. Finally, with trembling hands, he broke the seal.
Inside was a single sheet of parchment.
The handwriting was not his father's. It was angular and sharp, each stroke of ink deliberate, as if the writer had been carving the words into the page rather than writing them.
"The debt has been paid. Let silence remain."
That was all.
Sunny read the words again and again, his mind struggling to unravel their meaning. The debt has been paid. What debt? His father's? The family's? And paid to whom?
The last line, however, was the most unsettling. Let silence remain.
The phrase clung to his thoughts like a shadow, twisting in his mind with every attempt to make sense of it. Was it a warning? A threat? Or something else entirely?
The room seemed darker now, the air heavier. Sunny's breath came shallow, and he realized his hands were trembling. He set the letter down carefully, as if afraid it might shatter or disappear.
He sat back in the chair, staring at the faint light of the gas lamp illuminating the desk. His mind wandered to the events of that night—the scene he had walked into. Blood pooling on the floorboards, his father's body crumpled in the study, Beatrix in the parlor. No signs of struggle, no shattered windows or broken locks. It had been methodical, deliberate.
Sunny's chest tightened as the memory threatened to overwhelm him, but he forced it back, gripping the arms of the chair until his knuckles whitened. He couldn't afford to give in—not now, not yet.