CHAPTER 1: THE SILENT ESTATE

The year was 1864, and the American South was burning. General Sherman was carving a path of destruction toward the sea, leaving twisted railroad tracks and scorched earth in his wake. But in a secluded corner of Burke County, Georgia, miles away from the main roads, the Thornhill Estate sat untouched.

To an outsider, Thornhill looked like a fortress of white timber and stone, defying the war that raged around it. The main house was massive, a three-story testament to wealth, with Greek revival columns that seemed to hold up the sky. But there was something wrong with the atmosphere here. It was heavy. Stagnant.

On neighboring plantations, even in the worst of times, there was sound. The rhythm of the work songs in the fields, the clanging of the smithy, the shouts of overseers, the weeping of families separated by sale. Sound was the heartbeat of the plantation system, however cruel. But Thornhill was silent.

There were no hymns on Sunday mornings. No chatter between the rows of cotton. The enslaved people of Thornhill moved with their heads down, eyes fixed on the red Georgia clay, terrified to make a sound that might draw the attention of the mistress.

Katherine Thornhill.

She was a legend in Burke County, though not the kind people admired. They called her the “Ice Queen” behind her back. She was a striking woman, tall and severe, always dressed in mourning black since her husband, a Confederate officer, had died early in the war. But she didn’t grieve like a normal widow. She didn’t weep. She organized.

Katherine was obsessed with the concept of “Continuity.” She believed that the Confederacy was doomed—she was one of the few who saw the writing on the wall as early as 1862. She believed that when the South fell, chaos would consume the land. Her solution was isolation and biological control. She intended to build an ark, not of wood, but of blood.

Her control over the estate was absolute. She acted as her own overseer, riding a black mare through the fields, a notebook always in her hand. In that notebook, she didn’t record crop yields or market prices. she recorded pregnancies.

“Subject 44: Gestation week 12. Adequate growth,” she would write, sitting atop her horse, looking down at a pregnant enslaved woman as if she were inspecting a prize heifer.

But the rumors that floated into the nearby town of Waynesboro were far darker than typical plantation cruelty. Traders and supply men whispered that Katherine was running a breeding program. That she forced pairings between the enslaved based on physical traits she found desirable—height, strength, obedience. She was trying to breed a “perfect” servant class.

Yet, even that horror paled in comparison to what was happening inside the big house.

Katherine had four children: Jonathan, the eldest; Grace; Thomas; and Elanina, the youngest. They were beautiful, pale, and ethereal, like porcelain dolls kept on a high shelf. They were forbidden to leave the estate grounds. They were forbidden to speak to the enslaved workers, other than to give orders. They were forbidden to read newspapers.

Katherine told them the world outside was a disease. “Out there,” she would say, gesturing to the tree line with a gloved hand, “men are mongrels. They have no honor, no lineage. We are the last pure blood. We are the Continuity.”

As the war dragged on and food became scarce, Katherine’s obsession deepened. She cut rations for the enslaved to starvation levels, yet the table in the main house was always set with silver. But the children were starving in a different way. They were starving for truth.

Elanina, eighteen years old and sharp as a tack, began to notice the inconsistencies. She noticed that her mother never spoke of their father with love, only with a clinical respect for his “genetic contribution.” She noticed the way her mother looked at Jonathan—not with maternal affection, but with a possessive, hungry gaze.

And she noticed the late-night visits.

Jonathan, who was twenty-eight, would be summoned to Katherine’s chambers after midnight. Elanina would hear the heavy oak door close. Sometimes, she heard arguing. Sometimes, she heard weeping. But mostly, she heard silence. When Jonathan emerged the next morning, he would be grey-faced, refusing to meet his siblings’ eyes, scrubbing his skin raw in the washbasin.

The silence of Thornhill wasn’t peace. It was a lid screwed tight over a boiling pot. And Elanina was about to be the one to knock it off.

CHAPTER 2: THE RED LEDGER

March 17th, 1864. The date would be etched into Elanina’s memory forever.

