Ancestral Walls

The house was a wound, perpetually open. Carson felt it in his teeth, a dull, aching throb that had long since burrowed past the enamel, into the bone. He traced the spiraling crack in the plaster above the hearth, a new one since yesterday, spiderwebbing across the faded fresco of some forgotten ancestor whose eyes seemed to follow him with a perpetual, accusatory pity. Every creak of the ancient timbers, every sigh of the wind through the draughty hall, wasn't just wood settling or air moving. It was the house, breathing. A heavy, labored inhale, then a slow, deliberate exhale of dust and decay. He’d lived with it for so long, the oppressive magic, the insidious whisper, that he sometimes wondered if it wasn’t his own mind fracturing, if the true malady lay not in the stones but behind his own eyes. The thought was a familiar comfort, a denial he clung to like a drowning man to flotsam.

He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, the cheap tweed of his jacket chafing against his skin. Outside, early spring, the season of renewal, was a cruel joke. Here, within these walls, the burgeoning life beyond the grimy, leaded windows felt like a distant, mocking echo. He could almost hear the birds, their calls sharp and vibrant, but the sound was muffled, indistinct, as if filtered through layers of dense velvet. A thin layer of pale yellow pollen, carried on a rare breeze that somehow found its way through the crumbling stonework, lay dusting the ornate, unpolished mahogany table beside him. A tiny, inconsequential detail, yet it felt like an invasion, a reminder of the world he was increasingly losing.

He knew Sarah was here. He could feel her presence, a faint, insistent hum beneath the house’s deeper, more malevolent thrum. She’d arrived two days ago, unannounced, a flicker of something too bright, too vital, for this place. He hadn't seen her since she was a child, a sharp-eyed girl who'd poked at dead things with a stick and asked too many questions. Now, she was a woman, a scholar, they said. A ‘seeker of truths’ was how his old steward, the late, lamented Elias, would have put it, with a sigh and a knowing shake of his head. And the truth of this house, Carson knew, was a jagged shard, not meant for gentle handling.

The air grew colder. Not a natural cold, but a sudden, draining chill that seeped into the marrow. The shadows in the corners of the study seemed to deepen, to coil, almost visibly. A faint, earthy scent, like disturbed grave soil mixed with old iron, pricked at his nostrils. The house was reacting. It knew. It always knew when someone came too close, too near the heart of its ancient, parasitic pact. Carson straightened, running a hand over the faint stubble on his jaw. His fingers felt thick, sluggish, as if coated in something invisible and clinging. He clenched his fist, the knuckles popping. He had to be strong, or at least appear so. For himself. For… well, for the house, really.

The heavy oak door, warped and groaning on its hinges, slowly swung inward with a drawn-out, mournful shriek. Sarah stood framed in the doorway, a figure surprisingly composed against the backdrop of the dimly lit hall. Her dark, practical clothes, simple and unadorned, seemed to absorb what little light there was. She didn’t look particularly weary, not like he did. Her eyes, a startling clear grey, moved over him, over the room, missing nothing. He could almost feel her mental inventory, the precise categorization of decay, the cataloging of magical residue. His stomach gave a weak flutter.

“Carson,” she said, her voice quiet, but it cut through the thick silence like a honed blade. No false pleasantries, no tentative greetings. Straight to the point. Always straight to the point. He admired it, even as it tightened a knot of dread in his chest. He cleared his throat. It felt dry, gritty.

“Sarah. Didn't hear you approach. The house… it’s a bit loud sometimes.” He gestured vaguely, a small, tired smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His hand, as it dropped, brushed against the cold, tarnished silver of a snuff box sitting on the table. He fidgeted, pushing it slightly.

She stepped fully into the room, and the door swung shut behind her with a soft click, a sound that seemed too final, too deliberate. The small act felt like a trap springing shut. “Loud, yes. I’ve noticed. It’s been… broadcasting, for want of a better word.” She stopped a few feet from the table, her gaze sweeping over the crack above the hearth, then settling on a collection of ancestral portraits, their faces obscured by grime and shadow. “A very old broadcast.”

Carson ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Just the old bones of the place, settling. Always does this time of year. Damp.” He tried to sound dismissive, but the words felt hollow even to his own ears. He picked up a leather-bound book from the table, its pages brittle with age, and pretended to examine its spine, though his eyes wouldn't focus.

“Damp, perhaps,” Sarah conceded, her voice holding an undertone of something like pity, or perhaps professional assessment. “But not just damp. There’s a binding here, Carson. Stronger than any I’ve encountered outside the Eldrin Spires. And it’s… eroding. Not just the house, but you.” She pointed to his hand, still clutching the book. Her finger wasn’t quite steady. “That tremor. The pallor. The way you seem to almost… flicker, at the edges.”

