Aurelia's Gilded Curse
Lady Vivienne DeVeraux cut an imposing figure drifting through the opulent galleries and salons of her late husband Claude's vast countryside manor, draped head to toe in an array of exotic fabrics and priceless gems. Yet she seethed internally that none had come from Claude himself.
For while her peers enjoyed lavish gifts showered by doting husbands, the bitter truth was Claude had cared little for Vivienne's finery while alive. He dripped the household accounts into endless business investments, leaving his young wife feeling more like an ornament than cherished partner. Her jewels were but trifles compared to the vaults of wealth now widowhood bestowed - wealth forever beyond Vivienne's reach.
By Claude's final wishes, managerial control of the estate and fortune would reside eternally with his solicitors, allowing Vivienne just a meager monthly allotment scarcely enough for new gloves. Such insult even in death was inexcusable!
Outraged at this final betrayal, Vivienne concocted a scheme - she contracted the services of a reclusive Hungarian alchemist named Arik with a dark reputation for transmuting baser metals to gold. For the right price, his sorcery could convert Claude's locked away silver, jewels and artifacts into a glittering fortune of her very own.
Bound by her greed, Arik relocated to the estate's isolated east wing that Vivienne had discreetly prepared for the dangerous rituals ahead. Night after night strange smells and noises leaked from the alchemy laboratory as Arik stewarded volatile universal essences to will the stubborn elements into radiant gold.
Gradually over many hellish weeks, Claude's hoarded heirlooms emerged transfigured beyond recognition - silver platters now gilded discs blinding in the sun, emerald necklaces melted into shimmering bullion nuggets, swords and steins reshaped into solid gold ingots. It was more wealth than Vivienne could have dreamed!
But greed is blind, as they say, and in her avarice Vivienne failed to heed Arik's cautions about long exposure to the toxic fumes. As the gilded fortune amassed, so too did the poisons saturating Vivienne's body and mind. Strange symptoms plagued her...suspicious servants fled superstitiously.
By autumn, bedridden Vivienne clutched her precious bounty close, raging against death come to claim her before a single sovereign could be cashed and enjoyed! Her mind remained manically fixated on the glittering trove even as life ebbed away. Those were Vivienne’s final gasps in the ghoulish gold-choked chamber she commissioned as her tomb.
Over the decades, uneasy rumours spread about DeVeraux Manor...peculiar noises, odd smells and a creeping sense of dread surrounding the east wing’s sealed galleries. Claude’s descendants, now vastly enriched from his continued investments, shunned the property out of fearful reverence.
Finally in the 1980s, an intrigued heir named Marcel dared unlock the decaying shuttered rooms holding the cursed gold horde amassed by vile alchemy. To his shock, many bars and bricks had converted back to ordinary metal, tarnished artifacts...all except one jewel-studded golden chalice perpetually warm to the touch. Too late did Marcel sense a presence stirring angrily in the shadows. No one has entered since.
Some nights onyx-clad specters still spy a faint light glinting from DeVeraux's abandoned highest tower window, could it be moonbeams on that accursed chalice? For who knows what ethereal sentinels yet stand guard over the remaining gilded treasures so covetously gained and sinfully lost by Claudia DeVeraux’s tortured spirit. Greed’s grasp exceeds even death’s cold clutches, it would seem.