A storm had been threatening all day, the sky turning a bruised purple. The air pressure was giving everyone a headache. Katherine had been agitated since dawn, pacing the hallways, checking the locks on the doors, muttering about “security” and “leaks.”

Around dusk, Katherine took a lantern and headed out to the smokehouse, distracted by a report of stolen hams. In her haste, she made a mistake she had never made before: she left the key in the door of her private study.

The study was the brain of the estate. No one was allowed in there, not even Jonathan. It was where Katherine kept the estate’s finances, the deeds, and her journals.

Elanina stood in the hallway, watching her mother’s lantern bob away into the darkness of the yard. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew the punishment for disobedience—Katherine had once whipped Grace for smiling at a field hand. But the questions that had been gnawing at Elanina were too loud to ignore.

She pushed the door open.

The study was cold. The walls were lined with books on anatomy, agriculture, and history. On the desk, illuminated by the dying light of the fire, lay a stack of journals.

Elanina moved quickly, her hands shaking. She picked up the top one. It was recent. She flipped it open.

March 3rd. Supplies running low. The subjects in the cellar are restless. Need to increase the laudanum dosage.

The cellar? Elanina frowned. They used the cellar for wine and root vegetables. Who were the “subjects”?

She picked up an older journal, bound in cracked red leather. The date on the spine was 1846—the year she was born.

She opened it to her birth month. She expected to see a sentimental entry about her arrival. Maybe a prayer for her health. Instead, she found a chart.

Experiment Phase 2. Dam: Catherine Thornhill. Sire: Jonathan Thornhill. Offspring: Female. Naming designation: Elanina. Notes: No deformities. Intelligence appears high. The bloodline strengthens with concentration.

Elanina read the line again. Sire: Jonathan Thornhill.

The world tilted on its axis. A wave of nausea crashed over her so violent she had to cover her mouth to keep from vomiting. Jonathan. Her brother. Her brother was her father.

She scrambled backward, dropping the book. It hit the floor with a heavy thud. She grabbed another journal from 1848. Sire: Jonathan. Dam: Grace. Result: Stillborn. Deformity of the spine. Disposed of in the west woods.

Grace. Her sister. Katherine had forced Jonathan to… with Grace?

The horror was too big to comprehend. It wasn’t just breeding. It was a cult of incest. Katherine was trying to distill the family bloodline by folding it over and over on itself, like kneading dough. She viewed her children not as people, but as stock.

“I told you curiosity was a sin.”

Elanina spun around. Katherine was standing in the doorway. She hadn’t gone to the smokehouse. She had been watching.

The older woman stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. The lock clicked with a finality that echoed in Elanina’s bones. Katherine’s face was unreadable, a mask of smooth, pale porcelain.

“You read it,” Katherine said simply. It wasn’t a question.

“You…” Elanina backed away until she hit the desk. “You’re sick. You’re the devil. Jonathan is my brother!”

“Jonathan is a pure vessel,” Katherine said, walking closer. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. “And so are you. Do you think the kings of old married commoners? Do you think the Pharaohs diluted their power? No. They kept it within. They built dynasties that lasted thousands of years.”

“We aren’t Pharaohs!” Elanina screamed, the tears finally coming hot and fast. “We’re people! You made him… you made him touch me?” The realization that she might be next, that she was “of age,” hit her like a physical blow.

Katherine stopped inches from her face. She smelled of rain and iron. “I did what was necessary to save us. The world is ending, Elanina. When the Yankees come, they will destroy everything. They will mix the races, they will destroy the culture, they will dilute the blood until everyone is gray and weak. Only we will remain. Pure. Strong. Unbroken.”

She reached out and stroked Elanina’s hair. Elanina flinched as if burned.

“You are ungrateful,” Katherine whispered. “I have given you a destiny. I have made you a goddess among insects. And you want to cry about morality?”

Suddenly, Katherine’s hand snapped around Elanina’s throat. It wasn’t a stranglehold, but a warning grip—hard, possessive.

“You will not speak a word of this. Not to Grace, not to Thomas. If you do, I will send you to the cellar. And believe me, daughter, you do not want to see what lives down there.”

Katherine released her. “Go to your room. Lock the door. We will discuss your future in the morning.”

