Long before whispers filled his dreams, before the box passed into his hands, Anthony Leastock was a boy
lost in the wide, wind-swept countryside of Somerset.
He was born on a frostbitten morning in the year 1800, to a small but loving household. His father, Howard
Leastock, was a man of soil and sun—a farmer who bore the seasons in the lines of his face. He spoke little,
worked hard, and had a quiet pride in his land and family. His mother, Edith, had a gentle wit and a voice
that turned even the plainest lullaby into something sacred. Their life was humble, but rich in small joys:
shared bread, mended coats, and long evenings by the hearth.
Tony, their only child, was a peculiar boy—kind-hearted, sharp-eyed, and prone to long silences. He had a
habit of pausing in the middle of chores to stare at old tools or carved stones, as if trying to read the
memories hidden in their surfaces. Where others saw rust and ruin, Tony saw story. He once brought home
a broken iron clasp from the woods and whispered to it for hours, convinced it belonged to someone
important long ago.
His parents never scolded him for his oddities. Howard would ruffle his hair and mutter, "Boy sees more
than most," while Edith simply smiled and continued humming her soft, strange tunes—songs she claimed
her mother sang, passed down from the old isles.
Their cottage stood nestled between fields and the forested stretch known as Bramble Hollow. Townsfolk
spoke of the woods in half-joking tones, sharing tales of faerie mischief and wandering lights. But to Tony,
the trees felt less magical than melancholic. He would sometimes sit at the edge and listen—not for birds or
beasts, but for something beneath it all. A hum. A breath.
He wasn't alone in his wondering.
Clara Thorne, the daughter of a nearby landkeeper, was Tony's closest friend. Bold, quick to smile, and
fiercely intelligent, she had a way of making Tony feel less strange. She delighted in his quiet insights, often
dragging him into mischief only to claim he talked her into it afterward. When Tony spoke of shadows that
moved without wind or dreams that lingered long after waking, Clara didn't scoff—she asked questions.
Once, they found a half-buried key in the mud behind her barn. While others might've dismissed it, they
spent weeks trying to discover what it once unlocked. It was Clara who gave Tony his first notebook—"for all
your ghost-thoughts," she said, grinning.
Tony began writing, sketching, cataloging broken hinges, fragments of bone, lost buttons. He started to see
himself as a kind of historian—not of kings and battles, but of forgotten things. When he was fifteen, he
asked a local antiquarian if he could help in his workshop on Sundays. The man, a wiry fellow named Merrin
with a fondness for old Latin and older wine, welcomed the help.
There, Tony flourished.
He learned to clean and catalogue relics, date pottery shards, and decipher engravings. His ability to sense
authenticity—an instinctive grasp of what belonged—earned him quiet admiration. Even Merrin once
muttered to a customer, "That boy's got a ghost's nose for history."
By eighteen, Tony was apprenticed under Merrin full-time. He traveled to nearby towns, aiding in appraisals
and acquisitions. In every dusty barn and forgotten estate attic, he searched with a quiet reverence. The
older the item, the more he longed to understand it.
Clara remained by his side through it all. She teased him about the dirt under his nails and the way he'd
mutter dates and runes under his breath. But she also encouraged him, reading his notes, pointing out
details he missed, and sometimes even slipping strange old trinkets into his satchel just to see how long it
took him to notice.
By his twentieth year, Tony had earned a modest but steady place in the world of antiques and curiosities.
Though young, his reputation was growing. He loved the work—not just for the objects, but for the sense
that each item had once meant something. That memory clung to the broken and forgotten like moss to
stone.
And though he never said it aloud, he sometimes felt that the objects noticed him, too.
Of course, there were still the shadows. The glimpses. The dreams.
None of them had grown worse, only more frequent. More distinct. Sometimes he would wake in the dark
with music fading in his ears—a child's melody, played on something wound too tightly.
Still, he lived. He studied. He worked.
Until, one early morning in spring, with the fog still thick and the sun barely cresting the hills, a woman
stepped from the woods near Bramble Hollow.
Old, bent, draped in layers that moved without breeze, she extended a parcel wrapped in faded silk.
Tony reached for it without speaking.
"He's been looking for you," she said.
Then vanished.
And everything changed.