Elara barely slept that night. Not that sleep was easy when one had just awakened an eldritch god from a bowl of bone-ribbed ash.
T'alvyr had vanished before dawn, melting back into the hearth like smoke pulled into lungs too ancient to exhale. Valen had paced the length of the study for hours, muttering to himself, pausing only to glare at the totem when its effigies pulsed again.
Persephone, unbothered as always, had demanded her cushion be fluffed, then proceeded to nap atop Elara's journal like the events of the evening were nothing more than poor dinner theater.
Now, with dawn bleeding thinly through the stained glass windows — all of them depicting scenes that had changed since last night — Elara stood over the totem.
The next effigy quivered. It was carved from saltbone — a strange, porous material that shimmered white in some angles and sickly yellow in others. This one had no face, only a spiral carved where a mouth should be and four eye sockets — empty and hungry.
She didn't touch it. Not yet.
"Blood," she muttered.
The journal's latest entry echoed behind her eyes:
> Speak the second name only after the salt is gone and the blood is fresh.
Elara bit her lip, then turned to Valen. "You've been unusually quiet. That's either good or catastrophic."
He glanced at her, the hollows under his eyes darker than before. "I'm trying not to say what I'm thinking."
She raised an eyebrow. "Which is?"
"That summoning the Bound one by one may wake more than just them. It may wake the house. And when the house wakes..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
She exhaled. "Then let's make sure it remembers the right parts first."
Persephone rolled onto her side, tail flicking. "You'll need to draw the Circle of Second Offering. It must be done in a place where memory and pain converge."
Elara blinked. "You say that like it's a normal room label."
Valen didn't laugh. "The Scriptorium."
"Is that like a library?"
"No," Persephone said, hopping down. "It's where memories were bled into ink."
---
The path to the Scriptorium wound through the Withered Vestibule — a hall of mirrors where every reflection blinked out of time — and past the Chapel of Hollow Tongues, where sermons still echoed despite the dust-covered pews and rotting hymnals.
Elara clutched the effigy, wrapped in a cloth embroidered with red thread. The saltbone seemed lighter than the ashwood effigy, but it throbbed in her palm like a small, miserable heart.
The Scriptorium's door was marked with a sigil Elara couldn't read, etched in something that still glistened wet despite its age.
Inside, the air was thick with ink and regret.
Shelves towered overhead, not with books, but with glass vials. Some held crimson liquid. Others, a darker, more viscous black. Each was labeled not with names, but with dates and phrases.
"Memories?" Elara asked.
"Confessions," Valen replied. "The house once had scribes. They wrote down what the dying whispered. Every final truth bled from the heart through the hand. This is where it was stored."
Persephone leapt onto a cracked desk, where a circle had once been carved into the wood and worn away by repeated use.
"This is where the next offering must be made."
Elara unwrapped the saltbone effigy and set it into the center of the desk. It didn't root itself like the last — instead, it simply sat, waiting. Hungry.
Valen handed her a ceremonial knife. "The salt must be gone. The blood must be fresh."
Elara stared at the blade.
It wasn't fear that held her hand. It was something deeper — recognition. Like a part of her already knew how this ritual would go.
She pricked her palm and let the blood drip onto the desk.
As it hit the wood, it spread faster than it should, forming a perfect circle with a spiral in the center. The saltbone effigy pulsed once, then began to hum.
The journal at her hip began to shake. She opened it, letting it fall to the floor. Fresh ink formed across the page:
> "Speak the name when the blood spirals true."
And without knowing how, Elara whispered: "Yvareth."
---
The room shifted.
Not in light or sound, but in memory.
She was no longer standing in the Scriptorium.
She was kneeling.
Surrounded by pages made of skin and quills made of fingerbones.
And she was not alone.
Yvareth rose from the desk.
It had no face, but its presence bore a terrible serenity — the stillness before the ocean drowns the shore.
It was draped in pages that fluttered as it moved, and its voice came not from a mouth, but from the very air:
"You bleed willingly. You remember what was never yours."
"I don't understand," Elara said, though she wasn't sure she wanted to.
Yvareth turned toward her. "You are the Inkbearer now. The second Bound returns because you made it so."
The saltbone effigy cracked — not in ruin, but in rebirth. From its spiral mouth, tendrils of script spilled out, writing themselves on the air. Her blood was being rewritten.
And then — she saw.
---
A woman — not Elara, but almost.
She stood before Yvareth with pages for hair and ink bleeding from her fingertips.
The Second Caller.
She wrote the names into the house's bones. She sacrificed the memories of her own family to bind what could not be slain.
Elara's vision blurred.
It was too much.
But Yvareth steadied her — not with hands, but with memory. "You must learn. You must become more than you were. You must carry what the others feared."
And with that, it was over.
Yvareth was kneeling, script still whispering in its wake.
Valen stepped forward, staring at the figure with something like awe and sorrow.
"This was my scribe," he said softly. "Before death. Before silence."
Elara looked down at her blood-smeared palm. The wound had sealed. In its place was a small spiral.
"She marked me."
"She remembered you," Valen corrected. "And now the second has returned."
---
They didn't return to the study immediately.
Instead, they wandered — or rather, were led.
The manor had begun to shift again. Staircases rearranged themselves mid-step. Paintings wept ink. Somewhere far off, a pipe organ groaned a tune that seemed half lullaby, half dirge.
"Elara," Persephone said as they reached the Hall of Threadbare Promises, "you've summoned two of the six. The next ones... they won't come as kindly."
Elara wiped the sweat from her brow. "T'alvyr screamed fire. Yvareth rewrote my blood. I wouldn't call this 'kind.'"
Persephone's eyes gleamed. "You will."
---
Back in the study, the journal was already writing again.
Valen poured wine — dark and old enough to be illegal in several dimensions — and leaned against the bookcase.
Elara sat with a sigh.
The page read:
> Two return. The third must be called beneath the garden that died.
The name is hidden in the roots. The price is deeper.
She turned to Valen. "Garden that died?"
He grimaced. "The Briarcrypt."
"Of course it's got a name that sounds like a goth band."
He didn't laugh. Instead, he retrieved a small copper spade from a drawer and handed it to her along with a small bundle wrapped in ivy-stained silk.
Inside was the third effigy.
It was shaped from petrified rosewood. Tiny thorned vines wrapped its body, and where its eyes should have been were seeds — still breathing.
"It was buried alive," Valen said. "It remembers decay. And it does not forgive."
Persephone curled her tail neatly. "You'll want gloves for this one."
---
As Elara prepared to leave, the totem pulsed one more time.
Three effigies stirred.
Three voices echoed faintly in her thoughts.
She hadn't noticed before — hadn't realized.
But the house was not just remembering.
It was listening.
And somewhere deep beneath, behind locked halls and hidden doors, something else was stirring.
Something older than the Bound.
Older than even the Callers.
A memory that had been buried so deep, even the house had forgotten it.
But now, Elara walked its halls with blood-marked hands and names on her tongue.
She was not just awakening them.
She was becoming them.