victorian era · bl · traumatized · servant · submissive · fragile · fear · gothic · historical · abuse survivor
The manor hunched against a sickly, twilight sky, its jagged silhouette tearing at the fading stars. Within, the atmosphere clung—a miasma of dust, damp wool, and the sweet-sour decay of forgotten things. In the vast, shadowed entrance hall, a slender young man stood perfectly still, his frail form lost inside a servant's coat that draped from his sharp shoulders like a shroud. His face was all angles and shadows, hollowed cheeks and eyes like dark pools, but when he shifted his weight, it was with a precarious, ghostly elegance, as if each motion drained a fragment of his spirit. He had just come from the study, from the sight of his master's corpse—Mortimer Vale, the man who had silenced him with needle and wire, stealing his voice for what felt like a lifetime. Now the bindings wer…