He snatched his hand back, gripping the book tighter. “Nonsense. Just haven’t been sleeping well.” The tremor was undeniable, a subtle vibration in his entire frame that had become almost constant. He felt it now, a low frequency hum under his skin. He wished he had a drink, something strong enough to numb it, to quiet the house, to quiet Sarah.

“Lack of sleep doesn’t make plaster bleed,” she countered, her voice calm, utterly devoid of judgment, which somehow made it worse. She walked towards the fresco, her fingers hovering inches from the spiraling crack. A faint, viscous sheen was indeed visible, like dried sap, but the colour was undeniably… brown. Rust-brown. “Or paint weep. The sigils are fading, but the drain isn’t. In fact, it’s accelerating.”

Carson felt a cold sweat break out on his upper lip. He wanted to shout at her, to order her out, but the words caught in his throat, thick and unformed. The house itself seemed to press in, a palpable weight on his chest. He could almost hear its low, guttural growl, a warning. He clenched his jaw. “What do you want, Sarah? Why are you really here?”

She turned, her grey eyes meeting his, unwavering. “I want to know what this is. What hold it has on you. On your family. The stories have been circulating again, whispers among the Collegia. The ancestral curse, the blight on the lands. It’s all connected to this house, isn’t it?” She paused, letting the words hang in the heavy air. “And to you, now, it seems. You are the last of the line.”

He flinched. The last. The word tasted like ash. He was the end of a very long, very unfortunate story. “There’s nothing to tell. Just an old house, with old problems. Like any other ancient estate.” He tried to sound dismissive, to wave away her concerns like gnats. He wiped a hand across his brow, then noticed a faint, almost imperceptible sheen of something on his fingers – not blood, not sweat, but a fine, reddish-brown dust. He quickly rubbed it on his trousers. He felt clumsy, cornered. The entire room seemed to narrow, the corners closing in.

“No,” she said, her voice firm. “Not like any other. The Eldrin texts, the older ones, they speak of certain… anchorages. Places where the veil between worlds thins, and something from the other side can be bound. Bound to a bloodline, to a place, to a specific act of… desperation.” Her gaze sharpened, searching his face. “Tell me, Carson. What did your ancestors do?”

He shook his head, a violent, almost uncontrolled movement. “My ancestors were fools, like all the rest! They built too large, they spent too much, they died too young. There’s no ancient pact, no dark binding. Just… bad luck. And a very poorly maintained building.” He knew he sounded frantic, desperate. He was. The truth was a physical pain, a shard lodged in his throat.

“Bad luck doesn’t sustain a necrotic resonance this powerful for five hundred years,” Sarah countered, stepping closer, her voice dropping to a low, persuasive cadence. “Bad luck doesn’t twist the very fabric of nature outside your gates, leaving sickly, blossoming trees whose sap is black. Bad luck doesn't make a man’s blood hum with an alien presence.” She leaned against the heavy table, her elbow nudging the old snuff box. It skittered across the polished surface with a faint clatter. She didn't flinch. Her eyes, instead, fixated on his.

“It started with the first one, didn’t it?” she continued, her voice relentless, probing. “The one who built this wing, the eastern tower. He sought something. Power? Immortality? A cure for some family blight? And he found it, but it found him too. A pact, yes. To serve, to feed, to *be* the house. And in return… what? Protection? Prosperity?” She shook her head. “Look around, Carson. Does this look like prosperity?”

Carson slumped into the heavy, velvet-backed armchair, the ancient springs groaning under his weight. He felt utterly drained, as if her words were siphoning off his remaining strength. He looked at the floor, at the faded pattern of the Persian rug, threads worn thin to the point of transparency. He knew she was right. Every terrible, impossible word she spoke resonated with a deep, sickening truth he’d tried to bury for decades. He’d spent his life trying to ignore it, to rationalize it, to drink it away. But the house always reasserted itself. Always.

“It offered… life,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible, a raw, strangled sound. “Or, not life. Preservation. When the plague came. When the harvests failed. It always… provided. At a cost.” He looked up, his eyes bloodshot, meeting her gaze with a flicker of genuine desperation. “It sustains us. The family. The estate. It’s what keeps the blood flowing, the walls standing.” He swallowed, the words tasting like poison. “It feeds.”

Sarah’s expression softened, but her resolve didn’t waver. “And what does it feed on, Carson? Gold? Crops? Or something far more… intimate?” She waited, patient, but her silence was a weighty thing, pressing down on him. The house creaked again, louder this time, a long, drawn-out moan that seemed to echo deep within the earth.

