The moss had a way of claiming everything at Blackwood Plantation—the crumbling columns, the rusted iron gates, and the souls of those who lived within. I have been the caretaker here for forty years, a ghost in a linen suit, recording the slow decay of the Colonel's sanity in my ledger.

Colonel Silas was a man of iron and obsession. He lived for the purity of the Blackwood line, a lineage he believed was the only thing standing between the South and total anarchy. But Beau, the Colonel's son, was a smudge on that canvas. Beau was a creature of the woods, a boy who spoke to birds and screamed at the wind, his mind a shattered mirror of the Colonel's own rigidity.

I watched as the Colonel's love curdled into a cold, clinical hatred. He began to suspect that Beau was not his. He spoke of a nameless wanderer who had stayed at the plantation during the Great Fever, a man with the same haunting eyes as Beau.

"He is a changeling," the Colonel would hiss, pacing the veranda. "A weed in my garden."

When Beau finally snapped, killing a stable hand in a fit of manic energy, the Colonel didn't flinch. He didn't try to hide the crime or buy the witness's silence. He handed Beau over to the sheriff with a look of profound relief, as if he were finally throwing out a piece of rotten furniture. I remember the look on Beau's face—not fear, but a strange, heartbreaking gratitude, as if he were finally being released from a burden he couldn't name.

I remember the day Beau was taken. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and rot. The Stranger, a man who had returned to the county after decades, came to the house. He spoke to the Colonel in low tones, revealing a truth that the Colonel had ignored for twenty years: the wanderer had been a priest, sworn to a vow of celibacy, and had never touched a woman in his life.

The Colonel didn't scream. He didn't apologize. He simply sat in his rocking chair and watched the horizon, his eyes empty. Beau was gone, and the purity of the Blackwood line was now a perfect, silent void. I closed my ledger for the last time, knowing that the only thing left to care for at Blackwood was the silence.

*** OTMES_v2_Code: [M1:8.0, M4:6.0, N2:0.9, K1:0.8, theta:135, TI:65.0]