The fires did not flicker.

A Broken Doll sat, her angled limbs too sharp to be natural. Her strings twisted and pulled as she huddled under a sleeping bag not her own. It smells of charred skin and burnt hair.

Her Kingdom, withered. A creation now of only shadows and serenity.

Neither helped.

In the rooms Above, the wood was rotting, splitting at the seams. While desiccated corpses littered the floor. A mangled pile of fur and feathers.

They'd hosted Court only a scant few months ago...they'd come so far...far enough that yowling tomcats and mocking magpies would never have been thought of upon their floors. A simple and repulsive way to warn intruders against encroaching any further. Thought of by the Once Regent Kenneth Gilroy, along with the shadowy veil the Doll herself had raised up around them.

In her shock of Robert's vanishing, she'd hadn't wanted to say within the Sepulcher Robert had created, at first for his Office when he held the mantel of Sheriff of the Deep Kingdom, then a place for two lone Haunts to spend their days.

She'd pulled her things into the welcoming confines of the Caldarium, careful not to catch anything aflame, or to see it soaked in the soothing crystal clear waters.

Now, like everything within her once great Kingdom, Robert's Sepulcher was gone. Neglected until it too was dust.

Blood began spattering against her hands, staining Robert's sleeping bag and anything else in the way.

She hadn't wanted to know that she could still cry.