The Painted Shroud

“In Shadowmere, nothing is lost. Everything becomes a medium.”

Shadowmere estate is a rusting reliquary where Cyprian Mortmain wages a silent war against time. His most prized possession is the portrait of Iolanthe—a work of unnatural perfection that seems to mock the laws of nature. Vespera Malcor, a conservator who believes in the cold precision of chemistry, arrives to remove a mysterious flaw from this masterpiece. But in the stifling fumes of the studio, where silence smells of turpentine and decay, her rationalism begins to crack. Vespera soon discovers that in this house, paint does not dry—it waits. As the line between creator and medium begins to blur, the conservator must ask herself: is the varnish meant to protect the painting from the world, or the world from what lies within the painting? A gothic tale about beauty that is hungry.