The servants' corridor stank of mildew and old blood. Jacob pressed his back against the damp stone wall, his dagger held before him in trembling hands. Somewhere in the darkness ahead, water dripped in a steady rhythm that matched the pounding of his heart.
Eleanor leaned against the opposite wall, her chest rising and falling rapidly. In the faint light from a crack in the ceiling, Jacob could see her mask had changed - the porcelain crack now oozed a dark liquid that streaked down her cheek like a tear.
"You knew," Jacob accused, his voice raw. "You knew what was happening in there."
Eleanor's laugh was bitter. "I knew they were dead. I didn't know they'd start moving." She wiped at the black tear. "This place... it's been cursed for years. My father was just the latest to fall to it."
Jacob's grip tightened on his dagger. "That thing wasn't your father."
"No," she agreed softly. "Not for a long time."
A scratching sound came from further down the corridor. Something heavy dragged against the stones. Jacob's breath fogged in the suddenly frigid air as frost spiderwebbed across the walls.
Eleanor reached into the bodice of her gown and produced a tarnished locket. "You want the truth about your family? About why you're really here?" She pressed the cold metal into Jacob's palm. "Open it."
The locket clicked open with resistance, as if reluctant to reveal its secrets. Inside, a tiny portrait showed two children - a dark-haired boy with Jacob's own piercing green eyes, his arm protectively around a younger girl in a Blackwood-blue dress.
"That's impossible," Jacob whispered. His throat constricted. "I've never—"
The memory struck like a physical blow.
A younger Eleanor sobbing in his arms. The smell of burning flesh. A promise carved into the flesh of his forearm with a hot knife: "Protect her."
The walls around them groaned. The dragging sound grew closer, accompanied now by a wet, rhythmic wheezing. Eleanor's eyes widened.
"The Hollow Priest," she breathed. "He's found us."
Jacob snapped the locket shut, but the truth had already taken root in his chest. Whatever vengeance he'd come for, whatever justice he'd sought - it was all built on a lie. And the real monster wasn't the thing that had worn Lord Blackwood's face.
It was the thing coming for them in the dark.
The first torch further down the corridor guttered out. Then the second. Then the third, each extinguishing with a whisper that curled through the stale air:
"Jacob..."
Eleanor grabbed his hand. "Run."