Mélusine :
At the heart of a castle too vast to be inhabited by a single soul once lived the lady Mélusine. Its stones echoed with silenced laughter, remnants of a happiness long denied to her. Surrounded by a husband and stillborn children, she knew more grief than joy, each empty cradle deepening the void within her heart.
Then came the unthinkable miracle. A child breathed, cried, lived. Mélusine knelt before that fragile life as before a sacred relic. She watched his first steps, listened to his first words, etched every smile into her memory as though time itself might steal them away.
For thirteen years she guarded him with obsessive devotion. The world beyond ceased to exist.
Until that fateful night.
A ball was held, and Mélusine was forced to leave the castle. Amid candlelight and music, a pale messenger announced the child was dying. She fled the celebration, but returned to silence.
The child was dead.
Her scream never escaped her lips. It hardened into hatred. She denied death, denied absence. The world moved on regardless.
Mélusine vanished from society’s gaze. The castle became her living tomb, while her husband chose laughter, forgetting, and younger lovers within its walls.
On a winter night, she ended the farce. The poison worked slowly. Mélusine watched the man she once loved die, without anger, without mercy.
Her mind fractured. Pain turned to obsession. The curse reshaped her flesh, and she embraced the monster in the mirror.
She kept her child’s puppeteer cross close. The curse infused it with dark magic, granting her dominion over souls.
Thus began the unspeakable.
Loneliness was crueler than death.
She lured lost children to the castle, binding their souls into wooden puppets carved in their likeness.
They filled the halls with whispers and muted sobs. Mélusine called them her children. She carved their features and dressed them as the living.
So she would never be alone again.
They say the walls still whisper.
And the castle does not love silence.