CHAPTER 5

The ring burned cold in her palm.

Bone shouldn’t burn. Not like that.

It was whispering now.

A language older than blood.

And somewhere, someone else was listening.

She didn’t sleep that night. She couldn’t. The whispers had grown teeth.

Every time she closed her eyes, they gnawed at the edges of her sanity, growing louder, clearer. Words she didn’t recognize but somehow understood. She sat curled by the hearth with nothing but candlelight and an old tapestry between her and the dark.

Her fingers ghosted over the bone ring, its surface impossibly smooth, its edges inscribed with symbols that flickered when she blinked. They weren’t Rossetti glyphs. Not Latin either. It was name-script the forbidden binding tongue reserved for Benedictions.

Her chest tightened.

The ring wasn’t a relic.

It was a seal.

A contract.

And the moment that truth lodged itself in her bones, someone banged on her door.

Three sharp knocks.

Then silence.

She jolted upright, heart pounding. Waited.

No voice. No footfalls. Only the echo of her own breath.

Maria crept to the door and opened it.

The hallway was empty, not a single soul in sight.

Except for a crimson thread nailed to the threshold, trailing down the corridor like a vein cut from the house itself.

She should have called for someone. Enzo, or that old maid who never slept. But something in her stomach familiar, ancestral told her to follow.

So she did.

Barefoot.

Silent.

The thread led her through the east gallery, past portraits that seemed to watch, judging eyes behind cracked varnish. Past the servants’ quarters, where no Rossetti had walked in decades. Then to the end of a disused corridor and the old wooden panel with the iron keyhole.

The hidden entrance.

Maria hesitated.

No one had mentioned this place in years. Not since Nonna Rossetti had been buried. She remembered being seven and hearing the servants whisper: The Benediction chamber has woken. A new sacrifice will be called.

She hadn’t understood then.

She did now.

With shaking hands, she pushed open the panel.

It revealed a narrow stairwell choked with dust.

Each step down felt like sinking into a forgotten past. At the bottom, the Chapel of St. Benedetto yawned open, the air thick with wax and salt and the iron tang of old prayers.

The crimson thread ended at the altar.

And someone was already there.

A tall man. Hooded

He stood with his back to her, head bowed. Moonlight caught on the wet stone floor.

Maria stopped. “Who are you?”

He turned slowly. The hood fell.

Not a man.

A boy. No older than twenty.

His eyes were green fire, and his mouth twisted not in malice, but in grief.

“You have the ring,” he said.

Her fingers clenched it instinctively. “And you’ve been following me.”

He took a step forward. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“You were at the funeral,” she said, breath catching.

“I’ve always been here,” he replied softly. “You just forgot.”

“Forgot?”

He reached into his coat.

Pulled out a second bone ring.

Twin to hers. But not identical.

Where hers bore the Rossetti name-script, his was etched in another tongue, one she somehow knew. One her soul recoiled from.

“Two Thirteenths,” she whispered.

He shook his head.

“Two sacrifices.”

And then everything exploded.

A sudden wind howled through the chamber, snuffing candles and shaking the pews. The altar split with a thunderous crack. Maria fell to her knees, the floor vibrating beneath her palms.

Pain lanced through her skull.

Visions struck sharp, cruel, searing:

– Her mother, gagging on black blood.

– A masked child in chains, dragged down stairs.

– Her own name written beside his on a funeral scroll in flame.

“Antonio,” she whispered.

That was his name.

And he had been chosen long before her.

When she came back to reality, the boy was gone.

Only the second ring remained, lying where he had stood.

And scrawled across the altar in what looked like dried blood:

ONLY ONE CAN END IT.

Maria stood there for what felt like hours. Breathing. Not breathing. The chamber still whispered, but now it sounded different. Like it had noticed her.

A predator blinking awake.

Was this what the Benediction really was? Not a blessing but a hunt?

She picked up his ring. Cold. Heavy. The moment her skin touched it, something inside her chest pulled tight, as though a cord had snapped into place. A tether.

He is bound to you now.

A choice, whispered the darkness. Not yours.

A curse that chose both of them but would only spare one.

She backed away slowly, pulse thundering, her mind racing through half-finished stories and family warnings, the way her grandmother used to say, “The Thirteenth is never born alone.”

Now she understood why.

They had always been hunting for the final seal.

And now the curse was forcing it closed.

She clutched both rings to her chest and ran.

Past the cracked altar. Through the stone corridor. Up the staircase where no one had walked in decades. Into the waking nightmare above.

Because the house had changed.

Doors she knew were now locked.

Shadows moved.

And somewhere in the dark, Antonio was still watching.

Maria isn’t the only Thirteenth.

She and Antonio are both sacrifices

One a backup incase the other one rebels, the prophesy foretold that the thirteenth will be the most rebellious Rossetti, the rossetti ancestors must have made plans in case one rebels.

They were chosen to seal or break the curse but only one can survive it.

And the Benediction has already begun choosing.