Elanina fled. She ran up the grand staircase, her breath sobbing in her chest. But she didn’t go to her room. She went straight to Jonathan’s door. She didn’t care about the rules anymore. She knew the truth. And she knew that if they stayed in this house one more day, they would be consumed by it.

CHAPTER 3: THE AWAKENING

Jonathan’s room was dark, smelling faintly of tobacco and sweat. When Elanina burst in, he was sitting by the window, staring out at the storm-tossed trees. He didn’t look surprised to see her. He looked resigned.

“She found you,” he said. His voice was hollow, stripped of all emotion.

“I saw the book, Jonathan,” Elanina whispered, closing the door and leaning against it, trembling. “I saw… I saw who I am. Who you are to me.”

Jonathan finally turned. In the flashes of lightning, his face looked skeletal. The burden of twenty years of secrets had eaten him alive. “I tried to stop her,” he rasped. “When you were born… I tried to take you away. She has men. The overseers. They obey her, not me. She told me she’d kill you if I left.”

“She’s mad,” Elanina said, moving to him, grabbing his hands. They were cold. “We have to leave. Tonight. The storm is loud; it will cover our tracks.”

“Leave?” Jonathan laughed, a dry, cracking sound. “Where? The patrols are everywhere. The Union scouts will shoot us as spies. The Confederates will return us to her. And she… she has eyes in the woods.”

“I don’t care!” Elanina hissed. “I’d rather die in the woods than live in this… this farm. We aren’t a family, Jonathan. We’re her livestock.”

That word struck him. Livestock. He looked at his sister—his daughter—and something in his eyes shifted. The dull resignation cracked, revealing a glimmer of rage.

“Grace,” he said. “We can’t leave Grace.”

“Get Thomas,” Elanina commanded, feeling a sudden surge of strength. The truth hadn’t broken her; it had hardened her. “I’ll get Grace. Meet me at the old well behind the kitchen in twenty minutes. Bring a knife.”

The next twenty minutes were a blur of terror. Elanina crept through the hallways like a thief in her own home. The floorboards, which she had known since she was a baby, suddenly felt like treacherous traps waiting to squeak and betray her.

She found Grace in the nursery, sewing by candlelight. Grace was the quietest of them, always looking at the floor. When Elanina told her, whispered the frantic truth into her ear, Grace didn’t cry. She simply nodded, as if she had always known that the rot in their family went down to the bone.

“The cellar,” Grace whispered. “We have to let them out.”

Elanina froze. “The cellar? Who?”

“The others,” Grace said, her eyes wide. “I hear them. Through the vents. There are children down there, Elanina. Her failures. The ones she didn’t want us to see.”

Elanina felt the blood drain from her face. The subjects.

“We can’t,” Elanina said. “We can barely save ourselves.”

“Then I’m not going,” Grace said, picking up her sewing scissors. They glinted in the candlelight. “I won’t leave them to her.”

It was a suicide mission. Elanina knew it. But looking at Grace’s fierce, terrified face, she knew there was no choice. They couldn’t just escape the monster; they had to cripple her.

CHAPTER 4: THE DESCENT

The storm had unleashed its full fury by the time they met Jonathan and Thomas at the well. The rain was blinding, washing away the world in sheets of gray.

“The cellar?” Jonathan hissed when Elanina told him the change in plan. “Are you insane? The overseers sleep by the barn, right next to the cellar entrance.”

“Grace won’t move unless we do,” Elanina shouted over the thunder. “And if there are children down there…”

Jonathan cursed, wiping rain from his eyes. He pulled a heavy rusted key from his pocket. “I stole this from her room while she was downstairs. It opens the padlock.”

They moved as a unit, huddled together, soaked to the bone. They skirted the edge of the house, using the thunder to mask their footsteps. The entrance to the cellar was a heavy slanted door set into the stone foundation.

Jonathan fumbled with the lock. His hands were shaking. Click.

He heaved the door open. The smell hit them instantly—a stench of unwashed bodies, mold, and excrement. It was the smell of a dungeon.

