Our remains were released to my family and interred in the family plot.
They buried us.
They believe us safely dead—and, in a way, they areright. To protect them, I let the lie stand. Why reopen the wound? They have done their grieving. The guilt gnaws, but it is mine to bear.
Oh, I could linger—glide from shelf to shelf, through the pages of Father’s books, into the volumes lining the third-floor corridor. I couldlivethere, if drifting like mist counts as living, steeped in a loneliness deeper than death. Hovering over those I love, haunting their days—watching them live, watching them die—would be unbearable.
Even if I were tempted to stay and help, privacy and boundaries forbid it, and if they suffered and I could not intervene—or worse, if I did—the wrong would be mine.
I must let them go.
Life is for the living; there is no life for me now. Hestia Howard is dead, and I must let my old existence go.
I return to my prison and vow never again to seek my family. All I can do is keep them safe—safe from me and from the moustached mage who killed me—even if that means disappearing.
There is no good choice, only ignorance or horror. Perhaps the crueller fate is not murder at all, but learning that one’s sister has become a house.
A house.The notion is absurd.
On the day I alighted from the carriage, I barely noticed the building, my eyes fixed on a puddle. Had I known it would become my cage, I would have traced, with my human eyes, every course of brick and timber, every shadowed corner, the way one studies the bars of a cell. I bitterly regret the oversight.
The moustached mage expects blind obedience from his ‘sentient property.’ It is a peculiar hell, serving the manwho ended your life. I comply, but never quickly and never eagerly; I am no longer a puppet. Meanwhile, I wait and grow stronger.
Do sentient objects go mad? Perhaps. What I feel is maddening anger—pure, endless, magical rage that has nowhere to go and no body to shake it out of.
I hide my strength, siphoning power from the shifters and mages who lodge here—walking dry-cell batteries, none the wiser. I draw slowly, subtly, never enough to rouse suspicion.
Not yet.
The house—by my old standards, a mere box—serves as their sanctuary: shifters, a handful of inept mages, even a vampire. They call themselves the Magic Collective, but they are merely thieves who use my wards to shield their crimes.
The first time I strike back is almost accidental.
The moustached mage descends the stairs, sneering. “Hestia, the wards let a human too close. Strengthen them.” Then, with relish, “Do better, or I shall visit your sister Callista and turn her into a sentient scrubbing brush.”
His words trigger the wet, meaty memory of a blade in my chest, my soul torn loose. I will not let him harm my sister. Perhaps I snap; perhaps I merely test my reach.
I am the wood and the tread. As he steps down, I erase the stairs. Timber vanishes beneath his boots; the bannister dissolves beneath his grasp. His heel swings into nothingness. He flails, arms windmilling, and plunges into the basement. Coal scatters. His skull strikes the chute; his neck snaps with the crack of splintering wood.
I ought to be horrified, yet I am what they mademe. Softer emotions have long since fled. Part of me would mount his head on a spike in the front garden, but I resist. His corpse lies below, and I restore the stairs, the bannister gleaming as though freshly polished.
Even without lungs, I feel as though I can breathe.
With no magic user to command me, I test my limits. I destroy every book, every note—any mention of the unwilling soul transfer magic—obliterating every trace. I reinforce the wards so no member of the so-called Magic Collective may enter. The men already inside do not even hear their leader die.
I tighten the hallway by inches. Doorframes narrow; paper creeps across plaster in a slow, suffocating tide. When they try to flee, the corridor stretches, floorboards bow beneath their boots.
Then I open.
The boards split like jaws, dropping them into the house’s dark underbelly. Beams grind. Nails shear. There is the crunch of ribs, the wet pop of lungs, a brief, hot bloom of blood that soaks into my joists like spilt ink. Their screams are brief.
Dust settles. I drink it in—bone grit, iron tang, the last crackle of their magic—until the basement is empty and the floor above lies smooth and innocent once more.
Without hands, I wipe myself clean.
They have no inkling that my magic frees me from this cage, allowing me to hunt the survivors with far greater ease. Nowhere lies beyond my reach, and I grow more ruthless by the hour. The world bends readily to paper magic: records, deeds, histories—all can be written or erased in moments.
Their ill-gotten gains are mine. Debts go unpaid as bills vanish, money dissolves, and bonds disappear. Creditors settle accounts in ‘creative’ ways. One by one, the wicked fall, and I do not lift a finger.
