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“Grief built the Manor. Love locked the doors.”

 

Before it was Gloomridge, it was simply Liliette’s home — a grand estate draped in roses, laughter, and lace. A place where sunbeams danced through velvet curtains and memories hung in the halls like portraits.

Liliette Gravebloom, daughter of the manor, was to be married under the crimson ivy arch she helped plant as a child. But fate is cruel when it envies joy. A raven — black as omen — startled the horses returning her parents and beloved from town. The carriage overturned. No one survived.

Liliette never left the manor after that day. Grief stitched itself into her gown, and her bouquet wilted in her trembling hands. Her heart cracked, and the house cracked with it. From that moment on, Gloomridge Manor was born — not a place of life, but of what lingers after.

The house mourned with her.
And the house gave gifts.

Her childhood nursemaid, Thornetta Wraithwood, who had rocked her to sleep and warded off bad dreams, begged the Manor to let her stay — to care for Liliette forever. The Manor answered. Thornetta was granted agelessness and a room in the south wing nursery. There, she watches over two new children — once marionette dolls from Liliette’s toy box. Marrow and Mirth, once stitched for play, are now real, haunting twins who reenact tales in the sealed theater wing. They laugh and cry in turns, never seen moving, but always found in different poses.

Liliette became the bride eternal — her veil soaked in sorrow, her eyes fixed on a doorway that will never open. But she is not alone.

Liora Tallow, once the Manor’s quietest maid, loved the house more than she loved herself. When the darkness crept in and the guests no longer came, she lit candles in every corridor, whispering their names. She prayed to keep the Manor warm, to ward off shadows. In time, the house answered her devotion. She was no longer flesh, but wax and flame — a candle maiden whose presence both mourns and protects. Her glow keeps forgotten corners from collapsing.

When the last light dimmed in Gloomridge Manor, Liora Tallow wandered the empty halls, lighting candles for those the house had claimed. In the garden, beneath a withered rose bush, she found a tiny, living kitten — trembling, lost, and forgotten by the world beyond the gates.

The Manor, mourning with its last devoted maid, transformed the kitten as it had transformed so many before.
Stitches the Sorrowful Maiden was born — her velvet form stitched by grief, her button eyes watching through endless nights.
She waits still — beneath broken windows and silent arches — for the Maiden who never returned.