Work Text:
Beginnings
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Aldith was born to the Ancestor’s son, coming into the world with an underlying disappointment to her birth. Both her father and grandfather hoped for a male to carry on the family name, and while Aldith’s mother relished the prospect of passing on her knowledge of ladylike nobility to a daughter, her opinion was hardly valued in the grand scheme of things.
However, all two of Aldith’s consequent siblings were stillborn, and the resulting trauma upon her mother’s body and mind became apparent in her newfound frailty--as well as the auditory hallucinations of an infant’s screams throughout the house that only she could hear. Aldith was far too young to remember these incidents, but her father and the servants began to regard the lady of the house with a significant unease.
The couple decided to end their efforts to produce another heir. Soon after Aldith’s mother began to recover, and the voices stopped.
Blood Ties
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Occupied with his own financial ambitions and ignorant of the true goings on within the Ancestor’s manor, Aldith’s father kept his own parent as more of an afterthought than anything. Still, with his mother long since passed away, out of obligation he would occasionally take his family to stay for a week or so at the manor.
The couple were able to content themselves with the quaint, peaceful Hamlet, a stark contrast to the more chaotic city life they had grown accustomed to, and Aldith grew up to see these occasional visits to her grandfather’s home as an exciting adventure. A bookworm from the moment she learned to read and enjoying tales of fantasy the best, she found a great novelty in the Ancestor’s extensive library.
Despite his initial misgivings about the child’s birth, the Ancestor began to grow fond of Aldith. It was not just due to his amusement that came from her excitement brought on by occult matters he’d long seen as mundane--there was a sharpness to her mind that he believed was inherited from his own, and took pride in.
In time he himself told her stories from his exploits, unable to keep from boasting about the power he gained--but always skirting the edge of the true abyss, always keeping Aldith blind to the true horrors that tainted both his waking and sleeping moments. The mystical trinkets he allowed her access to were still ultimately harmless, the words upon the pages of the books he showed her merely words, but the child was rapt by these experiences all the same.
Moreover, Aldith was found to be a stark contrast to her father. He had gained the privilege of a higher education from his nobility, and had deemed the research the Ancestor was steeped in as mere superstition in favor of the more ‘modern’ sciences. As such when the whispers of dark dealings reached his ears, he dismissed it as the overreaction of the rabble over the eccentricities of an aging man.
More tangible matters, however, did alarm him: the deterioration of the Hamlet itself soon became obvious, as did the depletion of his father’s finances(by extension, his inheritance).
These ‘family visits’ became more frequent and even Aldith, now 13, began to notice the underlying tension in those dinnertime conversations. She was used to domestic disputes from her parents, however, and was at least pleased to have more chances to explore the opulent manor--to get more glimpses into what she saw as a fantastical life her grandfather led, an escape from her own.
Meanwhile, through well-practiced deception the Ancestor maintained his double life--until his efforts finally bore fruit, and the center of power he sought after was located.
Finding the Key
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The elation upon the discovery of the gateway was short-lived—the looming, intricately carved stone doors did not budge however much force his workers placed upon it. The only thing he could gain from it was the noise of muffled whispers--whispers that no double held the secrets he so desperately wanted, that the Ancestor just couldn’t quite make out. It maddened him.
Review of his notes and translated texts quickly proved to be unnecessary, he had dealt in these matters long enough that he could recognize a pattern. For the gain of riches, power, or knowledge, sacrifice was necessary. But what did it want? Not an incantation that lacerated his throat as he spoke it, not the forgotten life of yet another beggar snatched away from the streets, even the spilling of his own blood wasn’t enough.
His answer came in the form of a small, nearly ghostly figure wandering the hallways late one night during his family’s visit. Even from a distance he could make out Aldith’s closed eyes, the way her head lolled as if still in slumber.
Sleepwalking, it was clear--but something struck the Ancestor as odd. Her step was still confident, deliberate, not the aimless wandering he had read about in passing.
Ever the patient academic, he did nothing at first—merely followed, watched, and waited. Aldith moved down the winding corridors before finally stopping at a door the Ancestor recognized: a stairwell leading to a neglected cellar used as the starting point for the dig, out of the way and kept under lock and key for the sake of secrecy.
The child extended her hand and with a gentle push, opened the door as if there was no lock at all. Down the rotting stairs and through the tool-carved tunnels, she entered the chamber and approached the massive gate and knelt. Slowly Aldith began to claw at the door, movements rhythmic in their repetition with the scrape of her fingernails joining the otherworldly ambience. Again and again, for what must have been an hour.
Still the Ancestor stood by in morbid intrigue, until the change in behavior he was waiting for arose. So mundane it was nearly jarring: Aldith stood, turned around with eyes still shut, and went back upstairs to her bed.
When morning came and her mother’s scolding of the child’s dirty feet and clothes reached the Ancestor’s ears, he did not comment on it. Still his unquenched thirst for knowledge prompted him to linger in wakefulness that next night, and he was rewarded by a familiar sight.
Again and again, Aldith descended to the depths of the manor and performed this odd ritual every night, small hands relentless against the abrasive stone. Every morning after she awoke in bed as always, clearly no recollection of the events before.
