Part Sixteen – Shadows Beneath
Jonathan entered his room and shut the door softly behind him. The click of the latch seemed louder than it should, as though the silence of the mansion magnified every small sound.
He leaned against the door for a moment, breathing slow, his palms damp. His gaze wandered across the chamber: the canopy bed dressed in gray, the tall windows draped shut against the morning light, the heavy furniture his father had commissioned decades ago. Everything was in its place, orderly, timeless. Yet to Jonathan it all felt staged, as if the room were a set built to convince him that life remained normal.
But nothing was normal. Not anymore.
He crossed to the window and drew back the curtain. IronClover stretched beneath him in its peculiar, restless beauty—smokestacks rising like blackened fingers, brass gears turning on factory roofs, airships drifting across a pale sky. The city was alive, growing, forging ahead.
And here he stood, alone, haunted, with shadows chained above his room.
Room 32.
The thought gnawed at him again. Every step on the staircase, every glance down that darkened corridor, brought him closer to the truth he was too afraid to face: his mother and brother, still there, still something other than what they had once been. His family reduced to hunger and whispers in the dark.
He pressed his forehead against the glass, cold and unyielding. For a fleeting instant he imagined unlocking the door, stepping inside, facing them. Perhaps ending it all with the Winchester revolver still hanging downstairs.
But the image broke him. His stomach clenched, his throat tightened. He could not. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
Behind his reflection in the glass, IronClover shimmered in the pale light. The world outside demanded he keep living, but the mansion, with its locked doors and silent halls, demanded something else—something darker.
Jonathan shut the curtain, sealing the view away. He sank onto the bed, dragging a hand through his hair, green eyes heavy with a fear he would never admit aloud.
And in the silence, above the Ceilingboards, Room 32 waited.