The night had fallen heavy, the mansion's endless corridors growing colder, darker. I couldn't sleep—not with everything weighing on my mind. The curse, the secrets, and now Thalia's cryptic warning. There was something more beneath the surface of this place, something I still couldn't quite grasp, but I knew one thing for sure: it was hidden, buried deep where no one could find it.
I had spent days in the mansion, prowling through its vast, shadowy halls, feeling like an intruder in my own quest for answers. The mansion, with its cold marble floors and towering, dim-lit rooms, felt alive with secrets, each creak and groan of the house seeming to whisper of a past best left forgotten. But I couldn't stop now. Not when I was so close to understanding what had really happened to Sage.
The mansion had countless rooms—each grander and colder than the last—but tonight, I found something that wasn't on any map, something that had been deliberately hidden away. It was tucked in a forgotten corner of the basement, behind a locked door I had never noticed before. The door, old and weathered, was tucked under a narrow staircase that led nowhere but to shadows.
I shouldn't have even thought of opening it, but my curiosity won out. I had already spent too many sleepless nights wondering what the Vancourt family was hiding. Now, I was going to find out.
I searched for a way to unlock the door, finding a rusted key hidden under an old stack of books in the dusty hallway. It didn't take much to force the lock open, and with a final turn of the key, the door creaked open. The air that escaped from the dark room smelled stale, like it had been sealed off from the rest of the house for decades.
As I stepped inside, I felt an overwhelming chill crawl up my spine. The room was dimly lit by a single flickering candle, and the air was thick with dust, the kind of dust that accumulates only when something is abandoned—forgotten.
And yet, it wasn't abandoned.
The walls were lined with shelves filled with books—books that shouldn't exist. There were ancient, leather-bound tomes, their pages yellowed with age, filled with symbols I couldn't understand, filled with incantations that made my stomach churn. On the far wall, there was a large wooden cabinet, its doors slightly ajar, revealing a collection of strange artifacts—cursed-looking trinkets and odd relics, things that had no place in a normal home.
But the thing that caught my eye the most was the wall opposite the bookshelves. There were photographs, hundreds of them, pinned up in a haphazard arrangement. At first glance, they looked like typical family portraits—posed, somber, black-and-white shots of the Vancourt family through the years. But as I looked closer, something felt off. The people in the pictures weren't just posing for photos—they were performing rituals. In every image, there was something dark about their eyes, an emptiness that made my skin crawl. The faces of the Vancourts, generation after generation, stared back at me like they were watching, waiting.
I stepped closer to the photographs, my heart pounding in my chest. In one picture, a group of Vancourts stood around a strange altar, their hands raised as if in a chant, their eyes glowing with an unnatural intensity. In another, a child, barely old enough to walk, was standing with a knife in hand, poised over a blood-stained cloth. The rituals were unmistakable—sacrifices, dark magic, things I couldn't even begin to comprehend.
It was clear now. The Vancourts' wealth, their power, it wasn't inherited by blood alone. It was earned—through blood sacrifices. These weren't just wealthy aristocrats; they were players in something far darker, something that had been passed down through the generations. Each portrait was a testament to a legacy of occult practices, rituals that bound them to the curse that now held me and my children in its grip.
As I scanned the photographs, my breath caught in my throat. One photo, tucked behind the others, showed Sage. It was a recent one—taken just months before his death. He looked different than I remembered—tired, worn down, his face shadowed with something I couldn't place. His eyes weren't just tired, they were filled with a kind of desperate resolve. He was standing in the middle of a group of Vancourts, all holding hands, their faces serious, the air thick with dark energy.
I couldn't make sense of it at first, but then I saw it. In his hand, barely visible in the corner of the photo, was an old, worn book. The same book I had seen in the corner of the room.
My heart began to race. He had found the truth. He had been trying to fight the curse from within, trying to destroy it before it consumed him, before it destroyed all of us. But it had already been too late. He had discovered the curse's grip too late, and in his final days, Sage had been desperately searching for a way to break free. His death, I now realized, had been no accident. It had been the culmination of his efforts to break the family's grip, a sacrifice to keep the curse alive.
I frantically flipped through the pages of the hidden book. It was filled with ancient texts, coded symbols, and forbidden knowledge—everything Sage must have been researching in his last days. He had been trying to undo the very thing that bound us to the Vancourt legacy, but whatever he had discovered, whatever truth he had uncovered, had cost him his life.
I couldn't help but think—was I too late? Could I still fight back? Or had the curse already taken too much from us?
I shut the book, my fingers trembling, and took a deep breath, steadying myself. I couldn't let it consume me—not yet. I had to keep fighting for my children, for Sage. I couldn't let his sacrifice be in vain.
But as I turned to leave the hidden room, a strange feeling settled in my gut. I wasn't alone. There was something watching me, something that I couldn't see, but could feel in every corner of the room.
The curse was real, and now, more than ever, it was clear that the Vancourts would stop at nothing to keep their power intact. I had uncovered their secrets, but now I was a target.
And I wasn't sure if I was strong enough to face what came next.