His study was opposite his bedroom for a very good reason. Ivan was a sleepwalker. Every night, a part of his mind came to life, rousing him from his bed to the drawing table in the next room. Every morning Ivan awoke to a new creation. It was like being possessed by Da Vinci’s ghost. 

It was a curse. Quite literally. A very old, very powerful curse, manifesting in each first-born son of his family, each called Ivan in morbid memory of the first, Ivan the Foolish.