Chapter 4: The Return of the Lost Heir
The music grew louder.
Not from the piano in front of them.
But from everywhere.
The castle itself seemed to be playing.
Arthur clutched the edge of the instrument, his knuckles white.
“This is impossible…” he muttered. “No mechanism can—”
“It’s not a mechanism,” Nora interrupted quietly.
Arthur turned sharply toward her.
Her eyes were no longer fearful.
They were exhausted.
Relieved.
Like someone who had carried a secret too heavy for too long.
“You never found her body,” Nora said.
Arthur froze.
Nora continued:
“Because there was no body to find.”
The music surged again, echoing through stone.
Chloe stepped back slightly.
“Mother…” she whispered.
Arthur’s voice broke for the first time in decades.
“Where is she?”
Nora looked at him directly.
“You’ve been standing above her for twenty years.”
Arthur’s face went pale.
The chamber beneath them trembled faintly.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
And then—
The piano in front of them played a single final chord on its own.
Chloe whispered:
“She’s here.”
A hidden panel in the wall slid open.
Cold air rushed out.
And a voice—calm, familiar, unmistakably alive—spoke from the darkness:
“You finally brought her to me.”
Arthur’s eyes widened in horror.
Because he recognized that voice.
Not as a memory.
But as someone who should have never been able to speak again.
And from the shadows stepped a woman—
May you like
Holding the same melody that had destroyed a dynasty.
Elara Blackwood.
