The heavy iron gates groaned as Vladimir stepped through them, his black cloak dragging through the frostbitten grass. The ancestral estate loomed ahead, its dark, jagged spires piercing the night sky like the fangs of some slumbering beast. Ivy choked the stone walls, and the windows glowed faintly with candlelight—flickering and distant, as if the house itself resented its own light.

There were few reasons for Vladimir to ever return. He knew that his presence was unwelcome, it gave her too much power. That his father had come to fear him.

A bitter wind swept through the grounds, but Vladimir didn’t shiver. The cold didn’t touch him—not anymore. Not after what he had become. His crimson eyes, stripped of the comforting veil of his contacts, burned with a coal-like intensity in the cold night air, the faintest hint of unnatural heat behind his irises. He had not set foot here since his exile—since the night he had been cast down from the role of heir apparent. He had maintained the name, that could not be stripped from him. But there was more to a man than his name or his title, there was the esteem and faith of his peers, his family. Vladimir in death became a liability. Yet here he was, dragged back into the shadow of the family legacy he had tried so hard to outrun.

The doors opened before he knocked. Of course, they would.

The halls stretched long and narrow, lined with portraits whose painted eyes followed him with suspicion and disdain. They had judged him long before he fell, and they judged him still. None spoke but all could. He knew they would chatter when he escaped their presence. Vladimir paid them no mind. The only judgment that mattered now awaited him at the end of the corridor.

Thaddeus Athanatos did not rise when Vladimir entered his study. He did not need to. Seated in his high-backed chair, draped in black like a vulture roosting atop carrion, Thaddeus Athanatos radiated the kind of authority that bent lesser men’s spines and silenced their tongues.

"Father," Vladimir called out, unnecessarily announcing a presence his father likely identified hours before he stepped foot on the family grounds. He bent his knee, bowed his head but never cast his gaze to the floor.

“Vladimir.”

The name echoed through the chamber, heavy as iron, cold as stone. Thaddeus’ voice, rich and commanding, filled every corner of the room. Not unlike his presence, larger than life. Powerful, overpowerpowering. His name was not a greeting—it was a judgment, spoken like a sentence passed down from on high.

The patriarch did not look up from the ledger resting on the desk before him nor did he bid his son to rise. His quill scratched against parchment, slow and deliberate, as though the ink itself bent to his will. Only when the silence stretched to breaking did he deign to lift his gaze.

His eyes were sharp, cruel things—like shards of frozen obsidian carved from the same stone as the family’s cursed foundation. “What has dragged you from the shadows of Hogsmeade, boy?” After Vladimir's 'miraculous recovery' he completed his remaining Hogwarts curriculum and upon graduation he was left with comfortable, distinct and distant living accomodations. There was no need to return to the home of his blood kin. In fact, he was bade to never return.

Not that Thaddeus was concerned. Yet, the quill stilled.

He motioned his hand for Vladimir to rise. “What trouble have you brought to my doorstep?”

Father, the word hung in the air, laced with formality and restraint. He met Thaddeus’ gaze head-on, burning eyes reflecting nothing back.

The fire crackled, low and restless, its light casting jagged shadows along the stone walls. Vladimir stood on command and stepped closer, careful to keep his posture composed despite the weight pressing down on him.

“I bring news,” Vladimir said, his voice smooth but edged with tension. “Aamon is in danger.”

A flicker of something—interest, maybe—passed through Thaddeus’ expression, but it was gone before it could be named.

“There have been... disturbances,” Vladimir continued. “He has been attacked—haunted—by dolls. Cursed objects, bound to him, twisted and malicious. They’ve drawn blood, briefly took his hand, and dragged him toward the forest on the new moon. The crones want him.”

Vladimir hesitated, just for a moment.

“And it seems they have grown audacious," he left out the fact that he had rifled through Aamons things and was aware weeks earlier that someone using Marion's name at the very least was reaching out. "They sent the cursed items to this very home," the implication was simply scandalous. The estate boasts some of the best security in the world. While the palatial grounds were attuned to various magics, wards, runes, enchantments and various staff are in place to prevent any unwanted ingress or egress. The only reason he was ever able to step foot was because his father allowed it.

"I fear they seek to uncover or are a part of a past we all thought buried.”

The fire crackled again.

“This scenario seems familiar, the only difference being the players as history tries to repeat,” Vladimir observed, his words lower now, almost bitter. “A younger me thought I had power through them. A means to fight back against my lessers because I lacked faith in myself. I could control it then. Mold it. Make it bend to my will. But it didn’t—” He stopped himself, his voice cooling once more.

“—It wouldn’t.”

He straightened, his shadow stretching across the room. “I will not let what happened to me happen to Aamon.”

“Won’t you?”

The words slithered from Thaddeus’ lips, low and heavy, like the crack of thunder before a storm. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as he examined the man before him. He was a boy not long ago, yet the years move by in the blink of an eye, in the breadth of a heartbeat.

“You were meant to lead this family, Vladimir. And yet, here you stand—broken, wandering through the ashes of your failure. Do you think I don’t see it? That I don’t feel it every time your name is spoken?”

His eyes darkened. “You were supposed to rise above the rest, and instead, you let yourself fall. And now, this? Dolls? Curses? Whispers of hags and old ghosts?”

He stood suddenly, the chair groaning beneath him as he loomed over Vladimir. “You squandered what was given to you—and for what? Peace? Quiet? You had power. You were power.”

His voice dropped lower.

“But perhaps it was never meant to be yours.”

He turned sharply, pacing toward the fire. “Your brother will not fare better. Aamon has always been weak. Too much heart. Too little instinct.” A lot like the brother standing before him.

Thaddeus’ lip curled.

