The Candle's Last Flame

The manor had no windows left, only holes like blackened teeth. Wind prowled through them and carried whispers down the corridors, though no one dared live there.

And yet, on the eve of Saint’s Vigil, they gathered.

Madame Irelle arranged her candles with the patience of a surgeon setting his tools. Each flame bent low as if unwilling to burn, though she coaxed them upright with muttered words. The chalk circle was already drawn—symbols etched on stone that should not have held their shape so long.

Ser Aldric watched with arms folded, jaw set hard. His inheritance, this ruin. The house of Corven, eaten by fire and rumor, cursed since his father’s death. He looked more a soldier than an heir, with the sort of defiance that comes from denying fear too often.

Garran leaned against a splintered beam, arms crossed. “Saints save us, Aldric. You’ve dragged us to a midden heap to watch this charlatan mutter at candles. I’d sooner trust a dice game to speak with your father.”

The priest scowled but said nothing. His hand clutched a rosary so tightly the beads cut red into his palm.

The maid, Elayne, lingered near the wall, face pale. She had served the family since she was a child, had been there the night the fire took Lord Corven. More than once her eyes slid toward Aldric, not with loyalty, but with fear.

“Sit,” Madame Irelle commanded. Her voice was low, but it carried. “All of you, within the circle. If you wish to hear truth, you must risk it.”

They obeyed, some reluctantly, some with trembling eagerness. The air thickened, cold mist spilling from nowhere, coiling round their ankles. Shadows stretched, though no one moved. She began to chant. Words no priest would claim, syllables that scraped like stone dragged over bone. The flames quivered.

Then the knock came. Three sharp raps upon the table, though no hand touched it.

“Who speaks?” Madame Irelle whispered.

A voice answered, soft and mocking, as if from beneath the floor. “Why, you do, child. You always have.”

The priest hissed a prayer, fumbling at his beads. Garran swore under his breath.

But Aldric only smiled, faint and secret, as the shadows bent toward him.

The candles guttered, smoke curling like grasping fingers. Madame Irelle’s back straightened as though pulled by unseen strings. Her lips parted, and the voice came again—through her, but not her own.

“You called,” it purred. “You rattled your bones and burned your wax. Now hear.”

The priest slammed his hand on the table. “Name yourself! If you are of God, speak it plain. If you are not—”

“If I am not?” the voice teased. “Then you have no power here, bead-monger.”

Elayne whimpered, clutching her skirts. Garran’s knuckles whitened around his chair.

Aldric leaned forward. “Is it you, Father?”

The shadows writhed, and the air grew rank, like smoke soaked into stone. “Your father? No, boy. Your father was mine before the fire took him. Mine before his bones cracked and the worms licked his marrow. He is ash. But I… I remain.”

The priest tried to drown the words in prayer, but the syllables twisted, choked, turned to silence in his throat.

Madame Irelle’s eyes rolled back, white as bone. Her hands clawed at the table, nails splintering. “Blood,” she croaked in the spirit’s voice. “Blood for release. The heir’s blood.”

The candles bent inward, flames reaching toward Aldric.

Garran shoved to his feet. “Enough! This is trickery, Aldric, don’t tell me you believe this nonsense.”

But Elayne blurted, voice breaking, “I’ve seen him!” She trembled, eyes darting to Aldric. “In the halls at night, speaking to shadows when he thought none watched. His lips moved, but no sound—only silence, and the dark answering him.”

Aldric’s head turned slowly toward her. For a moment, just a flicker, his smile held something cold.

The priest lunged to draw a sunburst across Aldric’s brow, but the flames guttered out as he reached. Darkness surged. The chalk circle broke with a hiss. Candles fell, sputtering.

And in that choking dark, the spirit laughed.

The room tore itself apart. Chairs toppled. Wind howled through gaps in the ruined walls, but the sound was not of air—it was voices, hundreds whispering at once, too low to understand, too many to ignore.

Madame Irelle’s body convulsed. Her mouth opened wide, too wide, as though another face pressed beneath her skin. Garran dragged her back, but the voice that poured out was not hers. “You thought to bind me? To name me? Fool. I was never in the circle. I was sitting at your table.”

And then—silence.

Every eye turned to Aldric.

His smile widened. “It was never about calling him,” he said, rising to his feet. His shadow loomed impossibly long, stretching across the floor though all but one of the candles had gone out. “He never left. He lives here.” He pressed a hand against his chest. “Here.”

The priest staggered back, face ashen. “You—Saints preserve us—”

“I preserve myself,” Aldric said, voice layered, half his own, half the mocking tone from the séance. “My father thought to master it. Instead, it mastered him. And when the fire came, it chose me.”

Elayne sobbed. Garran drew steel, but the blade shook in his grip. “If that’s true, then you’re no heir—you’re a damned shell.”

“Shell?” Aldric tilted his head. His eyes caught the faintest gleam, like embers. “No. Vessel.”

The priest thrust his rosary forward, shouting words half-lost in terror. For a heartbeat, the beads flared with light. But Aldric only laughed, and the rosary crumbled to ash between the priest’s fingers.

Madame Irelle screamed as her body arched, spine snapping like kindling. She collapsed, eyes burned hollow, smoke curling from her lips. The spirit had no further use for its mouthpiece.

The shadows crowded in, coiling around Aldric, caressing him like loyal hounds.

Only one flame remained, trembling in the far corner, stubborn against the dark. Its glow painted Aldric’s face in fractured light—half man, half something else.

Garran seized Elayne’s wrist. “Run.” His voice cracked, raw with terror. He dragged her toward the shattered door, stumbling through black mist that clawed at their heels. The priest stumbled after, gasping prayers that sounded more like curses.

Behind them, Aldric did not follow. He stood in the circle’s ruin, hands spread, shadows coiling into him, out of him. “Run, yes,” he called, voice echoing like three voices at once. “But remember, you invited me. You lit the candles. You begged for truth.”

The last candle sputtered. Its flame shrank, guttered, flared one last time.

And in that heartbeat of light, they saw Aldric’s smile—no longer forced, no longer secret.

Then the flame died.

Epilogue

They did not speak of what they saw that night. Garran swore he’d never return to the manor, but he carried the memory like a wound that wouldn’t close. The priest resigned his office, muttering that prayers were straw in a firestorm. Elayne left the village altogether, haunted by the way Aldric’s eyes had followed her even as she fled.

But rumors spread as rumors do. A figure seen at crossroads, pale as smoke. A voice heard in empty churches, mocking priests at their altars. And when a bell tolled at midnight though no hand touched the rope, folk whispered that the heir of Corven walked again, wearing both his own face—and the demon’s.

The curse had not ended.

It had only begun.

The End