The memory took Jacob like a drowning wave—not fragments this time, but the full, terrible flood.
He was no longer kneeling in the ruins of the throne room. He stood in a sunlit nursery, the air thick with the scent of lavender and fresh linen. A cradle rocked gently by the window, its blankets embroidered with blackbirds. His hands—smaller, softer—clutched a knife that glinted too brightly in the morning light.
Behind him, a man cleared his throat.
"It's the only way, Daniel."
Jacob—no, his name was Daniel then—turned to see Lord Blackwood's younger face, his beard neatly trimmed, his eyes devoid of the madness that would later consume him. The lord placed a heavy hand on Daniel's shoulder.
"The house demands a child," Blackwood continued, guiding Daniel toward the cradle. "But we can make it forget which one."
The blankets stirred. A tiny fist emerged, followed by the most heartbreaking sound Daniel had ever heard—an infant's gurgling laugh.
His vision blurred. The knife trembled.
"Quickly now," Blackwood urged. "Before she wakes fully."
The memory jolted forward—
—Daniel's hand gripping tiny ankles. The first incision along the sole of a foot. The way the laughter turned to screams, then to whimpers, then to silence as the sigils took hold. Blood sizzled where it struck the ritual circles painted beneath the cradle.
"Good," Blackwood murmured, clasping Daniel's shoulder. "Now the final cut. The one that makes her belong to the house."
The knife slid across the infant's palm—
—And the nursery exploded into flames.
Daniel stumbled back, but the fire didn't burn him. It warped around him, forming walls of shimmering heat that reflected endless variations of the same moment:
A Daniel in his twenties, weeping as he carved the sigils into his own infant daughter.
A Daniel as an old man, watching blankly as Blackwood's grandson repeated the ritual.
A Daniel with hollow eyes, teaching Eleanor how to hold the knife.
The worst reflection stood apart from the others—a Daniel who'd refused. In that version, the fire consumed the entire estate, leaving only a single, soot-stained cradle untouched.
The Crow's voice whispered through the flames: "You could have stopped it. You chose to forget instead."
Daniel - Jacob reached for that scorched cradle. As his fingers brushed the wood, the memory ruptured, hurling him into.....