Jonathan lit a covered lantern, and they descended the stone steps.

What they found stopped the breath in their throats.

The cellar wasn’t just a root cellar. It was a prison. Iron bars had been installed, creating makeshift cages. inside, huddling on dirty straw, were children.

There were about twenty of them. Some were toddlers, some looked to be teenagers. They were pale, ghostly pale, with the same dark eyes as Katherine. But they were twisted. Some had limbs that bent at wrong angles. Others rocked back and forth, humming silently. They were the “discards” of Katherine’s experiments—the results of incest that hadn’t met her aesthetic standards.

“Oh, God,” Thomas vomited into the corner.

Grace ran to the bars. “We’re here,” she whispered. “We’re going to get you out.”

The children stared back, silent. They had never known a world outside these stone walls. They didn’t know what “out” meant.

Jonathan found the key ring hanging on a nail by the door—arrogance. Katherine was so sure of her control she didn’t even hide the keys well. He began unlocking the cells.

“You have to run,” he told a boy who looked to be about ten. “Run to the woods. Run far away.”

The boy didn’t move. He just stared at the lantern light, mesmerized.

“They don’t understand,” Elanina realized with horror. “They’ve been down here their whole lives.”

Suddenly, the heavy door at the top of the stairs slammed shut.

The sound echoed like a gunshot. The lantern flame flickered.

“Going somewhere?”

The voice came from the top of the stairs. Katherine.

She stood silhouetted by the lightning outside, a pistol in her hand. Beside her stood two burly overseers, men with callous faces who knew exactly what went on at Thornhill and didn’t care as long as they were paid.

“I gave you paradise,” Katherine shouted, her voice distorted by the acoustics of the stone chamber. “And you chose the pit. Very well.”

She signaled to the overseers. “Lock it. Board it up. If they want to be with the rejects, let them rot with them.”

“No!” Jonathan charged up the stairs, a roar of pure, desperate rage tearing from his throat.

Katherine didn’t hesitate. She fired.

The shot was deafening in the enclosed space. Jonathan crumpled backward, tumbling down the stone steps to land at Elanina’s feet. Blood bloomed on his chest, dark and fast.

“Jonathan!” Elanina screamed, dropping to her knees.

“Seal it!” Katherine commanded.

The doors slammed. The sound of heavy beams being hammered into place followed. Then, silence.

They were trapped. Buried alive with the sins of their mother.

CHAPTER 5: THE UNDERGROUND WAR

Darkness. Absolute, suffocating darkness, broken only by the dying flicker of the lantern Jonathan had dropped.

Elanina pressed her hands against Jonathan’s wound. He was breathing, but it was wet and ragged. “Don’t die,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t die.”

“The… back…” Jonathan wheezed, gripping her wrist. “The drainage… tunnel.”

Elanina looked around frantically. The cellar was huge, extending under the entire main house. “Grace! Thomas! Look for a drain!”

The “reject” children were whimpering now, the sound of the gunshot having broken their silent trance. It was a cacophony of terror.

Thomas found it behind a stack of rotting barrels. A low, brick archway, barely three feet high, barred with an iron grate. It was the old drainage system meant to prevent flooding.

“It’s rusted shut!” Thomas yelled, kicking at it.

“Help him!” Elanina screamed at Grace.

Grace and Thomas pulled at the grate. Rust flaked off, cutting their hands. They pulled until their muscles screamed, fueled by the adrenaline of death. With a screech of tearing metal, the grate gave way.

“Go,” Jonathan whispered. His eyes were glazing over.

“We aren’t leaving you,” Elanina sobbed.

“I can’t… walk,” he said. “Take them. Take the children. That is… my penance.”

He looked at the huddle of pale, terrified children—his children, his siblings, his shame. “Save them, Elanina. Be the mother she never was.”

Jonathan closed his eyes. His chest rose one last time and fell.

Elanina screamed, a sound that should have shattered the stone walls. But there was no time for grief. The air in the cellar was already getting stale.

“Into the tunnel,” she ordered, her voice cold and hard as steel. She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was the leader of the lost.

