Page 16 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

Ark glanced at the second-floor gallery above the staircase. From the backstory, he already knew the nursery would hold the worst of it.

They went upstairs. Each step groaned beneath their weight, and the air grew thicker as they climbed. Heavier, sweeter, carrying the faint ghost of a child’s nursery—talcum powder and something floral, long since turned sour. A row of doors stood half-open along the hallway, as if the house were daring them to choose. They found the nursery at the end, still filled with stuffed animals and frilly furnishings.

Caius knelt in front of a circular rug and lifted its tattered edge, revealing a series of symbols carved into the floorboards. Dust clung to the edges of the old, faded runes—a warding circle.

“Ah, someone tried an exorcism after all,” he pointed out.

“They tried to contain the corruption,” Ark murmured, peering over Caius’s shoulder.

Rhodes scoffed. “Amateurs. They made things worse.”

And he was right. The effort hadn’t cleansed the house. It had merely trapped the festering Grief within it, locking the sickness in instead of cleansing or expelling it. Over the decades, that Grief had multiplied and fermented. That accumulation took a form of its own, manifested into a sinister presence that didn’t welcome any kind of disruption.

Wind swept through the hall even though all the windows and doors were closed. The chandelier above them groaned, its tarnished brass frame swaying, crystals clinking together in a rapid rhythm. The temperature plummeted—a bone-deep chill that had nothing to do with winter. It bit through their coats and gloves as if they wore nothing at all. The shadows in the corners stirred, then stretched—tendrils of dark reaching toward them, like tongues tasting the air.

A rush of energy lashed out—the Grief pressing down, a sorrow so deep it sought to drag them under. Ark felt it reaching for a specific loss in his memory: his childhood dog. A stray puppy he and his younger brother had found and hidden from their parents. He’d loved that dog. It had gotten sick. He’d held it when they put it down, felt its heartbeat slow against his chest before it gradually stopped, and stayed until its body went cold. He’d never told anyone that.

But the house riffled through him, homing in on that wound, trying to pry it open.

Rhodes moved first. A low growl rumbled in his chest as his power surged outward—not a delicate spell, but brute force. The air within a five-foot radius of them grew still and dense, a wall of pure kinetic energy. The shadows that had crept toward them hit the invisible barrier and broke apart like smoke against glass. The ceiling shook. The crystals rattled. The floorboards groaned as more shadows descended upon them.

“This is your cue to start,” Rhodes grunted.

Caius pulled a slender, silver-tipped stylus from the inner pocket of his coat. The warding circle, worn and fractured, pulsed weakly beneath his gaze.

“This was done in haste,” he murmured. “So messy. No wonder it failed.”

He pressed the stylus to the floorboards. As the silver tip met the surface, his power flowed. A thin, shimmering line of light unfurled, restoring the fractured runes stroke by stroke. The glow pulsed weakly at first, faltering where the original design had degraded, its lines jagged from age and poor craftsmanship.

Caius worked with a surgeon’s precision. This wasn’t mere magic; it was high art. The silver stylus in his hand was a conduit, but the power was his own—an innate ability to see the essence of a space and manipulate the underlying structures of enchantment. He wasn’t just repairing the old, crude symbol. He was redesigning it on the fly, tailoring a new, intricate sigil that would harmonize with the house’s specific magical frequency. He had a whole arsenal of runes memorized, and could determine in seconds which ones to combine in order to cleanse a space. No two of his designs were ever alike.

The house groaned, the shadows doubling down on them. Rhodes, still holding the barrier firm, looked over his shoulder and scowled. “Anytime now, please and thank you.”

Without taking his eyes off his work, Caius arched a brow. “Patience, darling. You can’t rush perfection.”

Ark let his glamour fall, his demonic features surfacing. He’d learned years ago that glamour and cleansing couldn’t coexist. The work demanded all of him, not just the curated version. Releasing the glamour was like shedding a second skin—the constant hum of energy suddenly freed up, all his power surging through him like water bursting through a dam. His magic saturated his palms, ready to be channeled through Caius’s new design to burn away the corruption.

As he waited for his turn, he watched Caius working quickly. The sigil would become a framework, a conduit designed to harmonize with the magical currents running through the foundation. If misaligned, the magic would resist it, unraveling the moment they left. But done correctly, it would reinforce itself, working together with the land’s power to sustain its purpose for decades, even centuries. It would steady the house and ensure protection, harmony, and prosperity for its residents—restoring it into a place that could truly be a home again.

Slowly, the flickering glow stabilized, pulsing with renewed strength. Caius leaned back and surveyed his work.

He turned to Ark. “It’s ready.”

Ark knelt and pressed his palms to the sigil. Where Rhodes commanded force and Caius crafted the structure of a ward, one of Ark’s gifts was essence—the pure void from which all things could be remade. He didn’t attack the corruption. He simply let his power flow, a wave of nullification that returned everything it touched to a state of calm, neutral nothingness. The house bucked in protest. The weight of Grief thickened, pressing against his ribs, clawing at the edges of his consciousness—memories that weren’t his, sorrow that wasn’t his, yet it tried to claim him all the same. This was the true danger of a cleansing. One had to open oneself to the emotions to understand them, to purge them out. One had to feel the loss to heal it.

Ark closed his eyes and let them in. The house fought him, clutching on to anything it could, but he held steady. Sorrow didn’t yield easily; it never did. It clung, stubborn and quiet. He wove his power through each line, reinforcing Caius’s design, until the weight began to crack. A burst of golden light flared outward, lancing through the room like a pulse of cleansing fire. The corruption recoiled, unraveling thread by thread, stripping away the decay that had long festered in the walls.

The house shuddered, the last strands of sorrow fraying until, at last, with a final tremor, it settled.

A long, slow unburdening, as if some crushing weight had finally been lifted.

Outside, the air was crisp, laced with the scent of damp earth and the faint, lingering traces of old magic. They sat on the porch, bottles of ale in hand, watching snowflakes float and settle over the empty fields beyond the house. Halewick mansion was quiet now. No more restless energy, no more lingering Grief pressing against their senses.

Rhodes stretched out his legs, thick as tree trunks, with a satisfied grunt. “When’s your brother coming to do the renovations?”

Ark tipped his head back against the wall, gaze tracking the slow drift of clouds past the moon. “Let’s give the new sigil a few days to settle, but I’ll call Oromon tomorrow and work out the timing.”

Caius swirled his drink, the motion idle. “We’ve decided to sell, then?”