AN- I've been sitting on this idea for a while, in several forms. It was at first a Cardverse Murder Mystery, but I swapped the Cardverse element for a less defined fantasy setting. But this specific idea I got after reading the recent strip with Romania claiming to also be a descendant of Rome, and combined with my love for seeing Seborga included with the Italy brothers and personal headcanon that Greece is a cousin to them, it all snapped into place. I've also decided to try and focus on slightly less common character relationships, but that's not to say there won't be a few common pairings as well.

Just a quick note, since this is an AU, I'll be using human names for the characters. Specifically, Seborga will be Romeo Vargas and Romania will be Vladimir Popescu, and I will note any further human names outside of the canon ones in the chapters they are used in.

Now, thank you for reading, remember that I only own my own ideas, and enjoy! -Twilight Joltik

The Heirs' Curse

Chapter One- Bequeath

Bitter bile welled up at the back of Feliciano's throat. It'd been an entire week, and yet it hurt no less to know his grandpa was dead.

Of course, he'd be silly to say that he hadn't known it was coming, since he'd been sick for ages, but he didn't feel it could truly happen. And maybe that was why he wasn't ready to face this. Feliciano truly just wanted once more to believe that those letters were fake and the person he loved still stood upon the spinning earth, but the tears falling down his face and dripping saltwater into his mouth said otherwise.

Even so, the familiar surroundings of his grandfather's house hit him with an odd pang of nostalgia. This place was more his home than the flat he shared with his brothers, if he was being entirely honest. So much of his childhood had been spent here, exploring every last inch of what once seemed like an impossibly huge place. With his grandfather, with his brothers, with his cousins, with Otto…

His eyes stung once more, just when he'd thought he'd finally kicked the feeling. No need to remind himself of who else he'd lost, right? He tried to call up the happy memories, of daisy chains and sketchbooks, tried to fight the shaking of his hands.

But the emotion remained, the tears in his eyes only fell and wouldn't clear. Something inside him just felt so empty, so isolated. He wished he'd not gone ahead of Lovi and Romie, being alone never helped.

They would be there soon, though. So as he neared the front door, Feliciano just took deep breaths and tried not to dwell on that familiar pang of loss.

"One, two, three, ten, one, two, three, eleven…"

As his feet hit the cobblestones, Vladimir counted them out under his breath. He tried to step on each one once, just like he would when he would visit when he was little. Counting them in sets of four, he could quickly figure out how many there were once he'd gotten to the end.

He already knew the answer, though. There were one hundred and eight exactly. A powerful number, three cubed times two squared, among his favorites. Well, that would be because his younger self had realized there were only one hundred and five stones, and had taken it upon himself to find stones to fill out the remaining three to bring it to a nicer number.

Regardless, he still counted, to make sure they were all still there.

"One, two, three, fifteen, one, two, three, sixteen..."

It was silly, he knew that, but the number just made him feel better, but he supposed in the end it hadn't done his grandfather much good. It was a powerful number, but also a multiple of four, the number of death. Sure, he'd been sick for a while and had lived a fairly long life other than that, meaning whatever bad luck the number may have brought was ultimately negligible, but Vlad was very used to seeking patterns in numbers and events. By force of habit, he felt a bit guilty.

"One, two, three, twenty, one, two, three, twenty one..."

Before he'd left, he'd done a quick divination to see how the day would go, though, and that worried him more than any bad luck the numbers may have wrought. Rather than giving a negative forecast, all he could get out of it, whichever way he looked at it, was completely incomprehensible. Equations did not divide by zero, Arithmancy did not divide by zero, and he was certain he'd felt stones in his hand when he drew it out of the bag.

"One, two, three, twenty four, one, two, three, twenty five..."

The front door was slightly ajar, indicating he wasn't the first one there. Which was kinda weird, because he was pretty sure most of his cousins were the type to take things at their own pace. As he finished counting out the steps, he nearly tripped as he stepped where the last ones were supposed to be.

He frowned. Had the ones he'd added been moved? Looking down, he saw three stones, misshapen compared to the ones on the path, had fallen to the side.

This too seemed a bad omen, one of disruption. Perhaps it really was a divide by zero kind of day?

Despite the circumstances, his grandfather's house was as breathtakingly lovely as it had ever been. Subtle differences marked it as the home of the dead, such as the black curtains hanging where violet ones once had and the odd lack of light pouring from the windows, but it didn't mar the beauty of the place.

Selfishly, that appealed to Romeo. He'd never felt close to the man, and while he felt sorrow at his death, he hadn't agreed to come to mourn. No, he was fairly certain his older brothers were doing plenty of that. Rather, he'd agreed to come for their sake, to pay respect to the dead, whatever the proper wording of that might be.

Well, and because the letter had mentioned inheritance. It was doubtful he'd been left much, sure, but it would be something, right?

God, that made him sound inconsiderate. To be fair, he also very much relished the opportunity to see the house again. It was a very nice place, one he had quite a few fond memories of exploring and marveling over the random curiosities tucked away in storage closets. Glowing gems, tattered old books, rusted weapons…

Perhaps they hadn't been that exciting, he thought with a chuckle. But that was fine, he wasn't exactly looking for thrills. Just hoping that perhaps things wouldn't fall apart, whatever it was that they were doing.

He could hear idle conversation as he neared the front door. Feliciano's voice rang loud, less shaky than it had been, along with another voice that sounded familiar but he couldn't quite place.

As Romeo entered, he made sure to smile. It was what they needed right now, it seemed.

In the distance, Heracles could hear birds, chirping along as if nothing was wrong. And to them, yes, nothing was wrong. It made no difference to a bird whether a single person lived or died.