One by one, they crawled into the damp, slime-coated tunnel. Elanina went last. She looked back at her brother’s body, lying in the flickering lantern light, surrounded by the straw of the cages.

“I will come back for you,” she whispered. “And I will kill her.”

The tunnel was a nightmare. It was tight, crawling with insects, and smelled of rot. They crawled on hands and knees through mud and filth. The “cellar children” were terrified, freezing up, needing to be pushed and pulled along.

It felt like hours. It might have been minutes. Finally, Elanina felt a draft of fresh air. They reached the end—a grate that opened out into a drainage ditch in the woods, about a hundred yards from the house.

They tumbled out into the storm, covered in mud, gasping for air. The rain washed the filth from their faces.

“Where now?” Thomas asked, shivering violently.

Elanina looked back at the house. Lights were blazing in every window. Katherine was awake.

“To the quarters,” Elanina said.

“The slave quarters?” Grace asked. “They hate us. We’re her children.”

“We’re her victims,” Elanina said. “And they hate her more than they hate us. Tonight, we have the same enemy.”

CHAPTER 6: THE UPRISING

The slave quarters were dark, save for the embers of cooking fires. Elanina walked straight into the center of the muddy lane, carrying a child with a twisted leg in her arms. Grace and Thomas followed, herding the others.

A door creaked open. An older man, Isaac, stepped out. He held a pitchfork. He looked at the mud-caked, bloody white woman holding a deformed child.

“What is this?” Isaac rumbled.

“She killed Jonathan,” Elanina said loudly, her voice cutting through the rain. “She shot him. And she locked these children—her own blood—in the dark to die.”

More doors opened. Men and women stepped out, sensing the shift in the world. They saw the pale, frightened children—the rumors made flesh.

“She is a monster!” Elanina shouted. “She breeds us like cattle! She kills us like dogs! Tonight, she ends!”

Isaac looked at the child in Elanina’s arms. He looked at the fear in Grace’s eyes. He saw the blood on Elanina’s dress.

“Why should we help you?” a woman asked from the shadows. “You ate the silver corn while we ate the husks.”

“Because I know where she keeps the powder,” Elanina said. “I know where the guns are. And I know she is alone in that house with two cowards.”

Silence stretched. Then, Isaac lowered the pitchfork. “Show us.”

The uprising didn’t start with a shout. It started with a whisper that turned into a roar. The enslaved people of Thornhill, starved and abused for years, armed themselves with farming tools, clubs, and the few weapons Elanina helped them scavenge from the outbuildings.

They marched on the big house.

The overseers fired two shots before they were swarmed. They didn’t survive the first wave.

Then, they reached the porch. The massive white columns, symbols of power, looked fragile now.

Elanina kicked the front door open.

Katherine was waiting in the grand foyer. She had reloaded her pistol. She stood at the base of the stairs, looking like a queen whose kingdom was burning.

“Get back!” she screamed. “I am your mistress! I am Thornhill!”

“Thornhill is dead,” Elanina said, stepping into the light. Behind her, Isaac and a dozen others filled the doorway.

Katherine raised the pistol, aiming at Elanina’s heart. “I brought you into this world. I will take you out.”

Crack.

The shot didn’t come from Katherine.

It came from the top of the stairs.

Katherine stumbled forward, a look of pure shock on her face. She touched her back. Her hand came away red.

She turned. Standing on the landing, holding a small pearl-handled revolver, was Grace.

Grace, the quiet one. Grace, who sewed and looked at the floor.

“You aren’t my mother,” Grace said, her voice steady. “You’re just a breeder.”

Katherine fell. She didn’t die instantly. She lay on the marble floor, gasping, looking up at the children she had warped and the people she had enslaved.

Elanina knelt beside her. “Do you see?” she whispered. “You wanted continuity? This is it. We are surviving. Without you.”

Katherine Thornhill’s eyes glazed over. The architect of the nightmare was gone.

CHAPTER 7: ASHES TO ASHES

The fire started in the library. It was fitting that the journals—the records of their shame—were the first to burn.

The flames licked up the velvet drapes, consumed the silk furniture, and roared through the heart of the house. The white paint blistered and blackened.

