2025-08-26 16:41:12The house was trying to tell her something.
Lana knew that now. It wasn’t just shadows and strange dreams. It wasn’t even the ghostly girls in the mirror or the lullabies echoing through her bones. It was deeper than that. Intentional. And it wanted her to remember. By noon, she could no longer stay in the sitting room. Every tick of the grandfather clock felt like a countdown, and the walls — polished and quiet — seemed to lean closer with every passing hour. She needed air. Lana slipped out, careful not to make a sound. No sign of Miss Ward. No servants in the halls. Just silence, still and listening. She didn’t know where she was going, only that her feet led her there — back toward the older part of the estate. The one Grey had told her nothing about. The corridor was colder here. Unlived-in. She paused beside a narrow hallway framed in carved oak. The wallpaper was peeling, the floorboards scuffed from age. A single cracked painting hung on the wall — two children playing near a pond. One of them bore her face. Again. Lana stepped inside. Dust stirred around her ankles, kicked up by her movement. The door at the end of the hallway looked warped, its brass knob rusted. She tried it. Locked. Of course. But just as she turned to leave, she heard it. A creak — subtle but deliberate — beneath her feet. She crouched and ran her fingers along the floor. One board was looser than the rest. Her heart thudded. Prying it free wasn’t easy. Her nails chipped against the wood, and she had to use a hairpin from her pocket to wedge the edge. But eventually, with a groan of splintered resistance, the board lifted. Inside the hollow space was a velvet pouch. And inside the pouch—paper. A letter, yellowed with age, its seal half-broken. No envelope. Just a folded sheet with a jagged edge, as if it had been torn from a larger book. She unfolded it carefully. To whoever finds this — They lied. About the fire. About the twins. About what happened to her. They said she died. She didn’t. They took her. If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the story. Be careful who you trust. The uncle knows. The house remembers. And she is waking up. There was no signature. Just a symbol at the bottom of the page. Two roses. One dark. One light. Twined around a dagger. Lana stared at it, pulse pounding. Suddenly, the hallway creaked again. Not beneath her. Behind her. She stood quickly, shoving the letter into her coat. The door at the end of the hall— It was open. Just a crack. Someone had unlocked it. “Hello?” she called, her voice small in the silence. No answer. She stepped toward it cautiously, fingers grazing the wall for balance. Beyond the door was a narrow staircase, leading downward. Cold air rushed up from below — damp, earthy, old. A basement? She hesitated. Every part of her screamed to go back. But something else — something deep and wordless — urged her to go forward. She took the first step. The stairs groaned under her weight, each one older than the last. The walls closed in as she descended, and the light faded fast. She reached the bottom. And found herself in a cellar carved from stone. Not the wine kind — no racks, no bottles. This was something older. More primitive. The walls were lined with iron hooks. A single cot sat against the far wall, its frame rusted, mattress torn. Chains. Shackles. Scratches on the stone. Like someone had been held here. Or many. Lana’s breath caught. She turned to leave—and froze. A figure stood at the top of the stairs. Not Grey. Not Miss Ward. She couldn’t see a face. Just the silhouette of a man. Tall. Broad-shouldered. The light behind him cast his shadow down the stairs like a curtain. And then, he stepped away—disappearing from view. “Wait—” Lana shouted, rushing up the steps. But by the time she reached the top, the door had slammed shut. Locked. She was trapped.