“And as for Morgantha...”

The name fell from his lips like venom.

“She is a liability. A parasite. Do you think I don’t see her hunger? Her schemes?”

His hand tightened around the edge of the mantel. “Perhaps it is time to put an end to that arrangement.”

“No.”

The word slipped from Vladimir before he could stop it, sharp as steel. He straightened under his father’s gaze, his coal-like eyes burning with something raw and unyielding.

“Morgantha is dangerous,” Vladimir admitted. “But she is also controlled.” A lie as he knew it and he wondered if the words were even his own.

He let the words hang, measured and deliberate. “And she has served this family better than most.” He was uncertain if they were. He could not blame his father calculated decision to exile him, to allow him to escape with his life but nothing more.

His lips pressed into a thin line. “I owe my stepmother much. Also, I want no part in your titles or your power. I am what I am, and it is enough.” A truth as well as he knew it.

For a moment, there was a flicker of vulnerability beneath the surface, but it vanished just as quickly.

“What matters now is Aamon.” And the mistakes the both of them had made that had led the family to this tragic point.

His voice hardened.

“Whatever else you have buried, whatever debts remain unsettled, like mine, they are bleeding into the present. And if we do not cut them out—all of them—there won’t be a future left for any of us.”

Vladimir stood unflinching beneath his father’s shadow, his coal-black eyes reflecting the fire’s restless flicker. The weight of Thaddeus’ words pressed down like iron chains, but Vladimir bore it without bending. He had bent once—knelt before the will of this house, before the expectations carved into the foundation of their bloodline.

“You think I came here to beg for answers,” Vladimir said, voice cutting through the room like a blade. “I didn’t. I came to make you aware.”

He stepped forward, the firelight casting his sharp features in shifting hues of crimson and gold. There was no hesitation in his step, no crack in his voice. The air around him thickened, charged with something intangible, something dangerous.

“The hags are not dead. Or they’ve come back. Or worse—someone knows what they knew and has skills we are untested against.”

These words hung in the room like a curse.

“It doesn’t matter which it is. What matters is that this wasn’t random. It wasn’t a mistake. Aamon wasn’t chosen by chance—he was marked. You know it, and so do I.”

He leaned in slightly, his voice dipping lower, darker.

“This isn’t just a loose end, Father. It’s a noose tightening around our necks. Around this family.”

His breath slowed, deliberate. “You sent me into the fire once, and I burned. But this? This is something worse. Something that doesn’t burn—it devours.”

Vladimir’s gaze locked with Thaddeus’. “So tell me, Father. Do you still think the past should stay buried? Or do you see now that it’s already clawing its way out of the grave?”

He straightened, voice steady but edged with defiance.

He held no true love for Morgantha. She was in her own right a beautiful... woman might have been a stretch. But she was beautiful all the same. Vampiric lineage, a famed face and name. She was no stranger to the media and their union was one of mutual benefit. She would help him in the eyes of the wizarding world earn the regard of even his staunchest of opponents. Open-minded, considerate, keen to open the wizarding world to every sort of wizard, no matter how pitiful and small. In exchange he had wealth, a better name than even her own. Access, opportunity.

But he could not lock his doors to hold intruders who have already made it inside at bay. She knew much. Too much. And while she saved his first born from a certain end, she had gained a terrible foothold in his empire. He should have let the boy die. In his weakness he could not.

Vladimir's words fell heavy, but Thaddeus did not move. He stood as though carved from stone—an ancient monument weathered by time but unbroken. The fire roared behind him, casting his shadow long and menacing across the room.

“You dare come into my house and tell me what festers in the dark?”

His voice thundered, deeper than the crackling fire and sharper than the wind howling outside the estate.

“This house was built on darkness, Vladimir. It thrived in it.”

He turned, his sharp gaze raking over his son like a blade. “And it endured because I wielded that darkness. Because I did not flinch. Not when the hags whispered, not when blood was spilled, not when every coward in this world feared to tread where we stood!”

Thaddeus stepped forward, his towering form casting Vladimir in shadow.

“And now you stand here—broken, disgraced—and speak to me of danger?” Vladimir's foolish arrogance had cost him his life. For what, the affections of that muggle girl, the esteem of a common wizard boy. It did not take much to compel Vladimir, to walk him into the jaws of a trap that snapped shut around him and crushed him.

The fire surged behind him, its glow rising as if answering the force of his presence.

“You let this fester under your nose, Vladimir. You played with shadows you couldn’t control, and now you come running to me for answers. This was your error. Your blight. You think your defiance makes you strong? No.”

He leaned closer, his voice low and dangerous.

“It makes you weak.”

Thaddeus straightened, his presence filling the room. His voice rang out like a hammer striking stone.

“I will not let this family fall. Not to hags, not to curses, and certainly not to weakness. If the past has risen, then I will bury it again—deeper this time.”

He turned sharply, his cloak flaring out behind him as he strode to the towering bookshelf against the wall. His fingers brushed the worn leather bindings, pausing on one—The Black Grimoire.

“Go back to Hogsmeade,” Thaddeus commanded without turning. “Watch the boy. Watch his shadows. If they move, if they breathe, you will know.”

His hand hovered over the tome before pulling back, his focus shifting to the map laid out across the desk. Dark marks marred the edges—symbols etched into parchment older than the stones of the house.

“I will call the old contacts,” he continued. “Gather what we need. If the hags rise again, then so shall we.”

His voice darkened.

“And if something else dares to wear their skin, then I will burn it to ash.”

The fire crackled again, sharp and hungry, but Thaddeus did not look up.

“Now go. Do what you must.”

He turned his gaze back to Vladimir, piercing and unyielding.

“But do not fail me again.”