Elanina stood in the rain, watching it burn. The “cellar children” were huddled in the barn, being tended to by the women of the quarters. They were confused, but they were warm.

The house collapsed inward with a sound like a dying beast.

There was no celebration. Just a grim sense of finality.

“What do we do now?” Thomas asked. The sun was beginning to rise, painting the smoke-filled sky in hues of bloody orange.

“We disappear,” Elanina said. “Union soldiers are a day’s march away. When they get here, they will find a ruin. They will find the bodies of the overseers and… a woman who died in the fire.”

“And us?”

“We split up,” Elanina said. “We take the little ones. We go North, or West. We change our names. We never speak of Thornhill again. The bloodline… it ends here. We don’t continue it. We survive it.”

Isaac approached them. “We are leaving,” he said. “Heading toward the Union lines. You should come. The roads aren’t safe.”

Elanina shook her head. “If we go with you, they’ll think you kidnapped us. It puts you in danger. Go. Be free.”

Isaac nodded. He looked at the burning house one last time, then spat on the ground. “Goodbye, Miss Elanina.”

“Goodbye, Isaac. And… thank you.”

CHAPTER 8: THE GHOST OF BURKE COUNTY

Weeks later, when the Union 14th Corps marched through Burke County, they found the charred remains of the Thornhill Estate.

The report filed by Captain H.J. Miller was brief. Found plantation destroyed by fire. No survivors located. Evidence of a cellar containing iron cages, purpose unknown. Locals refuse to speak of the location. Moving on.

The jungle reclaimed the land quickly. Vines wrapped around the blackened stones. The forest swallowed the fields.

But stories have a way of surviving even when buildings don’t.

In the decades that followed, a legend grew in Georgia. Hunters would talk about seeing pale, ghost-like figures in the woods. They whispered about a “White Witch” who walked the ruins, searching for her ledger.

But the truth was far more human.

Elanina made it to Ohio. She married a baker, a simple man with a kind heart. She never told him about her family. She never had children. She broke the loop.

Grace became a nurse in Chicago, dedicating her life to caring for orphans.

The “cellar children” were scattered. Some died of their deformities, their bodies too broken by their mother’s experiments. But some lived. They blended into the growing cities of America, carrying the secret of their origin in their DNA.

Today, if you go to Burke County, you can still find the foundation stones of Thornhill if you know where to look. It’s deep in the woods, covered in moss.

Locals say that if you stand there on a quiet night, you can hear a woman weeping. But if you listen closely, you’ll realize it isn’t weeping.

It’s the sound of a pen scratching on paper.

Katherine Thornhill wanted to be remembered. She wanted her bloodline to rule. In the end, she got her wish, but not in the way she intended. She didn’t create a dynasty of kings. She created a diaspora of survivors.

And every time someone tells the story—the story of the mother who bred her own sons, the story of the house that held a dungeon—Katherine dies again.

And that, Elanina would have said, is the only continuity she deserves.

SIDE STORY: THE CHILDREN OF THE MOSS ROAD

Burke County, Georgia – Autumn, 1891

The road was gone.

What used to be a wagon path—overgrown, forgotten, swallowed by briars—was nothing more than a faint indentation in the earth. But Samuel Blythe could see it anyway. He felt it. It pulled on him the way a memory pulls on an old scar.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at the pine forest ahead. The air smelled of resin and decay. Spanish moss hung from the branches like old ghosts stretching down to whisper warnings.

He stepped forward.

The locals had told him not to come. They said the forest wasn’t safe. They said the land was cursed. They said people went missing near the old Thornhill grounds.

But Samuel had come anyway.

Because he had received a letter. A short, trembling letter written in a neat, almost childlike hand.

“I believe you are my kin. I believe we share a bloodline we must never speak aloud. Please come. I need help.
I have no one else.
—G. T.”

He hadn’t heard the name Thornhill in years.

Not since his mother, Elanina Blythe, had died in her sleep twelve years ago. She had never spoken of her family. Never. But she had burned her old journals the week before she took sick. Samuel had found her in the backyard at dawn, feeding yellowed documents into the frostbitten fire pit. The flames reflected in her eyes like helllight.

