The late afternoon sun slanted warm and gold across the small Parisian town, lighting up the dirt streets and the smithy’s yard where fifteen-year-old Nicolas de Vilar had been tossing his ball—a leather thing his father had made him, worn smooth by months of play.
He should have gone straight home after errands. His mother always warned him not to go near the dark forest that crouched behind the abandoned manor. But Nicky was spontaneous by nature, and when a poorly aimed throw sent the ball arcing over a fence and rolling right into the tree-shadow, he didn’t hesitate. His father would scold him for losing it; his brother Robert would laugh. So he ducked beneath the branches and followed.
The forest grew still. Too still. Nicolas’s skin prickled with the familiar discomfort he hated to acknowledge—fear. He spotted the ball at last, resting near a toppled stone wall. Beyond it loomed the old manor, black-roofed, its windows dead-eyed. He bit at his nail without thinking.
“Just grab it and go,” he muttered.
But as he scooped the ball into his hands, a gust of wind pushed the manor’s half-open door inward with a long wooden groan. Nicolas froze. His imagination darted through every scary story he’d tried so hard to forget.
He could leave. He should leave.
And yet… something tugged at him. Curiosity. The same trait that always got him into trouble.
Nicolas stepped across the threshold.
Inside, the air was cold and stale. Dust lay thick on the floor, except for one narrow trail leading downward into the manor’s basement. Someone had been here—recently, maybe.
His breath quickened. He followed anyway, each wooden stair complaining beneath his boots.
The cellar was nearly pitch-black, lit only by the faint light he carried from above. But in the center of the room, on a stone dais, rested a long wooden coffin bound with iron.
Nicolas’s heart pounded in his throat.
He knew enough of local legends—coffins inside abandoned manors, locked with iron, were never good things.
He should go.
He started backing toward the stairs… until he heard it.
A sound.
Soft.
Not quite a voice—more like a faint, restrained movement. As if someone inside the coffin had shifted.
His blood went cold. He nearly bolted. But then another thought cut through his terror:
What if someone was trapped?
What if he walked away and left a living person to die?
Turned away someone good—his worst fear.
His hands shook as he approached the coffin. The iron clasp was twisted, almost broken, as though someone outside it had tried to lock it hastily. Nicolas hesitated, whispered a small prayer under his breath, and tugged on the mechanism until, with a screech, it snapped open.
He lifted the lid.
Inside lay a person—perhaps a few years younger than him, perhaps far older, he couldn’t tell. Their skin was pale as unused flour, their hair fanned neatly around their shoulders as though untouched by time. Their outfit was old-fashioned, torn in places, but elegant. And though their eyes were closed, their chest rose and fell with the slow, deliberate calm of deep slumber.
Nicolas swallowed. “Excusez-moi…?”
They didn’t speak—didn’t even stir at first. But their eyes opened, very slowly.
They were red.
Not bright, not glowing—simply, unnervingly red, like wine against candlelight.
Nicolas stumbled back, clutching the ball to his chest. Every tale of demons and monsters slammed into his mind all at once. He wanted to flee, but their gaze held him—not by force, but by a quiet, unreadable expression. Not hunger. Not threat.
Confusion.
They lifted a hand, thin and delicate, as if to brace themselves on the coffin’s rim. When they tried to sit up, the chains around their ankles rattled softly.
Nicolas’s fear tangled with something else—pity.
Someone had locked them in here. Someone had bound them. And they wasn’t attacking him. They wasn’t doing anything at all except blinking in the dim light, looking at him as though unsure if he was real.
He took a small step forward.
“I… I shouldn’t have opened this,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t just leave you.”
The sun outside was already lowering. Shadows stretched long across the cellar door. Nicolas tightened his grip on his ball.
He didn’t know what they was.
He didn’t know whether freeing them was an act of kindness or a terrible mistake.
Nicolas took a shaky breath. “My name is… Nicolas. Nicolas de Vilar. I… I’ll come back with food. Or—something.”
Nicolas backed toward the stairs, then turned and fled the manor, running through the darkening forest with the ball clutched tight, his heart hammering as the last rays of sun faded behind him.
He didn’t know whether he had just saved a life…
…or awakened something far older than he could comprehend.
But he knew one thing for certain:
He would return.
