The Bone Collector’s Daughter – II: Whispers from the Crypt

Part 1: The Bone Collector’s Daughter – I: The Inheritance of Shadows

III: Whispers from the Crypt

The days bled together after the prince’s offer. Vera wandered Blackthorn Hall like a ghost herself, her fingers trailing over the relics of her father’s obsession. The skulls seemed to watch her now, their hollow gazes heavy with secrets.

She found herself returning to the glass case—shattered now, empty—where the prince’s bones had once lain. A single scrap of parchment remained, tucked beneath the velvet lining.

"The price of resurrection is written in blood."

Her father’s handwriting. A warning, or an invitation?

The First Nightmare

That night, Vera dreamed of a throne room.

Not the grand, gilded halls of storybooks, but a cavernous mausoleum, its pillars carved from yellowed femurs. The prince sat upon a chair of fused spines, his skeletal form now draped in the ghostly suggestion of flesh—pale as wax, stretched too thin over sharp bones.

"You’re curious," he murmured, his voice echoing as if spoken from the depths of a well. "Good. Curiosity is the first step to corruption."

Vera tried to speak, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

The air reeked of wet earth and burnt hair.

The prince extended a hand—still bone, but shimmering at the edges, as if caught between worlds. "Let me show you what they did to me."

When she touched him, the vision erupted in fire.

The Truth in the Flames

She saw him alive: a prince with a crown of silver and a smile like an unsheathed dagger.

She saw the accusation—sorcery, treason, heresy—hurled by a king with the same ember-lit eyes.

She saw the punishment: buried alive in a tomb lined with salt and scripture, his name chiseled from every monument, his lineage erased.

And she saw the moment his soul fractured, the birth of the curse that bound his bones to eternal hunger.

Vera woke, gasping, her sheets damp with sweat.

The scent of smoke clung to her skin.

The Awakening

The house creaked around her, louder than before. The bones in the study rattled in their cases, as if stirred by unfelt wind.

When Vera entered, the prince stood by the window, moonlight streaming through his ribcage. He turned, and for the first time, she saw the cracks in his arrogance—the way his fingers twitched like a man grasping for something just out of reach.

"You saw," he said. Not a question.

Vera nodded. "They betrayed you."

A pause. Then, softer: "Everyone does. Eventually."

She stepped closer. "What if I didn’t?"

The embers in his eyes flared.

Outside, the wind howled through the trees like a chorus of the damned.

IV: The Ritual of Flesh and Bone

The cellar beneath Blackthorn Hall smelled of damp earth and iron. Vera’s candle guttered as she descended the narrow stairs, the prince’s skeletal hand hovering at the small of her back—not guiding, not quite touching, but there. Always there.

“Here,” he murmured, his voice curling through the dark like smoke.

The ritual space was a perfect circle etched into the stone floor, its edges lined with black salt and crushed bone. At its center stood an altar stained the deep brown of old blood.

Vera’s stomach twisted.

“This was my father’s work.”

“His failures,” the prince corrected. He stepped into the circle, and the air shimmered like heat off a corpse pyre. “He tried to cheat death without paying its price. But you…” His skull tilted. “You understand that power requires sacrifice.”

The Ingredients of Resurrection

Vera unrolled the brittle scroll she’d found hidden in the study. The instructions were written in a language that made her eyes ache, but the prince whispered translations against the shell of her ear:

• A lock of hair from a living betrayer (Vera clipped a strand of her own without hesitation)
• The breath of a drowned man (collected in a vial from the marsh behind the house)
• A drop of blood from the one who wakes the dead (her finger still bore the scar from the shattered case)

The final ingredient made her hands shake:

• A name, freely given

“Not just any name,” the prince said, his fingers brushing the hollow where her pulse thundered. “Mine.”

The First Cut

Midnight.

The candles burned blue.

Vera knelt inside the circle, the prince’s bones arranged on the altar like a grotesque puzzle. When she pricked her thumb and let the blood drip onto his ribcage, the house screamed.

The walls wept rust-colored tears.

The skulls on the shelves chattered their teeth.

And the prince—

—the prince moved, not as bones but as a man, his flesh knitting itself from shadow and memory. Muscle slithered over bone. Skin, pale as grave wax, stretched tight over sharp cheekbones.

But when his eyes opened, they weren’t human.

They burned.

The Price Unpaid

He gasped—a raw, wet sound—and clutched at Vera’s wrists. “More,” he demanded, his voice no longer hollow but hungry. “It’s not enough.”

She tried to pull away, but his grip was iron. “You said one drop—”

“I lied.” His mouth twisted into something too sharp to be a smile. “The dead always lie, little thief. Didn’t your father teach you that?”

The candles snuffed out.

In the dark, something with too many teeth breathed against her throat.

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Volume III soon to come!