Victoria's POV
They took Whitmore's body to the east wing.
I watched them carry him up the stairs, wrapped in a sheet like he was already a ghost. Father called it a heart attack. Natural causes. Nothing suspicious. Just an old man whose time had come.
But I'd seen the frost. I'd seen the darkness in the stranger's eyes when Whitmore died. There was nothing natural about it.
"We need to call the police," I said.
Father turned on me. "And tell them what? That our dead son came back and killed our doctor with black magic? They'll lock us all up."
"Then what do we do?"
"We handle this ourselves." He looked at Thomas. "Like we always have."
Thomas nodded. They'd already decided. Already made their plans without me. That's how it worked in this family. The men decided, and everyone else followed.
Except I was tired of following.
I went to Elias's old room. The one they'd locked twenty years ago and never opened. The door was solid oak, the kind that didn't break easily. I tried the handle anyway.
It opened.
The room smelled like dust and memories. Everything was exactly as he'd left it. Books stacked on the desk. Sketches pinned to the walls. His favorite jacket hanging on the back of the chair. Like he'd just stepped out and would be back any moment.
I walked to the desk. His sketchbook lay open to a half-finished drawing. A portrait of Mother, her face soft and kind. The mother he thought she was before he learned the truth.
"I used to come here," a voice said behind me.
I spun around. The stranger stood in the doorway, watching me with those grey eyes.
"After I came back," he continued. "When the house was empty. I'd sit at that desk and try to remember what it felt like to be him. To be human."
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. My voice shook. "If you're really Elias, even a piece of him, why hurt us?"
He moved closer. Each step was careful, measured. "Because he's inside me, screaming. All his pain, all his betrayal, all his anger. It's like swallowing fire every moment I exist. The only thing that makes it stop is when I make them pay."
"I didn't kill you."
"No." He stopped a few feet away. "You just watched. You saw what they did and you said nothing. For twenty years, you kept their secret. That makes you guilty too."
Tears burned my eyes. "I was fifteen."
"So was I when they murdered me."
The truth of that hit me like a fist. Elias died at fifteen. Never got to grow up, fall in love, have a life. They stole everything from him.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
"Sorry doesn't bring him back. Sorry doesn't heal what was broken. Sorry is just a word people use when they want forgiveness they don't deserve."
He turned to leave, then paused. "But you're different from them. You feel guilt. Real guilt, not just fear of getting caught. That's why you'll live longer than the others. I want you to watch them suffer first."
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with Elias's ghosts.
I spent the next hour searching the room. I didn't know what I was looking for. Evidence? Answers? Some way to fix this nightmare we'd created?
I found his diary in the bottom drawer, hidden under old sweaters. My hands shook as I opened it. The last entry was dated three days before his death.
Father barely looks at me anymore. Mother only talks to me when she needs something. Thomas treats me like I'm invisible. Only Victoria still sees me. Still talks to me like I'm real. Sometimes I think about running away. Just disappearing. Would they even notice I was gone?*
I pressed the diary to my chest and cried. Really cried, for the first time in twenty years. For the brother who felt invisible. For the boy who died thinking no one loved him.
A sound in the hallway made me freeze. Footsteps, slow and deliberate. I wiped my eyes and went to the door.
The hallway was empty. But at the far end, near the old servants' stairs, I saw something that made my blood freeze. The door to the chapel stood open.
We'd sealed that door. Bricked it up after that night. No one should be able to open it.
I walked toward it anyway. Each step felt like moving through water. The air grew colder as I got closer. My breath came out in white clouds.
The chapel was dark. Moonlight came through the broken stained glass windows, casting colored shadows on the floor. The altar where they killed Elias still stood in the center. Someone had cleaned it recently. The stone gleamed.
"He died here."
I spun around. The stranger stood behind me, blocking the doorway.
"They drugged his dinner," he said. His voice was flat, emotionless. "Sleeping pills crushed into his food. He didn't even fight when they carried him down. Just mumbled, confused, asking why."
He walked to the altar and ran his hand across the stone. "They stripped him. Painted symbols on his skin with something that burned. Mother spoke words from a book so old the pages crumbled when she turned them. And Father just watched. His own son, and he just watched."
"Please stop," I begged.
"Why? Does it hurt to hear? Good. It should hurt. They poured oil in a circle around him. Thomas lit the torches. And when Elias woke up, when he realized what was happening, he screamed. He begged. He called for his mother."
The stranger's voice cracked. For just a moment, I heard Elias in it. The real Elias, trapped inside this thing.
"She didn't stop," he whispered. "She just kept chanting while he burned. His own mother, and she watched him die."
I couldn't breathe. The room spun around me.
"You saw it," he said. "Through the crack in that door. You were supposed to be in bed, but you followed them. You watched the whole thing."
"I didn't know what to do. I was just a child."
"So was he."
He moved closer. The temperature dropped so low my teeth chattered. "Do you know what happens when you burn alive? Your nerves scream so loud you can't hear your own voice. Your skin splits. Your blood boils. And all you can think is why. Why are they doing this? What did I do wrong?"
"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I'm so sorry."
"You're going to be." His eyes went completely black. "Before this ends, you're all going to understand what he felt. What I feel. Every. Single. Moment."
The door slammed shut behind him. I was trapped in the dark with the thing wearing my brother's face, and I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to die in this room. Just like Elias did.
But then he walked past me, heading for the door. "Not yet, Victoria. You still have a role to play. You're going to help me destroy them."
The door opened by itself. He disappeared into the darkness beyond.
I collapsed on the floor, shaking so hard I thought my bones would break. Above me, on the ceiling, I saw something that made me scream.
Scorch marks. In the shape of a body. Arms spread wide like an angel. That's where they hung him to burn. That's where my brother died.
And now something wearing his skin had come back to make sure we all joined him.