Page 95 of Foresyth Conservatory
We studied the Book together. And that was our undoing.
It started with small sacrifices—rats, lizards, trivial things. But your mother wanted more. I was too enamored—by her, by the Book, by the promise of understanding—to resist. But eventually it was at the cost of my soul.
We chose Elizabeth Svenski.
A girl, terminally ill. A life already slipping away. I told myself it was mercy, but that was a lie. We wanted to prove the Book’s theories, to see if freeing a human soul from its material prison would unlock what Khorvyn had claimed.
It did not.
The girl did not die in a ritualistic transcendence. There was no ascension, no enlightenment. Only a quiet dimming of her light, a candle snuffed. And yet, something stirred in me. I felt it. A hunger not entirely my own started to fester deep within me.
The demiurge. The false God, the prison warden of this material realm, turned against Sophia, and created an unquenchable blood lust within me. It took but never gave, devoured but never satisfied.
The House knew that we had called on the demiurge. It fought back, attempting to right our wrong. Life erupted from underground—roots, vines, and a giant oak tree in the sitting parlor. But it wasn’t enough to stop the death ripening within us. We were too far gone.
Your mother was convinced we had only done the ritual wrong. She believed the five elements had to be offered, not just in presence, but in blood. Five sacrifices. The demiurge would choose one to die and grant the rest power to manipulate the material plane from our sheer will.
And then she told me she was pregnant.
I wanted to protect you. I wanted to end this. I stole the Book and left, believing—foolishly—that if I hid it in the depths of my soul, the cycle would break. I buried myselfin work, hunting men guilty of crimes that could never outweigh my own.
And yet, Foresyth continued.
At some point Hamra gave up, burying her research, and our dark history. She quietly raised you in Enderly while she ascended to power as one of the most influential Advisors in history. All the while Foresyth continued to fall apart at the seams.
The deaths stopped for a while. But when Renate was appointed as Meister, he came across Hamra’s work. He was determined to finish what we started, and to restore the House’s magick.
One by one, students began disappearing again. And at the behest of Renate, the Council ensured that no one would discover his sordid methods.
But I knew the truth. I had set this in motion.
I tried to stop it. I tracked the deaths, studied the patterns, but I had no proof. I was barred from the House, from Foresyth, and from you. The best I could do was keep the Book hidden. I locked it away, sealed with blood magick even the most desperate practitioner couldn’t break.
I tried to move on.
I met Estelle. A woman of light in all the ways I was dark. She loved books—the good kinds—and together, we built something beautiful. Something untouched by magick. We were blessed with a daughter, Dahlia. A flower erupting through the tainted soil of my life.
I swore to protect her. To keep her from the path that had destroyed me. When I learned you were being groomed for Foresyth, I tried to keep her away from you, from any institution that might indoctrinate her.
But even then, the Book haunted me.
It spoke to me. Whispered things I cannot bring myself to write. The bloodlust never truly left. I told Estelle the truth, and it nearly shattered her. We tried everything to fix me, but it was no use. I became a ghost in my own home, watching my wife dwindle away, watching my daughter grow up afraid of the father who could never love her properly.
And now, the Book is back at Foresyth.
Renate has it. And I must stop him with what power I have left.
If you are reading this, it means that I have failed. It means that I could not protect you, and that you are in grave danger. So, I beg you, Julian, leave. Forsake the Book and walk away while you still can. Do not let it consume you as it consumed me.
I wish I could have known you, and loved you, as much as I loved your mother, Hamra. I have even come to forgive her, for the corruption she had let into her soul. I can only hope it doesn’t fully enter yours.
For my absence, for my sins, I am sorry.
Your father, Daniel Blackburne
I let the letter roll over me like a storm, its weight settling in my bones, before turning to the second—this one penned in Julian’s familiar hand. A terrible question began to rise: had my father’s death truly been a suicide, or had he been silenced for speaking out about what was happening at Foresyth?
Anger surged in my chest, and I clung to it like a lifeline. It was so much easier—cleaner—to feel fury than to surrender to the guilt, the shame, the grief clawing at the edges of my composure. Easier to be furious with my father for all his secrets, with the Meister for pulling my strings like a marionette, and with Julian’s mother for dragging him, and by extension, my father, into this spiral of darkness.