“Some things,” she whispered, “must die twice to stay dead.”

Her voice had trembled when she said it.

That was the only time Samuel ever saw fear on her face.

He continued walking through the trees, his boots sinking into the damp earth. He was twenty-eight now—older than she had been when she fled this place. And yet, stepping onto Thornhill soil, he felt like a child trespassing in a graveyard.

The path widened.

And there—half-hidden by kudzu and oak—the stones appeared.

The ruins.

A sprawling skeleton of charred foundations, devoured by vines. Saplings grew through what had once been the grand foyer. A chimney—tilted, cracked, alone—pointed at the sky like an accusing finger. Moss smothered the collapsing cellar doors.

The Thornhill Estate.

Samuel swallowed hard.

“It’s real,” he whispered. “All of it was real.”

A wind stirred the ashes of twenty-seven years. He felt a pressure behind his eyes—like something in the air was watching him.

And then, from the trees, a voice:

“Samuel Blythe?”

He spun.

A woman stood at the tree line. She was around forty, with pale skin, tired eyes, and her hair tied back in a severe bun. She wore a widow’s black dress even though she wasn’t old enough to be widowed twice.

She stepped into the light.

“Grace Thornhill,” she introduced herself.

Samuel exhaled. “My aunt.”

Grace nodded once, slowly.

“You look like her,” she murmured. “Like Elanina.”

Something in her voice cracked on the name.

Samuel approached her carefully. “Your letter said you needed help.”

Grace clasped her hands in front of herself, twisting her knuckles white.

“I wouldn’t have called you if it weren’t necessary. I promised your mother I would let the past rot.” Her gaze drifted toward the cellar doors. “But the past has a way of digging itself back up.”

Samuel frowned. “What’s happened?”

Grace didn’t answer. Instead, she walked toward the ruins, motioning for him to follow. She moved with surprising swiftness for someone who looked carved from sorrow.

They stopped at the old cellar doors.

Charred. Warped. Overgrown.

But intact.

“Do you hear it?” Grace whispered.

At first, Samuel heard nothing but the wind.

And then—

A tap.

Soft. Repeated.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Coming from beneath the earth.

Samuel froze. “Someone’s down there.”

Grace nodded. Her face was hollow.

“Yes,” she said. “One of them.”

Grace led Samuel to a clearing where a campfire smoldered beside a canvas tent. A young woman knelt by the fire, stirring a pot of broth. Her hair was stark white—not blonde, not gray, but white like new snow. Her skin was pale as marble, her eyes large and dark.

She looked up when they arrived.

“Samuel,” Grace said, “this is Livi.”

Samuel felt a chill—not of danger but familiarity.

“Elanina… met her once,” Grace explained softly. “Back in the cellar. Livi was only a child. She was one of Jonathan’s.”

Samuel’s breath caught. “My… half-sister? Cousin? Something in-between?”

Grace’s eyes slipped away.

“That’s the problem, Samuel. The bloodline is broken. Twisted. We never knew what Katherine did to them in that cellar. Laudanum. Experiments. Starvation. Some of the children died within months of their escape. Others wandered off and vanished.”

She glanced at Livi.

“Livi is one of the last.”

Livi rose slowly, wiping her hands on her dress.

“She found me,” the girl said quietly. “In the woods. Two months ago.”

Grace nodded. “She was half-dead. Feverish. Barely coherent. But she kept saying one thing.”

Livi’s eyes locked on Samuel.

“She kept saying… ‘Someone is still in the cellar.’”

The tapping grew louder. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“It started three nights ago,” Grace whispered. “And it hasn’t stopped.”

At dusk, Grace and Samuel forced the cellar doors open. The hinges shrieked. A gust of cold air rose from below—thick with mold and old death.

Livi watched from the edge.

“He came back,” she whispered. “He came back to the only place he ever knew.”

Samuel lifted a lantern and descended.

The cellar was unchanged. The iron bars. The straw. The stains. The ghosts.

