The light wasn't blinding.It was worse than that—it invited.
Clara stepped forward, one foot then the other, her pulse keeping pace with the quiet tick of Noah's watch still echoing behind her. The door's frame seemed to stretch as she passed, as though the house itself were reluctant to let her go.
Her fingers brushed the threshold——and the world tilted.
The others vanished soundlessly.No cry, no wind. Just gone.
She stood in a corridor that shouldn't exist. The walls were pale and curved like the inside of a ribcage, the floor smooth stone veined with black threads that pulsed faintly beneath her steps. The air hummed, not with electricity, but with awareness.
She lifted the lantern, though its light barely pushed back the murk. The shadows here didn't retreat—they leaned closer, as if curious.
Somewhere ahead, a steady dripping began.
Drip.Drip.Drip.
Each drop echoed too long, as though falling through an unseen depth.
Clara swallowed hard. "Hello?"
Her voice came back warped, half a beat behind, half a tone lower.
Hello…
She froze.Her hand tightened on the lantern's handle until her knuckles whitened.
You came back, the echo said softly.
Her breath caught. "Who's there?"
No answer. Just that same dripping sound, steadier now, closer. She turned slowly, her light catching movement—a figure at the far end of the hall.
Tall.Still.Facing her.
She blinked—and it wasn't there.
Only a patch of wet stone where it had stood, glistening faintly, like something had melted away.
Clara backed up, pulse hammering. "This isn't real," she whispered. "This isn't—"
Something laughed.
A child's laugh, soft and far too familiar.She hadn't heard it in years.
The lantern flame guttered, bending toward the sound as if drawn by breath.
"No," she said, her voice cracking. "You're not—"
Why did you leave me?
The voice was behind her now.
She turned sharply—too sharply—the lantern swinging wild arcs of gold. The light caught the wall, revealing faint carvings—lines of writing she hadn't noticed before. Dozens of them, layered and overlapping, all in the same cramped hand as the journal.
It learns your shape.It remembers your steps.It will build you again if you let it.
The stone beneath her boots gave a low groan, shifting slightly, as though something massive was stirring beneath.
She stumbled forward. The hall narrowed, the ceiling pressing lower, ribs of stone closing in until she had to stoop to pass. The lantern hissed with every breath she took, flame flickering frantic.
The dripping sound had become a rhythm now—steady, deliberate.A heartbeat.Not hers.
Clara.
Her name again. This time from everywhere. From the walls. The floor. Inside her own skull.
You opened the door. You let it breathe.
The lantern died.
For a moment there was nothing—no sound, no sight, just the thick, suffocating awareness of the dark itself looking back.
Then—footsteps.
Not hers.
Slow, careful, deliberate. Moving closer.
She pressed her back to the wall, breath shallow. The stone felt warm now—alive. Something beneath the surface moved, slow and serpentine, like a pulse.
We waited, the voice murmured, almost tender. You never came home.
A faint glow appeared ahead—pale, like moonlight on bone. She took a trembling step toward it. The passage widened into a chamber, circular and high-vaulted. The walls gleamed faintly, wet with condensation—or sweat.
And in the center, rising from the floor like the trunk of a tree, was a column of carved stone.
Her lantern flickered back to life without her touching it.
On the column were names.
Hundreds of them.Some old and faded.Some carved deep and recent.
Her eyes moved down the list—and stopped.
There they were.
Evan.Marcy.Noah.Ben.
And beneath them, the faint outline of a fifth, still forming. The chisel marks were invisible, but she could hear them being made—a rhythmic scrape in the silence.
Letter by letter.
C… L… A…
She stumbled back, but the air behind her solidified, the exit gone. The walls curved inward, humming.
Finish it, the voice said.
The final letter carved itself into the stone.
CLARA.
The lantern shattered.
And somewhere above, in the house she'd left behind, the portraits all turned their faces toward the cellar door.