Another pattern to be recognized, an opportunity presented to him on a silver platter.
Ties to those who were of his bloodline, his precious family name, were all that remained in his possession. And what better being to embody this than the child before him? Her father was far out of his reach, too unpredictable and independent, but the Ancestor recognized his own fondness for Aldith as well as her unthinking trust in him. Both being attachments that only had value in being broken.
Severed
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The plan was set the one morning that Aldith awoke in tears to the stinging of her raw and bloody fingertips, the skin all but sloughed off. His son and daughter-in-law’s unease now saturated the air of the manor as they kept their child close, their hushed talks of departing relayed to him by a servant charged with their observation. If the Ancestor was to act, it had to be soon--with the course fate has appeared to lay out, his foolish son’s stubborn skepticism in the supernatural could only last so long.
A shame, to extinguish the light of a promising future. But if the power that slept in the manor’s depths was calling for her, the Ancestor had no choice but acquiesce if he was to make it his own.
The last day was spent in a facade of normalcy, of discarding letters from the financial institutions who demanded the repayment of his debts, reviewing the next step of his operation, and sitting side-by-side with his granddaughter as he showed Aldith his illustrations of the fishfolk in one of his many research journals.
She gasped in both shock and delight--bedtime stories of merfolk had always caught her interest, it seemed--quickly transforming into a fountain of questions as she hastily turned the pages. He smiled, and answered them all patiently,
That night Aldith’s mother slept in the child’s room, to ensure Aldith remained safe though the night. The Ancestor found her alone before the gateway all the same.
He slit her throat ear to ear. The child awoke.
As Aldith clutched at her throat and gurgled the Ancestor let her slump to the floor, turning his focused attention to the stone doors in eager anticipation. Impatience won out over caution and he strode forward, ready to push it open with all his might--
Something tugged upon his coat--the weak gurgle from behind told him that it was the child, but he ignored it. What he could not ignore, however, was a scream ringing out that certainly didn’t come from Aldith. He turned to see his son and daughter-in-law, looking on in horror from the entrance of the cavern .
An oversight, perhaps, that the Ancestor did not make sure they were dealt with before the sacrifice. No matter now, however--the deed was done.
Then came a sound in agreement with his thoughts, a horrific groan resounding deep into their very bones if the earth itself was in pain.
The door opened.
To Aldith it was all a blur of noise and motion and red, so much red. Her father’s arms locked around her as she was carried through winding passages, her mother’s shrill sobs and clutching hands as she followed behind.
The family fled the Hamlet in a blind panic, piled into a carriage that went bolting into the moonless night. His wife now passed out from exhaustion, Aldith’s father cradled the limp body upon his lap with shaking hands as he stared out into the blackness of the Old Road
It was only until their carriage came to a stop in the next town that he realized the wound had completely closed, and the child’s heart still beat.
Aftermath
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Aldith’s father wrote a letter to the lawmen of the city from which they lived bearing a request to send men to the Hamlet, deeming his father insane and too dangerous to be left alone. He knew the group to be reliable, efficient, and above all loyal to his money.
As such, when the lawmen responded that there is no such place in the location he described, he flew into a rage...that was quickly stamped out by the sight of the map upon the wall of his study. The Hamlet, the Old Road, the entire estate: gone. Anger gave way to icy terror, and Aldith’s father sent no further letters.
There were many unspoken rules that began to accumulate in the household as the years passed.
Aldith was to keep her neck covered anywhere outside of her own room, fine silks and lace obscuring the swirling, unnatural scar that still occasionally aches with a phantom pain. She was to ask no further questions about her grandfather--as far as the family was concerned, he was dead.
When Aldith was to hear her mother brought out of a nightmare with screams tearing from her throat, she was to remain in her room no matter how much they hurt her. Her parents began to sleep in separate rooms quickly after.
When Aldith’s father fell ill and died, noone was to speak of how the servant found him: his organs writhing and bulging behind his bare torso, pulsing like a steady heartbeat. The terrified woman set him the corpse alight with a torch--the scorch marks on the bed were still there, behind a forever locked door.
Her widowed mother grew cold, controlling yet distant. In violent denial of the unnatural occurrences of the past she instead held desperately onto the structure of noble life, forcing her rigid expectations of womanhood onto her child and cutting her off from the more ‘masculine’ academia.
The older Aldith became, the worse it got. Haunted by events she could only half remember, suffocating under her mother’s influence that felt nothing short of wrong, every small moment of relief was precious to her. Still it was not enough--she needed more.
She found a way out--or what she thought to be one--in a letter slipped underneath her bedroom door one night. The hallway outside was empty.
The yellowed parchment spoke in jarringly familiar prose, conjuring up her grandfather’s voice and eloquent speech within Aldith’s mind as she read further as if he himself was in the room. It spoke of misfortune, of madness, but also offered something precious. Answers to her questions, a carriage waiting for her on the edge of the city. Escape. A chance for Aldith to maybe, finally, do something meaningful in her life.
Upon looking up at her father’s map the inked letters of ‘The Darkest Estate’ stared back at her mockingly, as if they had always been there.
Her fingertips ached.