Self-made developer Julian Garrison seals an $85 million merger by acquiring a cursed marble statue, only to discover his ruthless partner encased his abandoned ex-lover alive within the stone.
Silas’s finger twitched on the trigger. The cold steel of the pistol glinted in the candlelight. The air thrummed with unspoken threats.
But I didn’t drop the hammer.
The images of Elena, vibrant and alive, then trapped and silent, flashed through my mind. The faint heartbeat, the whispered name. I thought of Beatrix’s grim warnings, the ancestral power in my hands.
“You won’t win this, Silas,” I said, my voice low and steady.
“Oh, but I already have,” he retorted, a chilling smile playing on his lips. “You signed the contract, Julian. You walked right into my trap. Now, this is merely… damage control.”
He raised the pistol slightly, adjusting his aim. “One last chance. Drop it.”
Instead of dropping the hammer, I roared.
The primal sound ripped from my throat, fueled by rage, guilt, and a desperate, burgeoning hope. I ignored the gun entirely, focused only on the marble form of Elena.
With all the strength I possessed, I swung the ancestral hammer.
The heavy, rune-etched iron met the cold, enchanted marble with a deafening *CRACK*, a sound that seemed to shatter the very air in the library. A blinding flash of purple light erupted from the point of impact, momentarily obscuring everything.
Silas staggered back, his eyes wide with shock, the pistol momentarily forgotten in his hand. A gasp escaped his lips.
The statue of Elena vibrated violently. A spiderweb of crimson cracks spread across its chest, radiating outward from the impact point like angry veins. And from those cracks, a thick, dark liquid began to seep, staining the pristine white marble a shocking, visceral red.
It was blood. Elena’s blood.
A faint, rattling gasp echoed throughout the room, a sound so fragile, so agonizing, that it pierced through the ringing in my ears. It came from inside the statue, from within the heart of the stone.
Elena. She was truly alive. And she was in pain.
Silas, recovering from his initial shock, raised his pistol again, his face a mask of furious disbelief. “You fool!” he shrieked, his composure finally breaking. “You’ll destroy everything!”
The blood oozed faster, dripping onto the pedestal, painting a grotesque picture against the classical beauty of the sculpture. The rhythmic *thump-thump* of her heart, once faint, now pulsed with a frantic, desperate beat, audible even above the raging storm.
My arm ached, but the hammer felt lighter now, a conduit of terrible, necessary power. I looked from the seeping blood to Silas, then back to Elena. The agony in that faint gasp spurred me on. There was no hesitation now, only a burning need to free her.
The statue groaned, a low, resonant sound as if the stone itself was in pain. The air grew heavy, thick with unseen energy. The reckoning Beatrix had warned me about was beginning.
I raised the hammer again, ignoring Silas’s shouted threats, ignoring the gun pointed at me. Elena was suffering. I had to finish this.
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