But whenever she left her room for long, the necrothralls began materialising. They didn’t try to stop her or herd her back into her room; they just watched her, hovering like ghostly apparitions.
She tried to ignore them along with the creaks and groans of the house, the shifting shadows, but they made it impossible for her to find any means of suicide. She persisted doggedly, but most of the rooms were locked tight, and those that weren’t held nothing but old furniture and useless knickknacks.
In one old room, she found a painting crammed behind a disassembled bed frame. It was covered by a dustcloth. She pulled it out, curious.
Drawing the fabric back, it was a portrait of the Ferron family. Not Ferron and Aurelia, but Ferron as a boy with his parents.
Atreus Ferron, the former patr
