"Aria…"
The whispers came again.
Soft. Distant. Threading through her dreams like fog.
This time, it felt real— cold, near, insistent.
"Ms. Hale, wake up!"
Her eyes fluttered open to find Mara standing over her with a tray. The scent of coffee and toasted bread reached her before the light did.
"You sleep like the dead," Mara said with a straight face, setting the tray down. "Breakfast. Mrs. Rowan requested you begin work after you have eaten."
Aria sat up, sheets tangled around her legs.
"What time is it?"
"Nearly nine."
She groaned softly. "I overslept."
"Understandable," Mara replied. "The sea can make sleep deeper."
Her tone was unreadable; neither warm nor cold, just there.
When Mara left, Aria exhaled the breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
The tray was immaculate. Fresh berries, toast, a perfectly folded napkin. Even breakfast here looked staged, too composed to be real.
She ate slowly, staring at the fog drifting past the window. Last night replayed in her head; the shadow on the cliff, the whisper that might have been her imagination. Maybe the isolation was getting to her already.
By the time she finished and dressed, the house had settled into that same heavy silence again. No voices, no footsteps. Just the faint hum of something electric beneath the quiet.
The writing room waited.
---
The air inside felt colder than before, though the windows were shut.
Something was different.
The stack of pages, Damian Cole's unfinished manuscript, had been disturbed.
She froze.
The top page had shifted slightly, no longer aligned with the rest. And there, in the margin, was handwriting.
Not hers.
The ink was dark, fresh. The words slanted and precise; the same distinct stroke she had seen in Damian's notes.
Truth lives in what we bury.
Her throat tightened.
Someone had been here. Last night.
Her pulse quickened. "Okay," she whispered. "Not losing it. Not crazy."
The logical part of her said it had to be Mara, or Julia maybe. But the handwriting… no, it matched perfectly. And he was supposed to be dead.
She scanned the rest of the pages. A few more lines had been altered—subtle corrections, phrasing adjustments, just like an author refining his own words. Every mark felt deliberate. Alive.
Aria's mind raced.
If someone was messing with this, she needed to know who.
And if her gut was right, then she was sitting in the middle of a secret the house was trying to hide.
There was no way Mara would come into the study and edit a manuscript. This could only be one person.
---
Hours passed. The fog thickened outside until the windows were nothing but pale mirrors. The only light came from the desk lamp, warm and small against the gray.
She decided to wait, even if it meant breaking Mara's warning to stay in her room by midnight and not cross the study after dark.
She had to see if something would unfold again tonight. It could not be her imagination; someone had been here, and she had a strong feeling they would return.
Aria pretended to work, but every sound made her look up; the groan of trees outside, the whisper of curtains, her own heartbeat.
"How much longer will I be waiting here?" she thought.
She was dozing off when she heard footsteps.
Soft. Careful. Coming from the hallway.
She held her breath.
They stopped right outside the door.
The handle turned slightly, then stilled.
Silence stretched like a held breath.
Then came retreating footsteps.
She moved quickly, turned off the lamp, and crouched behind the desk, her pulse wild.
Minutes passed. The knob turned again. Then a faint glow from the corridor came through the slightly opened door.
The hair on her arms rose.
A figure stepped in, tall and deliberate. The air seemed to shift around him. He did not move like Mara or Julia; there was a stillness to him, a command.
Aria stayed hidden, heart slamming against her ribs.
Then, a soft click. The lamp flickered back to life, casting a pool of golden light across the desk.
She eased her head around the corner of the desk and looked toward the window. The glass was a black mirror; beyond it, the fog swallowed the world.
His reflection appeared first, not his body; a shape in the lamp's soft glow. Broad shoulders. Dark hair brushing his collar. A profile she had seen everywhere, from magazine covers to archived news articles.
"Damian?"
She felt smaller than the room. Smaller than the page. She wanted to stand, to shout *Why are you here?* But her mouth was bone dry.
He moved with the strange, cautious grace of someone who had learned to bend around danger. He did not glance toward the desk. Instead, he bent, wrote something carefully, and without looking up, spoke in a voice that was near and far at once.
"You should not be here."
Her knees nearly gave out. Somehow her whisper escaped. "You are supposed to be dead."
A slow shift. The scrape of paper. A sigh that could have been wind.
"I still am," he said.
Something in that phrase made the room tilt. Not denial. Not deception. A claim. A warning.
He straightened, and for a single heartbeat she saw him look at the desk, at the pages, at the faint hint of her presence. Then he turned away as if the room itself forced him to disappear.
The handle clicked. The steps receded.
She did not move. She let the quiet take her in until it felt like the house could not breathe without her feeling it.
When she finally climbed to her feet, both her knees and hands were numb. The margin ink looked like a promise and a trap at once. Whoever he was or whatever he had become, he had not wanted her there.
Yet here she was, knee-deep in someone else's life, the only person who could stitch his truth together with words.
Outside, the fog thickened. The house seemed to close ranks.
She gathered the pages with trembling hands. She would move carefully. She would not let him see how small he made her feel.
Because if he was the ghost in the study, then her job, her life, possibly her ruin or her redemption, had just begun.