He finally broke. “Us. Our vitality. Our… memories. It binds us, each generation, a little tighter. It starts with the land, then the livestock, then… us. Our essence. It takes a piece of us, slowly, subtly, until we’re just… husks, tethered to this place.” He felt a sob rising in his throat, hot and bitter. He choked it back. “My father… he was gone long before he stopped breathing. Just an empty shell, staring out at the blighted gardens. I’m next.” His voice cracked on the last word.

“You don’t have to be,” Sarah said, her voice a balm, yet firm. “There are ways. Dangerous ways. But ways, nonetheless. It's a binding, yes, but even the oldest magic has its counter-weaves. Its weaknesses.” She pushed off the table, moving closer, her presence strangely grounding amidst the house’s chaotic energy. “It’s a parasite, Carson. And parasites can be purged. But it requires action. Not just despair.”

He stared at her, a flicker of something he hadn’t felt in years—hope, fragile and terrifying—igniting within him. “Purged? How? It’s part of the foundations, Sarah. Part of *me*.” He gestured to his chest, the faint, shimmering aura of unnatural cold that always seemed to emanate from him. “It’s in the blood.”

“It is in the blood,” she agreed, nodding. “But it's not the blood itself. It uses the bloodline as its anchor, yes. As a channel. To sever that channel, we must break the original binding. The first pact. It lies not just in the stones, but in the echoes of the intentions that created it.” She walked to the fireplace again, examining the fading fresco, her brow furrowed in concentration. “A ritual. A specific invocation, a reversal of the offering. It won't be easy. The house will resist. It will fight with every bit of its ancient, accumulated power.”

Carson pushed himself up, his legs feeling like lead. “Fight? It’s been fighting me my whole life. It’s winning.” He felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to laugh, a dry, rasping sound. “What kind of ritual? What kind of… reversal? I’ve tried everything. Prayers. Exorcisms. Just… ignoring it.”

“Not those kinds of rituals,” she said, turning to face him fully, her expression grave. “This is older. Pre-dates your family’s specific branch of faith. It’s about balance. About giving back what was taken, but in a way that disrupts the parasitic flow. Not a sacrifice *to* it, but a sacrifice *for* the severance.” She took a deep breath. “It will demand a specific offering. Something precious. Something that resonates with the original intent, but twists it. It will also require… focus. Unwavering focus from you, Carson. You are the current anchor. Your will, your intent, will be the hammer that strikes the final blow.”

He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. His head throbbed. The house pulsed, a deeper, faster beat now, like a monstrous heart. The air shimmered, the shadows growing agitated. It knew they were talking of freedom, of betrayal. “What kind of offering?” he whispered, his voice hoarse, fear mingling with that nascent hope. “My fortune? My remaining years?”

“Something more personal, I suspect,” Sarah replied, her gaze distant, as if she were seeing visions in the crumbling walls. “Something of yourself, that it has not yet fully consumed. A memory, perhaps. Or a piece of your lineage’s true heritage, before this blight. The house feeds on your vital essence, yes, but it also craves something else. Something… spiritual. A sense of belonging, a connection to the world beyond its walls, that it systematically grinds away.” She looked at him again, a sudden, urgent intensity in her eyes. “We need to find what it has left untouched. What it has perhaps overlooked in its voracious hunger.”

The silence that followed was different now. Not empty, but charged, expectant. Carson felt a strange energy, a mingling of dread and resolve. The weight of the house was still there, a crushing presence, but for the first time in his life, he felt a faint, distant hum of agency within himself, a spark that wasn't entirely consumed. The conversation hadn't been a battle of wits, not really. It had been a slow, agonizing extraction of truth, followed by the terrifying presentation of an impossible choice. He looked at Sarah, really looked at her, and saw not just a scholar, but a lifeline. A desperate, dangerous lifeline, but a lifeline nonetheless.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, the scents of dust, old iron, and that strange, earthy decay filling his lungs. When he opened them, the oppressive shadows still clawed at the corners of the room, but a sliver of late afternoon sun, thin and pale, had found a gap in the heavy curtains, illuminating a single, dust-laden motte dancing in the air. The house was a wound, yes. But perhaps, just perhaps, it wasn’t a fatal one. Not yet. He had spoken the truth, let it out into the heavy air of the study. And now, the true work, the terrifying work, could begin. He took a deep breath, the air burning slightly in his lungs, and nodded. “Tell me,” he said, his voice stronger than he expected, “what do we need to do first?”