Yet, those very same birds were intrinsically connected to the life of his grandfather, surely. Their song resonated in the background of his existence, and it continued playing even once that existence was spent.

Heracles felt the same; he was connected to this man, and yet his death was of no meaning to him. He'd known him, certainly, but never well. This house was only familiar to him for the events that transpired there, more than often only tangentially connected to its owner.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He also remembered the man for the stories he'd tell, fairy tales about beasts he'd claim to have slain or mysterious creatures he'd outwitted. But those stories still existed, even if only in his and others' unreliable memories, but their version of the story was surely no more true than his.

So it made no difference to him in the end, but he was truly curious about one thing in particular, that being the letter inviting him to the place. He'd received it about a week ago, but he was certain it wasn't written for him alone, given the wording.

Something to the effect of:

My dearest grandson,

I am very sorry to say that I have died. Shameful thing, really. I sincerely hoped I could hold out a bit longer, but as I write this, I can already tell it won't be terribly long until I expire. I ask you to please come to my home a week after you receive this and meet the rest of my grandchildren there. Hopefully, this will makes certain there is no confusion or conflict over the contents of my will.

I ask you to forgive me, but I give you all my love,

Romulus Vargas

What did he want to be forgiven for? And who had sent it out so quickly after his death? How was he to know his heirs would all receive it on the same date?

He could only hope some form of answer was inside, and he could already hear voices inside the house as he approached it, so he could only hope they'd come swiftly.

The scent of flowers still filled the air, even now. Wryly, Lovino thought about how it seemed the daisies and lilies weren't missing his grandpa much. No matter how much he'd cared for them, it seemed they were still thriving even after a week of his absence. They had moved on, and honestly, he had too.

There were some stones overturned by the front door, and he could hear some chatter inside. Seemed the others had beat him there.

Opening the front door, he paused for a moment as the familiar, warm scent hit him. It seemed at least that remained in death.

Four people looked up at him as he entered. Feliciano's face was stained with tears, but he smiled warmly all the same. "Oh, Lovi!", he exclaimed, gesturing to the seat next to him. "I was getting worried!"

"Don't keep us waiting like that," scolded Vladimir, one of his least favorite cousins. He kept tapping his fingers on the edge of the chair he was sitting in, counting something out under his breath. It was something about Arithmancy, he knew that much, but he didn't understand normal magic all that well, let alone when all that number stuff got added in.

Perhaps he shouldn't have procrastinated so much in getting there, especially after both his little brothers said they wanted to go on ahead.

On the other side of the room, his other little brother, Romeo, was intensely studying some painting hanging on the opposite wall. He smiled as well when he noticed Lovino. "Oh, I'm sure he just needed some time to gather his thoughts," he defended.

"I'm fine," Lovino insisted. "I'm over it. Now, why the hell are we here, exactly?"

"I was wondering the same thing," a rather soft voice added. Heracles watched him with some form of disinterest as he slowly made his way to the seat Feliciano had indicated. "But since we're all here, we can find out now, I suppose."

Wait, what? This couldn't be all of them, right? The letter had said something about grandchildren, but were there really just the five of them?

Maybe it was just that the house felt a bit empty without his grandpa- no, he was fine, he repeated in his mind. "Uh, what do we do?", he quickly asked out loud, and he was answered by a motion towards a wooden box sitting on a table in the middle of the room.

There was a note sitting on top of the box, and as Lovino rose to examine it, he recognized the handwriting as belonging to his grandpa, but it was far less shaky than the letter. Combined with the yellowed paper, he got the feeling that note had been written a while back.

All it said was "Open this after I am gone".

Without thinking, Lovino reached towards the box and started to open it, only hesitating when the lid was half open. Feliciano was sort of frowning at him, like he didn't think he should automatically get to open it.

Ah, whatever, it was already halfway open and he was the oldest anyways, so it probably would have fallen to him regardless. So the lid touched the table with a soft clanking noise, and revealed another piece of paper, this one sealed with wax and coiled into a tight scroll.

Unsealing it, Lovino began to read it aloud:

"My dearest grandsons, I must apologize to you for what I have left you. For you see, my life was not taken by illness, but by a curse."

Lovino read back over the sentence in disbelief, over the handwriting more shaky than that on the other note. No, he couldn't have- but that was what it said, no matter how many times he went back over it. So he went on.

"I know not the nature of this curse, but I know the results well. Its power robbed me of my very senses slowly, accelerating as it burned through my body until there was nothing of me left. And though I still do not, and will most likely never know what caused it, the strongest curses do not stop with a single victim. No, they descend upon the bloodline of their host until there are none left for it to feed upon. So I must warn you, it is very much likely that you five will have inherited this curse, and if you too are unable to break it, it will destroy you all as it did myself."

The paper dropped out of Lovino's shaking hands with a thud.

AN- A few things to note. For one, this jumping between points of view won't be a common thing, it's just being used to set up all the characters. Also, Romania's form of magic is number-based, and really not based off of anything from the real world except my own interest in numbers. In other words, I have absolutely no intention to be misrepresenting anything religious here. It's a made up form of magic that will be elaborated on in the future.

Also, more importantly, I have an important question to ask any readers about what form this story should take. Each of the five main characters will have their own story, largely self-contained but serving the larger narrative. So, should these stories simply be part of this story, or be published individually? The former would make it easier to follow and find them all, while the latter would allow the stories to be easier read in any order, which I intend to make a possibility. If the former, the sub-stories will, most likely, be published one at a time, but if the latter, then I would be able to hop around a bit more.

Anyways, thank you for reading! -Twilight Joltik