The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
The walls of the estate sweated under the weight of dampness, and the air hung heavy with a scent of mildew and old, forgotten time. Somewhere inside the narrow corridor between the servants' quarters and the west shrine, a candlelight flickered without wind — as if it breathed on its own.
"Don't step too far beyond the old prayer altar," Tien warned. His hand hovered near Lucien's wrist, not quite touching, but trembling with the effort not to.
Lucien raised his lantern. His voice was low, almost reverent. "This is where my uncle died, isn't it?"
Tien did not answer. The silence spoke louder than words.
They had uncovered the hidden stairwell that morning — a crumbling mouth beneath a rotted tatami mat, reeking of incense and scorched oil. The steps led down into what could only be described as a forgotten sanctum — shrine or prison, it was unclear. Charcoal scrawls painted the brick like claw marks. And within that chamber, they found what was left of a ritual: broken chains, dried blood, and a talisman with the mark of a binding spell.
Lucien had held it with shaking hands.
"My family has been hiding this for generations..."
Tien's eyes had glinted in the lanternlight, fierce and unrelenting. "Not hiding. Burying."
The deeper they investigated the manor's history, the more they realized its foundations were not built with wood and stone, but sacrifice. Every generation of Lucien's family had bound a spirit beneath the manor to secure its fortune. And now, that spirit was no longer dormant.
---
ACT II – THE UNVEILING
They retreated to the study that night, trying to make sense of what they'd found.
Books lay scattered across the floor, written in both Vietnamese chữ Nôm and old clerical Chinese. Some were journals from Lucien's ancestors; others were ritual texts detailing rites that bordered on the heretical.
"Here — this one," Tien muttered, flipping through a decaying volume. "Listen."
> To bind the spirit, one must offer blood of the heir, silence of the heart, and the severing of love...
Tien looked up. "Severing of love. That's why they forced your father to abandon your mother."
Lucien felt the chill crawl down his spine. "That's why she died."
They connected the dots slowly, painfully. Lucien's mother had been cast out — labeled a curse to the family line. But the truth was far worse: she had refused to let her unborn son be used in a ritual. She had fled, and in doing so, disrupted the pact.
Now, the spirit was unbound. Angry. Seeking retribution.
---
ACT III – THE DREAMS AND THE DEAD
That night, Lucien dreamed of a girl in white, her eyes hollow, mouth sewn shut with red thread. She stood at the foot of his bed and whispered with her hands, words Lucien somehow understood:
"You carry the key. But the lock is inside you."
When he awoke, there were scratch marks down his arm.
Not his own.
Tien was waiting outside the door, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sweat running down his neck. "It touched me too," he said. "In my sleep. It said... it remembers."
They had no choice. It was time to perform the rite again — but this time, not to bind the spirit.
To set it free.
---
ACT IV – THE BLOODLINE
In the heart of the house, under the crescent moon and the weight of ancestral judgment, Lucien and Tien prepared the altar.
Tien lit the sacred herbs: mugwort, camphor, and lotus seed. Lucien, hands trembling, used his blood to redraw the sigils on the floor — the very same ones his ancestors used to imprison the spirit.
"It wants freedom, not revenge," Tien said. "But it's angry. And if we do this wrong—"
"Then it'll consume me," Lucien finished.
"No. It'll consume us both."
They knelt opposite each other. Tien placed the spirit urn in the center. Its seal was already cracking.
"Say the invocation," Tien instructed.
Lucien's voice rang out — wavering, but true:
"By blood of flesh and bone of kin,
By love uncut and not broken within,
I unseal the curse laid on thee,
And ask you now — return to peace, be free."
The floor trembled.
The air folded inward.
The urn shattered.
---
ACT V – THE REVELATION
A wind rose from the broken vessel, screaming without sound. The lanterns snuffed out. The walls peeled. And before them, she rose — the spirit.
She was not grotesque, not monstrous.
She was beautiful.
But her beauty was wrong — too still, too perfect. Her long black hair floated like smoke, and her eyes held all the sorrow of centuries.
"You were never the curse," Lucien whispered. "You were the sacrifice."
The spirit hovered between them, gaze fixed on Tien.
And then she bowed.
She reached out — touched Tien's forehead.
His body jerked. Eyes wide.
"She remembers you," Lucien gasped. "From a past life."
Tien collapsed. The spirit faded like mist into his body — not to harm him, but to rest within him.
"She's chosen you as guardian."
---
EPILOGUE – A HOUSE AT PEACE
They sealed the chamber.
Not with spells, but with truth.
Lucien wrote down everything — every secret, every horror. The family history would no longer be buried.
And Tien? He stood in the garden at dawn, eyes closed, the spirit whispering through his breath like wind in pine.
He turned to Lucien and smiled.
"It's over."
Lucien smiled back.
"No. It's just beginning."
---