Page 22 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

“Oscar,” I utter his name, low and commanding. The silence in the room stretches thin, each breath we take weighted with expectation. His eyes meet mine, patient, waiting.

He doesn’t speak right away, as if choosing his words carefully. But I know his rhythm well enough. The task is already done. The work, the digging, it’s all been executed with precision. All that remains is to lay it out before me. To reveal the truth we both know will shape everything.

“The information you requested has been found, sir” I open the folder he passes to me and I sift through it, the photographs falling across the desk like fallen leaves, revealing their grim contents. The bodies lie there, naked and raw, their skin branded with sigils that should never see the light of day. I study them with dispassionate eyes, my fingers tracing the air above the images without ever touching the paper. The markings are wrong.

“Boureutherna Institution, 1965. A massacre betided resulting in the deaths of nuns and orphans”

Oscar’s words hang in the air like smoke, curling and dissipating with an ominous weight. The past presses in, but it is a thing already known, already cataloged in the dark corners of this world. I lean forward, steady and unmoving. I do not tremble at history. I do not flinch at its ghosts.

“I’m aware of the history, Oscar,” I say, my voice colder than I intend, though it cuts through the air with a sharpness that betrays the undercurrent of dread twisting in my stomach. “What is it that you’re getting at?”

“Two weeks ago, the same institution held an ordination. New members were sworn in. Seven lives were sacrificed.”

“They’re not apotropaic,” the words slip from my lips like a bitter truth. “No, these are not protections. They are something darker, something less... refined.”

“They’re back, sir,” Oscar says, almost as an afterthought, but I can hear the undercurrent of something unspoken

“They are not,” I reply, and the words fall from me like stones into the depths of a well, dark and final.

I drop the image on the desk, the motion deliberate, almost ceremonial. My hands move to another, and I study it with the same cold focus. The markings are different, still—raw, unpolished, and unmistakably wrong. Whoever did this was not a craftsman of the occult, but an ignorant hand, reckless and eager, as if they were playing at something they could not hope to understand.

There is a ripple through the room, a sensation I can’t quite place. But fear does not settle in my bones. No, it is something else, a sense of inevitability, the quiet hum of danger on the horizon.

“Whoever they are,” I say, my voice like a knife, carvingthrough the tension in the air, “they do not know what they are meddling with.”

And that is the most dangerous truth of all.

“We reduced the Stamatoties Clan to cinders years ago, Oscar. This… this is not them.”

I let the image slip from my fingers, its edges crinkling as it meets the cold surface of the desk. I pluck another photograph, gaze unwavering, dissecting each mark, each detail, with the same clinical precision that has come to define me.

“This is a re-imagining,” I say. “A mockery of what once was. These markings are wrong, inferior. Whoever is behind this is trying to resurrect something long dead, but they are failing, spectacularly.”

Oscar’s eyes remain steady, unwavering as always, but the faintest flicker crosses his face. “Perhaps a blood relation we weren’t aware of,” he suggests, his voice flat, devoid of speculation.

“Perhaps,” I concede, though I know where this trail leads. Years ago, a cult was born from the ashes of my bloodline, a cult founded by my father’s half-sister. The very same cult that delivered my parents to their graves.

Calix Moretti remarried after my fathers mother died. He welcomed the devil into his home, embodied in the daughter they later birthed. Iris, a woman whose jealousy festered like a wound left untreated. A woman who, in her bitterness, came to believe in things far darker than the world ever should’ve allowed.

Her descent began innocently enough. Homilies filled with words no one had ever heard, notions foreign and strange to all who listened. But beneath that veneer, there was something insidious brewing. Incantations whispered in the dark, strange rituals, and too many nights lost in thewoods. She began crafting haunted dolls, each one more twisted than the last, silent witnesses to her madness.

When Calix had no choice but to lock her away in Bourethean Institution, he believed nuns were the cure. A small, crumbling institution nestled miles away, once a sanctuary for troubled souls. A sanctuary turned slaughterhouse, a massacre that would become legend. One of rituals and bloodshed, of murder and madness.

However, she did not stop at that alone. After taking the lives of her own mother and father, she murdered my parents as well, and not only did she destroy their lives—she destroyed mine.

I was fifteen then. Bloodlust bloomed within me, a hunger I could not sate, a thirst I could not quench. I wanted her blood. I wanted to see her fall, to feel her brokenness beneath my hands. And so I did.

“Find out more, Oscar,” I close the folder shut, its contents a reminder of an unfinished war. “And let me know when my guest arrives.”

“Understood, sir.”

As Oscar closes the door shut, I feel a familiar tightness coil in my chest, a savage yearning, like claws scraping against bone. I thought I had buried all of this, long ago. But something—or someone—has unearthed what I sealed away. And that is a problem.

I rise from my chair, my movements slow, deliberate. I walk to the bookcase, pressing a hidden lever to reveal the winding staircase that leads down into the depths of my past. The dim light flickers on as I descend, casting long shadows on the cold stone.

At the bottom, I approach a barred door. My fingers brush against the keychain around my neck, the metal cool against my skin as I unlock it. The room is suffocatinglydark, but I know this place like I know the back of my own hand. I walk past another cage door until I’m facing her.

The heavy, stale air wraps around me. I pull the folder from under my arm and throw it at her. The sound of it hitting the concrete echoes like a gunshot in the stillness.

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