The Cel Tradat home was a place frozen in time.

It was a modest house, as far as houses in Barovia went, with two levels and a chimney. The sloped roof had telltale signs of neglect, though not as much as would be expected had it gone without any upkeep at all.

Teige had made sure the house didn't fall into disarray in their absence, sending some of the Scouts-to-be into the house to make sure it didn't fall apart completely. It gave them something to do, which kept them out of trouble. It also meant they didn't have to be there alone.

Teige fumbled around their satchel, looking for the key. After some fishing around, they pulled out a small brass key, adorned with a twine cord. The end had once been knotted into a flower, but it had long since turned into a frayed jumble. Teige thought it might have once been a daisy.

The door opened with a slow creak. Teige winced.

The house was dark, illuminated only by the dim light of Sunny at Teige's side. The curtains were drawn. Even if they were open, the clouds filling the sky would have blocked the little daylight there could have been.

They made their way to the center of the room, doing their best to control their breathing. They pushed their bangs out of their face, trying to clear their mind, to sense any dangerous forces in the house.

Nothing.

The fireplace was cold, swept clean of dirt and soot.

There was still wood by the fireplace, stacked neatly in a pyramid. Teige picked up a piece, turning it experimentally. If they remembered correctly, Fern had insisted on picking "the most explosive" firewood in the Svalich woods, whatever that meant. They were fairly certain that firewood could not explode, in part because that would be dangerous enough for it to be common knowledge, and also because if that were true, Leaf and Fern would have more than taken advantage of that information.

They arranged a few pieces of wood in the fireplace, careful to keep them far enough in that jumping embers couldn't reach the floors of the house.

The room began to warm a few minutes later, the glow of the fireplace casting golden light throughout the common room.

Teige sat for a while, watching the shadows dance against the walls.

They remembered the last time they were alone in the house. It was one for the books, though Teige had stopped journaling quite some time ago.

They made their way upstairs, hand tracing the underside of the railing carefully. They'd have to make repairs to it one day and replace the pieces that had been broken off over the years.

Sunny, do you mind? Teige asked mentally, pulling the sword out of the sheath.

Sunny glowed a bit brighter in response, fully illuminating the hallway.

The upstairs of the house was a narrow hallway with doors that led to bedrooms and studies. Teige knew it like the back of their hand. They could navigate it with their eyes closed. They had done that before, back when their father had just started teaching them how to create maps of spaces.

But it was nice to see it as it would have been at daylight, the way they remembered it. The paint was damaged in all the places Teige remembered. There was a shallow dent in the wall from when they'd first started playing around with toy tools, and swung a play-axe into it. Teige laughed at the memory.

Their mom had decided training would channel their energy and fix their aim. Teige thought it was successful on both counts.

The door to Teige's room was a bit harder to open — jammed by time or by the house settling, perhaps. It was a room that Teige didn't let anyone into. They barely went in there themselves.

Standing in front of the closed door, they did another sweep of their surroundings. It smelled a bit more like dust and dirt, but nothing out of the ordinary, both in front of and behind the door.

They pushed the door open.

The room was just as Teige had left it all those years ago: a disaster. Bed unmade, inkwell knocked over. The ink had since sunk into the desk and the floor. Journals littered the floor, some with scorch marks as if someone had started to burn them, only to change their mind.

Everything was covered in thin layer of dust, seemingly faded with time, except for one thing.

A bouquet of flowers, stray petals scattered like blood from a gash, colored as freshly as the day they'd been uprooted.

Bloodred roses, stems bent and bruised. Bright red carnations. Purple hyacinth. Yellow and red chrysanthemum. Thorns broken off at unnatural angles.

Teige's hands stung at the memory.

So much had happened in the last five years.