The wind clawed at Eldeholt castle's broken spires, a bitter welcome for Helga as she stepped from the carriage. Her new husband, Count Edgar Eldeholt, swayed beside her, his breath sour with wine even on their wedding day. She was nineteen, her Water and Air magic a quiet hum beneath her skin, and this crumbling heap of stone was her dowry's price—two villages and a title, traded for her family's favor. The mountain loomed behind, its peak jagged against a bruised sky, and the forest below whispered with pine. She'd make it hers, she vowed, starting with the rot within.
The castle was a ruin—walls sagged, floors buckled, and the dungeons beneath were a warren of old tunnels, half-collapsed from neglect. Edgar cared only for his cups and his whores, but Helga saw potential. She'd ordered the foundations resurfaced, the cellars cleared—stone by stone, she'd forge a seat worthy of her ambition. The workers came from the mountain village, broad men with picks and torches, their faces lined from iron mines. Three dozen started that first week, hauling rubble and shoring beams. By the third day, three were gone.
It began with a scream.
Helga stood in the great hall, tracing a crack in the pine table, when the sound tore up from below—high, raw, then cut short. She froze, her Air magic stirring the dust around her feet. Edgar, sprawled in a chair, sloshed his goblet and laughed. "Rats fighting, eh?" But the foreman's shout followed, sharp with panic: "Get up here!" She moved before she thought, her blue skirts trailing as she descended the narrow stair to the dungeons.
The air thickened as she went, damp and heavy, laced with the tang of iron and something older—something wrong. Torches flickered along the walls, casting jagged shadows over the workers clustered at the tunnel's mouth. Their picks lay scattered, their faces pale. "What happened?" she demanded, her voice steady despite the chill creeping up her spine.
The foreman, a grizzled man named Torv, wiped sweat from his brow. "Dren, Mik, and Luth—they were clearing the east passage. Said they found a vein, somethin' shiny. Then the screamin' started. We ran in, but…" He swallowed, his eyes darting to the dark. "Nothin' left. Just this."
He held out a gem—an amethyst, fist-sized, its violet facets glinting like a trapped star. Helga took it, her fingers brushing its cold surface. The torchlight dimmed, though no wind touched it. She turned to the tunnel, a gaping maw of black stone, and the shadows within seemed to pulse—not a trick of the flame, but alive, coiling like smoke. A whisper brushed her ear, soft and sharp: "Stay." Her Water magic flared instinctively, a sheen of frost riming her hands, but the voice faded.
"What was it?" she asked, her gaze locked on the dark.
Torv shook his head. "Dunno, m'lady. Screams stopped fast—too fast. No blood, no bodies. Just… gone." The others muttered—ghosts, curses, tales from the mines. One swore he'd seen the shadows move, another that the gem had glowed before the men vanished.
Helga's mind raced. Her grandmother had spoken once, in a hushed tone, of a sister lost to darkness—magic that ate its wielder, forbidden and feared. Shadow, they'd called it, a stain on their line. She'd dismissed it as old superstition, but now, holding the amethyst, she felt its weight beyond the stone. The castle's tunnels stretched deep, older than the Eldeholts, older than memory. Whatever took those men wasn't rats or cave-ins—it was something she couldn't fight, not yet.
"Seal it," she said, her voice cutting through the murmurs. "Every tunnel, every passage. Brick them up. Now."
Torv blinked. "But the foundation—"
"Do it." She turned the gem over, its light winking like an eye. "No one goes down there again."
The workers obeyed, hauling stone and mortar through the day and into the night. Edgar stumbled down once, bleary-eyed, and scoffed. "Wasting good men on your whims, woman?" She didn't answer, her Air magic lifting a brick into place as the last scream echoed in her mind. By dawn, the tunnels were gone—walled off, buried, a secret pressed beneath the castle's bones. The amethyst she locked in a chest, its glow muted behind iron bands.
Years passed, and the workers' tale faded to whispers in the mountain village—ghosts, they said, or gem-cursed greed. Helga bore Edgar a son, Julius, whose Air and Fire lit the halls, and a daughter, Gloria, whose eyes she couldn't meet. The girl was quiet, drawn to the dark, and Helga watched her with a coldness she couldn't shake. She'd seen the shadows move once. She'd heard them call. And she'd buried them deep, praying they'd never wake.
But the castle remembered.