acob's back hit the wall as the creature's teeth sank into his shoulder—not tearing flesh, but drinking memory.
Visions erupted behind his eyes:
—Age twelve, holding the torch as Emily wept in the ritual circle. Not tied down. Holding hands with Eleanor. "It's just a game," Eleanor lied, her voice shaking. "You'll be home by dawn."
—Age seventeen, drinking with Blackwood guards in a tavern, their laughter sharp as they described the "mad little girl" who'd screamed for a brother who didn't exist. One guard tossed Jacob a silver coin. "Fine acting, boy. Almost believed you cared."
—Last month, finding Eleanor in the asylum's darkest wing, her face wrapped in blood-crusted bandages. "You came back," she'd sobbed. "The Crow let you remember this time."
The Priest knelt beside him, pressing his forehead to Jacob's. Their shared breath reeked of charred meat. "How many times have we done this?" he murmured. "You hear the truth. You run. The world burns. And we begin again."
Beneath them, the ground trembled as something vast and feathered stirred in the deepest crypt. The roots surging from the walls began to sing—a chorus of children's voices, all harmonizing Emily's favorite rhyme:
"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!"
Eleanor's void-face loomed over Jacob, her crow's eye weeping black tears. "Last chance," she whispered. "Remember properly."
The memory that surfaced wasn't his.
—A younger Eleanor carving words into his chest with a rusted key: "Emily was never your sister. She's the Crow's daughter. And you're the—"
The Emily-thing wrenched back, its mouth dripping with stolen memories. "Liar!" it shrieked.
The catacomb walls ruptured.