A small cloud of white vapor appeared on the window glass, only to vanish instantly in the frigid blast of the AC. Beyond that barrier, my sister lay motionless. Each breath I took felt like ice shards in my lungs, the bitterness almost choking me.

That was Lily—eighteen and supposed to be stressing over college applications. Instead, she lay withered like a drought-stricken flower, silent and still amid a tangle of beeping machines.


"Mr. Lawrence, we have the latest results." The doctor—middle-aged with gold-rimmed glasses—wore compassion on his face but spoke with clinical detachment. "Your sister's immune system is experiencing systemic, irreversible failure. We've consulted specialists worldwide, but…" he sighed, "we can only attribute it to an extremely rare hereditary condition."

"Hereditary?" I forced a smile that felt like a grimace. "Doc, my family might not have produced scholars for generations, but we breed like rabbits and we're tough as hell. So why are we suddenly so 'special'?"

The doctor adjusted his glasses, light glinting off the lenses. "Sometimes even science hits a wall, Mr. Lawrence. We've exhausted every option. All we can do now is keep her comfortable and stable."


I just nodded and walked away, the sterile hallway suddenly feeling like a tomb.

Science has its limits. That much I believed.


My phone pinged. Another message in the "Lawrence Family Lineage" group chat.

[Northern branch: Kenneth's grandson Michael started showing fever and weakness today. Identical symptoms to little Emma's.]

[Jesus Christ. That makes seven in one month!]

[This is a goddamn nightmare. The ancestors must be turning in their graves. We're cursed!]

I stared at the messages, finger hovering over the keyboard. After a moment, I just shoved the phone back into my pocket.

A curse? Christ. These people were living in the Dark Ages. If they redirected even a fraction of their ancestor-worship budget toward education, we might actually have family members who understood concepts like DNA and genetic mutations.

But no. They'd rather burn incense and chant prayers than read a science textbook. They preferred supernatural forces they could bargain with over cold, hard facts they couldn't control.

And the high priest of this superstitious circus? My great-uncle Victor. The almighty head of the Lawrence family.

Right on cue, the chattering ceased when a message tagged everyone thirty minutes later.

The message came from Victor's son, my cousin Brian: [@everyone By order of the Family Head: Emergency meeting tonight, 7 PM sharp. All direct Lawrence bloodline and branch representatives must attend at the ancestral hall. Topic: warding off the family curse. Attendance mandatory.]

I pulled into the library parking lot and lit a cigarette but just watched it burn. The smoke curled through my car, making my throat itch.

Family meeting. Two words that filled me with more dread than a terminal diagnosis.

The restoration lab usually calmed me—the scent of ancient paper and archival glue my sanctuary. Not today. As I worked on a Ming Dynasty woodblock print, filling insect damage with a fine brush, my hand trembled. A drop of brown pulp splattered onto the pristine margin.

"Shit," I muttered, grabbing a cotton swab with tweezers to blot the mistake.

"Trouble at home, Jason?" Walter Thompson ambled over, steaming mug in hand. The silver-haired master conservator—two months from retirement—peered at my work with knowing eyes.

"Just slipped," I mumbled, eyes fixed on my work.

"Not your style." Walter sipped his tea with a knowing smile.

"Word is, your family's going through something." I froze, finally meeting his gaze.

Walter rarely spoke, but when he did, he knew exactly what buttons to push.

"Just spit it out, Walter."

"Fine." Walter set down his mug and leaned closer, voice dropping. "Look, Jason, your grandfather saved my life once. There are things nobody else will tell you, but I owe him that much."

He glanced around before continuing, barely above a whisper. "That 'curse' that hits your family like clockwork—doesn't that strike you as odd? It never misses a beat, and it started right after your grand-uncle Victor took control."

My pulse quickened. The thought had crossed my mind before, but I'd buried it deep—family loyalty and all that ancestral bullshit had a way of smothering uncomfortable questions.

Walter's eyes glinted. "Your grandfather Franklin was a once-in-a-century genius! Feng shui, mechanical engineering, ancient languages—he mastered them all. Everyone knew he was next in line to lead the family. Then suddenly…" he snapped his fingers, "his health mysteriously collapsed."

His tone shifted as he fixed me with a penetrating stare. "You've got his same fire, kid. After your father vanished, they locked all your grandfather's belongings in the old house attic. Nobody's touched them since. Maybe you should. Old stuff, sure, but…" he tapped his temple, "might be exactly what you need right now."

Walter grabbed his mug and shuffled back to his workstation, leaving me frozen in place, the pulp on my brush long dried.

At seven, while the family gathered at the ancestral hall, I pointed my rusted Honda toward the old family house—the place we'd abandoned years ago.

The place had stood empty for over a decade. Dust and mildew greeted me like old friends.

I kept the lights off, navigating by phone flashlight up the groaning stairs. When I pushed open the attic door, the musty assault made me sneeze violently.

The attic was a graveyard of forgotten possessions—sheet-covered furniture looming like specters in the darkness. In the corner, just as Walter had described, sat a camphorwood chest buried under years of dust.

The damn thing weighed a ton. I grunted and heaved it into a clearing.

No keyhole—just a brass dial etched with the Chinese zodiac. Classic mechanical puzzle lock, exactly my grandfather's style.

Child's play for someone in my line of work. I crouched and studied the verdigris-covered dial, then pulled out my restoration brush to sweep away decades of grime, revealing the intricate markings beneath.