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Chapter Eighty — What Remains of Us
By morning, the rain had thinned to a mist that clung to the trees like breath. The world outside the cabin was a blur of gray and green, silent except for the dripping of water through leaves. Grey hadn’t slept. Lana could tell by the way he stood at the window, shoulders rigid, eyes fixed on the fog. The torn page from Seraphine’s letter lay on the table between them — five words that had rearranged everything they thought they knew. You’re looking in the wrong fire. Lana rose quietly, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “You’ve been standing there for hours,” she said. Grey didn’t look away. “I keep thinking about the timeline. If Seraphine’s right — if there was another fire — then the one that killed my mother might’ve been staged. Everything since might’ve been built on that lie.” “She’s baiting you,” Lana said softly. “Or warning you. I can’t tell which.” He finally turned, eyes shadowed but alert. “There’s an old Thompson site north of here — a textile property. It b
Chapter Seventy Nine – The Warning
By morning, the storm had drained itself into a gray, exhausted drizzle. Grey was already dressed when Lana opened her eyes. The ledger lay closed on the table, wrapped once more in its oilcloth, as if putting it away could undo what it had revealed. “I need to go back,” he said simply. “There’s someone who might know more. My uncle’s assistant — Harlan. He handled Foundation correspondence.” Lana sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You think he’ll tell you the truth?” “I think he’ll slip up trying not to.” He left before she could argue, leaving only the faint smell of rain on his coat and the soft creak of the door. For hours, the cabin held its silence. Lana made tea that went cold before she ever tasted it. The ledger tempted her like a wound — impossible not to reopen. She turned the pages again, tracing the names. Some entries were marked lost in incident. Others had no endings at all. One entry, written in rushed ink, simply read: Subject relocated – location
Chapter Seventy Eight - The Ledger
The lamp had gone out sometime after midnight, leaving the hut soaked in blue-black quiet. Lana lay awake, eyes open to the faint glow leaking through the window slats. Every creak of timber felt amplified, every breath heavy with thought. Grey hadn’t moved for nearly an hour. But she knew he wasn’t asleep. He never was, not when his mind was circling the past like a wolf around a wound. She turned her head toward him. “Do you ever think,” she murmured, “that some things survive just to haunt us?” Grey’s answer was low, rasped, almost lost to the dark. “Every day.” It wasn’t a confession. It was a truth scraped raw. Silence stretched — long, heavy, pulsing with the echo of the stranger’s warning still alive in her skull: Don’t trust him fully. It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have sounded so believable. Finally, Grey pushed himself upright. His outline cut against the faint glow of the dying embers. “There’s something you should see,” he said quietly. He rose, cross
Chapter Seventy-Seven — The Night Watch
The sound of Lana’s breathing steadied before it softened. Grey waited a while longer to be sure.The lamp had gone out completely now, leaving only the dim light of the moon spilling through the window — a thin, colorless wash across the floorboards. He sat where he was, on the low chair near the hearth, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, listening to the quiet.Outside, the wind had eased. A faint drip of melting snow ticked against the eaves. The kind of silence that came after long violence — too still to be trusted.He should have slept. He knew that. But his body had long forgotten how.He turned his gaze toward her — the narrow rise and fall of her shoulders under the blanket, the faint line of her jaw in the half-dark. Even in sleep, she looked tense, her fingers curled into the fabric as though bracing for something.He exhaled slowly.Don’t trust him fully.The words had hit her hard. He’d seen it in her eyes — the flash of fear, the betrayal she tried to hide. He c
Chapter Seventy-Six – Ash Between Us
The wind had died down by the time Grey shut the door, but the cold clung to the seams of the little hut. The paper bag he’d brought—bread, two tins, and a thermos—sat forgotten on the table between them.Lana hadn’t moved since he came in. The card still lay near her, charred around the edges, the faint trace of smoke curling from it as though reluctant to leave.Grey crouched beside her, studying the floorboards, the shadows, the corners. He didn’t touch her. “Whoever it was,” he said quietly, “they knew how to get this close without leaving a sound.”Lana nodded numbly. Her hands were stiff, her knuckles white against her knees. “He didn’t break in. He just… stood there. Like he knew I’d wake.”Grey’s gaze flicked to her. “He?”She hesitated. “I think so. His voice was low, soft. He said…” Her throat closed. The words still felt too heavy, too strange. Don’t trust him fully.Grey didn’t push. He stood slowly, arms folded, his profile sharp against the flicker of lamplight. “And the
Chapter Seventy-Five: Shadows Don’t Burn
The silence after the storm had its own kind of violence.Grey set the paper bag down on the counter — a simple, ordinary thing, the smell of coffee and bread spilling into the cold air. But nothing about the moment felt ordinary anymore.Lana was still standing by the table, the edges of the burned card singeing her palm. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I didn’t see his face,” she said softly. “He was gone before I could—”Grey was already moving toward the window, scanning the treeline beyond the frost-glazed glass. “How long ago?”“Minutes,” she murmured. “Maybe less.”He turned back to her, his expression sharpening into that unreadable calm he wore when danger brushed too close. It wasn’t fear she saw in him — it was calculation.“He left this?” Grey asked, nodding toward the card in her hand.Lana hesitated before holding it out. The words were nearly gone, the ink burned at the edges. Grey’s fingers brushed hers as he took it — a small contact that sent her nerves sting
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