He followed the tapping to a collapsed brick wall. A narrow crawlspace opened into a hidden chamber.

He stepped inside—and froze.

A man sat in the corner.

Rail-thin. White-haired. Eyes wide and black as pitch. His skin hung in folds. Ancient and young all at once. His wrists and ankles bore scars from long-removed shackles.

He tapped a stone against the floor.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Sir,” Samuel whispered, “we’re here to help you.”

The man looked up.

“You look like her,” he rasped. “You look like Elanina.”

Samuel’s breath shuddered. “You knew my mother?”

“I knew all of them,” the man whispered. “I am the last. I hid when they escaped. I was too weak. I stayed. And she came looking.”

Samuel felt icy dread. “Who came?”

The man leaned forward, eyes gleaming.

“Katherine.”

Samuel shook his head. “She died in the fire.”

“No,” the man whispered. “She lived. She crawled. Burned. Broken. Angry. She lived long enough to find me. Long enough to put me back in the dark.”

Tap. Tap.

“For twenty-seven years, I waited. She said someone would come. Someone with her blood.”

His eyes drilled into Samuel.

“She told me you would come.”

“Why?” Samuel breathed.

“Because the bloodline isn’t finished,” the man said. “She said the blood must continue. One of us must carry it on.”

Samuel’s heart thrashed. “I will not continue her bloodline.”

The man laughed—a wet, rattling sound.

“You already have,” he whispered. “The moment you stepped back onto this land.”

He raised his hand.

Blood dripped from a small carved symbol burned into his palm.
A perfect circle.
Three thorns.

The lantern fell from Samuel’s hands. Darkness swallowed the room.

The man’s breath brushed Samuel’s ear.

“Welcome home.”

Grace caught him at the top of the steps.

“What happened? Samuel—what happened?!”

Samuel slammed the doors shut. “There’s a man down there. Alive. But Grace—he said Katherine put him back after the fire.”

Grace’s face drained.

“That’s not possible.”

“She survived it.”

“No,” Grace whispered. “I killed her. I shot her. I watched her die on the marble floor.”

“Then who did you kill?”

Grace’s lips parted in horror.

Behind them, Livi stepped forward. Calm. Too calm.

“He is the last,” she said softly. “And you woke him.”

Grace stared. “Livi… you knew.”

Livi nodded. “He wasn’t tapping because he wanted out. He was tapping because he sensed Samuel’s blood.”

Samuel stepped back. “Why me?”

“Because your mother never broke the bloodline,” Livi said. “She carried it. She gave it to you.”

Grace trembled. “This is my fault. I should have burned the cellar.”

“We must leave,” Livi said.

“Yes—now,” Samuel said.

“No,” she murmured. “Not us. Him.”

Samuel froze. “You want to release him?”

“He will die if he stays,” Livi replied. “But if he dies, the bloodline ends. That is not allowed.”

“Allowed by who?” Samuel snapped. “Katherine is dead!”

Livi smiled.

Samuel understood, too late, that Livi feared nothing here.

“You cellar children… you were raised in darkness,” he whispered. “Raised in her doctrine.”

“We were her Continuity,” Livi said.

Grace moved between Samuel and Livi.

“The bloodline ends tonight. Samuel is the last Thornhill. I won’t let you touch him.”

“I don’t need to,” Livi replied. “He is already part of the ritual.”

“What ritual?”

“The one that began the moment he stepped onto Thornhill soil.”

A shift of air.

A scrape.

A cough—wet and alive.

Samuel turned.

The cellar doors were open.

The man stood at the top of the stairs. No longer weak. Straightened by something in the dark. His white eyes gleaming.

Livi bowed.

“Welcome, Master Thornhill.”

Grace screamed.

“Run!”

The forest twisted. Branches curled. Moss writhed. Paths vanished.

Behind them, the man’s voice echoed:

“Continuity must endure.”

Samuel felt the ground tremble as something ancient stirred beneath Thornhill. Something that had waited twenty-seven years for his blood.

And tonight, in the ruins that should have died with Katherine Thornhill, the past opened its jaws—

—and began to swallow the living.