The world burned white.
For a heartbeat—or a hundred—there was no floor, no sky, no Larissa.
Only memory.
Only truth.
She saw the house before it was a house—when it was still a creature. A spirit, vast and formless, born from grief and winter and the first human promise ever broken.
It had no walls then. It was the walls. A sacred covenant. A shelter offered to the desperate.
And it was fed by desperation.
Anya. The King. Even Lukyan. They weren't rulers. They were caretakers of a prison that needed sacrifice to survive.
But now—now it had something new.
Larissa was not a ruler.
She was a mirror turned weapon.
The broken throne behind her dissolved into snow, vanishing into the void. Around her, the chamber bled cracks of warm light. The frozen glass melted in ribbons, revealing roots—long and gnarled—snaking downward like veins of an ancient heart.
The house was alive.
And it had finally remembered its name.
Elsewhere – The Inner Corridor
Lukyan stepped into the light just as Larissa collapsed.
He caught her before she hit the ground, the warmth of her body shocking against the cold radiating from the chamber.
She looked up, dazed. "Lukyan?"
"You shattered it," he said, stunned. "The throne."
She nodded weakly. "It was never meant to be sat on."
"You could've died."
"I still might."
He helped her stand. Behind them, the chamber trembled. A distant creaking sound, like the house groaning awake after centuries of stillness, echoed upward.
Then the roots began to pulse.
A deep, thunderous heartbeat throbbed through the air.
Boom. Boom.
BOOM.
Larissa clutched her chest. "It's… coming apart."
"No," Lukyan said, scanning the walls, "it's changing."
"Same thing."
The chamber split open with a low crack, and the icy stairwell collapsed behind them. There was no going back.
Only down.
Only deeper.
In the Manor – Dimitri
Dimitri stood beneath the grand chandelier as it exploded into a rain of glass and silver.
He didn't flinch.
He looked upward—and smiled.
The house was shifting. The walls were no longer fixed. Hallways doubled back on themselves. Doors led to impossible rooms. It was bleeding into its own reflection, the Mirror Realm overlapping the real one like oil and water.
And at the center of it all… was her.
"She really did it," he murmured. "She cracked the heart."
Behind him, the portrait of the Volkov matriarchs ignited, flames flickering through oil and canvas.
He didn't stop it.
He only turned to the shadows whispering in the corner of the room.
"Tell the others," he said softly. "The Queen's war has begun."
Below the Manor – Rootbound
Larissa and Lukyan emerged into a space that shouldn't exist.
A cathedral beneath the house.
The roots of the manor wove through stone and bone, wrapping around ancient altars carved with names neither could read. In the center, a massive pool of black water reflected the ceiling—and nothing else.
No reflection.
No faces.
Just potential.
"The source," Larissa breathed.
Lukyan stepped forward slowly. "This is where they made the first bargain."
She looked at him sharply. "You knew?"
He didn't answer right away.
"I suspected," he said finally. "I've felt it all my life. The house… it's not cursed. It's waiting. And now that you've shattered the throne—" He turned to her. "—you've given it the choice it never had."
"What choice?"
"To become something else."
She stared at the pool.
It pulsed.
A voice—hers, but not hers—rose from it like smoke:
"Will you bind me again, or will you set me free?"
Larissa stepped closer. "What does that mean?"
Lukyan placed a hand on her shoulder. "It means whatever you do next… the house will follow."
Behind them, something stirred in the dark—an echo of Anya, fractured and screaming.
The dead did not go quietly.
And neither would the house.