The Obsidian Bloom

March 12, 2026

by Jannie

3 min read

Story Premise 3 min read (459 words)

"The antique grandfather clock in the hall chimed midnight, each resonant stroke vibrating through the old house. Elias lay in his four-poster bed, the heavy velvet curtains drawn, a futile attempt to keep out the oppressive darkness of the summer night. His two cousins, a boisterous pair named Finn and Leo, were asleep in the […]"

The antique grandfather clock in the hall chimed midnight, each resonant stroke vibrating through the old house. Elias lay in his four-poster bed, the heavy velvet curtains drawn, a futile attempt to keep out the oppressive darkness of the summer night. His two cousins, a boisterous pair named Finn and Leo, were asleep in the guest room down the hall, their snores a distant counterpoint to the house’s creaks and groans. Elias, however, found himself awake, a prickling sensation crawling over his skin.

He pushed himself up, the linen sheets cool against his clammy skin. The room was bathed in a faint, phosphorescent glow, as if the very air held a hidden luminescence. It was past midnight, but the house felt alive, charged with an unseen energy. A strange compulsion, a dizzying pull, drew him to the edge of the bed, a silent invitation to explore the anomaly. He took a step, then another, his feet making no sound on the Persian rug.

As he neared the window, a suffocating pressure clamped down on him, yanking him backward with impossible force. He was slammed against the headboard, his breath stolen. He couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. A presence, heavy and suffocating, loomed over him. Then, impossibly, soft, cool hands began to trace the contours of his chest, moving with a deliberate, almost reverent slowness. The touch sent shivers through him, not entirely of fear, but of an unnerving, alien pleasure. Delicate kisses, like the touch of frost, feathered across his ribs. He squeezed his eyes shut, a silent plea for it to end, for it to be over. When he finally dared to open them, he was lying flat on his back, the unseen entity gone, the room now plunged into its usual Stygian blackness. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that this was no mere figment of a sleeping mind.

The following night, the cycle began anew. Elias found himself pinned once more, the phantom touch returning, more insistent this time. He tried to recall his father’s hushed tales of the ‘sleeping sickness,’ a malady spoken of in hushed tones by his grandmother, a curse whispered to afflict those who strayed too close to the old well on the family’s neglected estate. Elias had always dismissed them as folklore, the ramblings of an aging woman. Now, as the spectral caresses intensified, the memory of the deep, shadowed well, rumored to have been dug by hands long dead, began to fester in his mind. He felt the invisible lips graze his neck, and a cold dread washed over him. He felt himself being slowly, inexorably, consumed by something ancient and starved, a darkness that bloomed in the stillness of his room.

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