The Bone Collector's Daughter - IV: The Original Sin

Don't forget to read the first three!

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

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

The Bone Collector’s Daughter – III: The Ravenous Dark

VII: The Original Sin

The cellar stairs descended deeper than Vera remembered.

The air grew thick with the scent of turned earth and spoiled marrow as she followed Valac into the bowels of Blackthorn Hall. The walls here were not lined with bones—they were bones, fused together in a grotesque mosaic of femurs and fractured spines.

"Your ancestors were not mere collectors," Valac murmured, dragging a fingertip along the ossuary wall. A faint moan echoed from within the bones. "They were architects."

At the base of the stairs, a single slab of onyx dominated the floor, its surface etched with a family crest Vera didn’t recognize—a crowned skull with a key through its teeth.

Valac’s smile turned knife-sharp. "Ah. The first Locke’s signature."

Pact in the Dark

The slab lifted with a groan, revealing a hidden chamber. Inside, seven skeletons sat in a perfect circle, their bony hands clasped as if in prayer. At the center lay a withered corpse in rotted velvet, its skeletal fingers clutching a rusted box.

"Meet your great-great-great-grandmother," Valac purred. "The witch who built this house—bone by cursed bone."

Vera reached for the box. The moment her fingers brushed it, visions erupted behind her eyes:

A woman screaming as mortar mixed with her children’s blood and was then slathered between stones.

A king’s corpse being dismembered beneath a new moon.

A whispered bargain with something older than death itself.

She wrenched back, gasping. "They sacrificed their own—"

"To make the house live," Valac finished. His newly formed flesh pulsed unnaturally in the low light. "And now it wants its final payment."

The Hungry Foundations

The ground trembled. Dust rained from the ceiling as the house’s bones began to contract, the walls creaking like a great beast shifting in its sleep.

Valac seized Vera’s hand, pressing it to his chest where a heartbeat should be. "You woke me. You named me. That makes us a threat." His other hand gripped the rusted box. "This contains the first Locke’s remains. Destroy it, and the house dies."

A thunderous crack echoed above them as the staircase collapsed.

"Of course," he added with a mad grin, "so might we."

The Choice

Vera pried open the box. Inside lay a single mummified heart, threaded through with blackened wire. It stank of grave soil and bitter magic.

The walls screamed.

Valac’s mouth found her ear, his words a dark promise: "Feed it to me, and I’ll have the strength to get us out. Leave it whole, and we can burn this place to the ground." He licked the blood still welling from her finger. "But choose quickly, little thief."

Above them, the ceiling splintered.

VIII: The Devouring

Vera crushed the mummified heart in her fist.

It crumbled like ancient parchment, releasing a plume of black dust that stung her eyes and coated her tongue with the taste of rotten honey. For a terrible second, nothing happened.

Then the house howled.

The bone walls convulsed, ribs snapping like twigs as the ceiling rained teeth. Valac threw himself over Vera as the foundations shuddered—not collapsing, but writhing, as if something trapped beneath the stones had finally been set loose.

"You glorious, reckless witch," he gasped against her throat, his voice giddy with adrenaline. His skin had gone translucent, veins pulsing black beneath the surface. "It's eating itself alive!"

The Birth of a Monster

Valac's transformation accelerated as the house died around them. His fingers elongated into claws, his jaw unhinging with a wet pop as rows of needle-teeth erupted from his gums. The stolen blood in his veins wasn't enough—not with the original curse unraveling.

He seized Vera's wrist and bit.

The pain was electric. Vera's vision whited out as he drank deep, her blood mingling with the powdered heart on his tongue. When he pulled back, his eyes were completely black—no whites, no irises, just endless void.

"Now we run," he snarled, his voice distorted by too many teeth.

The Escape

They barely made it.

The grand staircase collapsed behind them as they fled upward, each step disintegrating into powder. The portraits lining the walls wept blood, their subjects' faces melting like wax.

Somewhere in the chaos, Vera heard her father's voice screaming curses in a language that made her ears bleed.

The front doors had fused shut, grown over with fibrous bone. Valac didn't slow—he charged, his monstrous form slamming through the barricade with a sound like a thousand china plates shattering.

Cold night air hit Vera's face as they tumbled onto the lawn.

Behind them, Blackthorn Hall folded in on itself with a final, deafening wail, its bones grinding to dust.

The Aftermath

Dawn found them at the edge of the marsh, the remains of the house nothing but a foul-smelling mound in the distance. Valac's transformation had receded, leaving him pale and shaking—but unmistakably and terrifyingly alive.

Vera examined the bite on her wrist.

The wound had closed, leaving behind a raised scar in the shape of a key.

Valac traced it with a trembling finger. "I told you," he murmured. "Everyone betrays you eventually."

She grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Then it's a good thing," she said, "that I'm not everyone."

Somewhere in the ruins, a single bone rattled.

Epilogue: A Crown of Bone and Blood

One Year Later

The villagers whispered about the house on the cliffs.

No one remembered who had built it—only that it hadn’t been there before. It stood crooked and defiant against the storm-wracked sky, its spires carved not from wood or stone, but from something that gleamed too brightly in the moonlight.

If anyone had dared approach, they might have noticed the bones woven into its foundations.

They might have heard the whispers in the walls.

But no one ever came close enough.

The Throne Room

Inside, Vera lounged on a chair of fused vertebrae, her fingers idly tracing the bite scar on her wrist. Across from her, Valac—no longer a prince, but something far more interesting—poured wine into a goblet made from a polished skull.

"They’re calling you a witch again," he remarked, offering her the cup.

She took it, her lips staining red. "Only because they haven’t met you yet."

He grinned, his teeth still too sharp, his eyes still too dark. But his hands, when they brushed hers, were warm.

The Bargain Kept

The house hummed around them, content. Its new bones were fresh, its hunger sated.

Vera had kept her word. She hadn’t betrayed him.

And Valac? Valec had given her everything. Power. Knowledge. A kingdom built on the ruins of the old. (And his heart, though neither of them mentioned that part aloud.)

The Last Secret

In the deepest cellar—the one with the salt-lined floor—a single skeleton stood vigil and wore a rusted crown.

And if its jaw sometimes moved in the dark, whispering secrets only the house could hear?

Well...

Some curses were worth keeping.

THE END

(...or is it?)

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