The attic skylight rattled under the downpour like a dying heart. As Ayla reached for the forbidden library's bronze lock, Lucas seized her wrist—his palm colder than the rain, prosthetic joints embedded with shards of the ceramic angel wing she'd shattered last Christmas.
"Sure you want this?" His voice grated like rusted gears. "What's inside makes Odile's perfume bottles look tame."
The lock sprang open with a stench of mildew and stormwater. Oak shelves leaned like coffin lids, revealing Odile's diary at the core, its peacock-blue silk cover moth-eaten into constellations. When Lucas wiped away cobwebs with his coat, a leak drenched the gilded name "Odile van Neumann," making it phosphoresce sickly green.
(Nails pried yellowed pages as wind whipped the oil lamp into corpse-light blue)
March 17, 1897 They say love is a plague meant for humans. Then why did Alan's palm burn our crest when we touched?
Rain blurred the ink, summoning hidden text: "Bury the engagement necklace Mother gave me in the rose garden tonight. Alan says the pendant holds sakura seeds from his homeland. When the war ends..."
Lucas' prosthetic finger twitched, tearing the margin. More rain seeped in, the diary exuding strange perfume—pine resin and bridal bouquets. Ayla grabbed disintegrating pages, watching droplets rewrite history:
"Father found the seeds. They branded Alan's name from my skin with irons."
The script fractured here, silver veins surfacing—a necklace blueprint with an "E" matching Eric's pocket watch engravings. The floor shuddered, a hidden compartment spitting up a rusted sakura pendant, its broken chain crusted with blood.
"So she bled too." Lucas polished the pendant like a fresh wound.
Ayla's earlobe throbbed—Odile wore this at her mother's funeral. She reached, but Lucas jerked back, slamming shelves. As books cascaded, the diary's final page revealed crimson carvings:
"The night they taxidermied Alan, I mixed vampire ashes with the sakura seeds. If the curse holds, the first Neumann blood to touch this in a century will..."
Thunder stole the rest. Stained glass exploded, stormwind flooding the attic, washing the unfinished sentence into inky rivers that pooled into Eric's youthful face—three decades younger than the man now shadowing the stairs.