What would the old man have used? Birthday? Too obvious. I closed my eyes, mentally cataloging everything I knew about him.

He was a romantic at heart. After Grandma died, he never took off that vintage watch she'd given him. Everything precious to him connected back to her somehow.

Their anniversary. Of course.

The realization hit me like a thunderbolt. Dad had mentioned it once—June eighteenth.

I inhaled deeply and started turning. Matching zodiac signs to months: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit… Horse for May, Goat for June.

I rotated to "Goat." For the eighteenth day… I mentally converted to the traditional calendar—a Xin-You day. But this dial only showed Earthly Branches.

I turned the second dial to "You." The third would be the hour…

Traditional weddings happened at auspicious hours based on birth charts. Most likely "Si time"—9-11 AM. Goat, You, Si. I aligned the final dial.

A sharp click echoed through the silent attic.

Bingo.

My heart hammered as I raised the lid.

The pungent scent of camphor and aged paper wafted up like a ghost's breath.

Inside lay books wrapped in oiled paper—texts on feng shui, geomancy, archaeology. I removed them carefully until my fingers touched something hard and square at the bottom.

A thick notebook emerged, bound in unusual leather—deep brown, supple yet tough, unlike any animal hide I recognized. It too was locked, with a more sophisticated mechanism: a four-digit combination.

Clutching it like the Holy Grail, I hurried down to my old bedroom and locked myself in.

Under the weak yellow desk lamp, I examined my prize. Another password. What would it be?

I tried birthdays, anniversaries, wedding years—nothing. The damn thing wouldn't budge.

"Fuck!" I raked my fingers through my hair, forcing myself to breathe. Grandfather was methodical to a fault. If he buried this at the bottom, he meant it for family eyes only—or more specifically, for someone who truly understood him.

I glared at the four wheels, mind churning through possibilities. Years of restoration work had honed my pattern recognition. Maybe he'd used a coding system? The Four-Corner Method? Or reference numbers from a favorite text?

I rotated the notebook under the light, examining every millimeter. There—in the bottom right corner—a tiny mark so small you'd miss it without trained eyes.

An incomplete character, like "方" with one stroke missing.

Franklin Lawrence. His name.

My pulse quickened. Could he have used stroke counts from his name?

"Frank" in Chinese characters—eight strokes. "Lin" four strokes. Then his courtesy name, three strokes.

No, that's only three digits total.

I studied the mark again, noticing its precise placement at the fold. Grandfather was a puzzle master—he wouldn't be this obvious. The mark was a red herring, pushing me toward something else—a four-digit number with personal significance.

What was I missing?

My eyes drifted back to the chest. The combination had been 0618—their anniversary. Maybe this password related to that date differently?

I grabbed my phone and dove into family history. Their wedding had been modest—just family, no fuss. I scrolled through ancient photos, searching for anything unusual. Hours passed, my eyes burning, patience wearing thin.

Just as I was ready to grab my lockpicks, my fingers brushed a black-and-white photo—their wedding portrait. On the back, in Grandma's elegant script: "To my beloved Franklin, Summer of the 38th year of the Republic."

The 38th year of the Republic… 1949. Holy shit. My hands trembled as I spun the dials: 1-9-4-9.

Another satisfying click.

The lock surrendered.

I held my breath as I opened to the first page.

The first half contained exactly what you'd expect—family history in Grandfather's precise calligraphy. Migration patterns, settlement records, genealogy charts. Thorough but unremarkable academic work.

I flipped through methodically until midway through, where everything changed. The neat script vanished, replaced by wild, primitive symbols resembling ancient oracle bone writing. Encrypted text.

I cranked the lamp to maximum brightness, laid out my notepaper, and dove into my element—code-breaking. The chaos of symbols gradually revealed patterns to my trained eye.

He'd created a hybrid cipher based on oracle bone script and bronze inscriptions, deconstructed and reassembled into something entirely new. A puzzle box left specifically for me.

Night deepened into that perfect silence where even breathing seems intrusive. There was only the scratch of my pen and the dance of symbols gradually yielding their secrets. I forgot everything—Lily, the family drama, even time itself.

Characters became words. Words became sentences.

"…The Lawrence ancestral grounds are not sacred but cursed. Beneath them lies a massive tomb harboring dark secrets of a fallen dynasty…"

"…Deadly traps throughout, arranged by the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams. The Flying Star formation holds the key…"

"…Nine paths to death, one to survival…"

Ice crawled down my spine as the truth emerged. This wasn't historical research—it was a goddamn treasure map! No, worse—a detailed blueprint of the Lawrence family tomb!

I blinked in disbelief. The sacred burial ground my family had venerated for generations was actually an ancient tomb rigged with death traps?

Fighting back nausea, I pressed on. In the section marked "Main Burial Chamber," a name leaped from the page—familiar yet alien.

Gregory Lawrence.

My father. The man who'd "vanished" when I was too young to remember. His name, here of all places!

My blood turned to ice. Like a man possessed, I flipped to the final page. No encryption here—just words carved into the paper with desperate force.

In the yellow lamplight, five lines burned themselves into my brain:

"Those who enter seek not treasure, but truth."

"The curse comes not from heaven, but from man."

"Find the truth in the 'Return to Origin' ritual, main burial chamber."

"If my son reads these words, remember…"

"Trust no one. Especially not Victor."