Below – The Thread Tree
The bark of the root-tree smoked beneath Larissa's palm.
Where it burned her, a pattern began to etch into her skin—a spiral of symbols that moved like ink in water, never still, never fully readable.
She staggered back, but the tree held her fast—not with branches, but with memory.
Visions poured through her:
A child buried beneath the floorboards, humming lullabies to the worms.
A priestess kneeling in blood, whispering to a house that had no ears.
A war not yet begun, but already lost.
The tree spoke again, but now with many voices.
"You cracked the heart, but you have not bled for it. The bond remains incomplete."
Larissa gasped. "I didn't come to bleed. I came to choose."
"You are not the only one who did."
Behind her, the roots trembled.
Something was rising.
Not Lukyan.
Not Anya.
Not even the house.
Something older.
Above – The Mirror Corridor
Dimitri had followed the shifting hallways into what had once been the Volkov library. Now it was nothing but reflection: every surface mirrored, infinite versions of himself staring back.
But none of them moved.
Except one.
The reflection in the center mirror stepped forward, though Dimitri did not.
He watched it silently. It grinned.
And then it spoke—with her voice.
"You're still wearing skin. How quaint."
Dimitri didn't flinch. "You're not real."
"I'm what waits when the door stays open too long." The reflection blinked—black eyes, no whites, only endless void. "You cracked it wide, Dimitri. She's doing what you never could."
"I never tried to awaken the house."
"No. But you fed it." The reflection stepped closer. "And now it's starving."
Suddenly, all the mirrors shattered.
Except the one behind him.
Dimitri turned slowly.
In that mirror… he saw Larissa, bound in roots.
Bleeding.
And a thing of antlers and ash crawling toward her.
Below – The Forgotten One
Larissa couldn't move.
The tree had bound her wrists with veins of light, and every time she struggled, her memories twisted—rewriting themselves.
She was five.
She was dying.
She was unborn.
She was Queen.
The creature stepped out from behind the tree. Not walking—unfolding. A tangle of limbs, a body made of shattered promises and bone.
It didn't speak.
It sang.
A low, guttural chant that made the world throb.
The same chant from the dream.
The same voice that whispered when her mother burned.
Lukyan's voice echoed distantly behind her. He was trying to follow—but the threads wouldn't let him in. This part was hers alone.
The creature approached.
Larissa finally spoke.
"What are you?"
The thing smiled with her mother's mouth.
"The one they forgot when they built the walls."
It placed one clawed hand over Larissa's heart.
And the spiral burned brighter.
"You cracked the heart. But now you must feed it."
Larissa screamed.
Elsewhere – In the House That Was
Lukyan clawed at the invisible barrier keeping him from the tree.
He could hear her. The screaming. The roots twisting in pain.
Behind him, a thousand doors slammed open at once.
And Dimitri stepped through one of them—coat burning at the edges, hair slicked back with something that shimmered like oil.
"I'm going in," Lukyan said, desperate.
"She doesn't need you," Dimitri replied.
"She's dying."
"No," Dimitri said. "She's becoming."
The Thread Tree – Between Moments
The creature's hand dug into Larissa's chest—not piercing, not breaking, but claiming.
The spiral glowed, then vanished.
And her heart stopped.
She hovered between breaths, between realities.
And then—she saw the house from above.
All of it.
The real.
The mirror.
The rot.
It had a shape now. A body.
And it was hungry.
She could hear the walls whispering.
Not words.
A question.
Always the question:
"Bind me… or free me?"
She opened her mouth.
And the world went black.
She opened her mouth.
And the world went black.
But not empty.
Not silent.
She was still there—floating between the roots of reality. Inside the dark, she felt everything: the trembling of the house's bones, the echo of footsteps above and below, the scream of the tree as it twisted under the weight of what she had become.
Then—
A flicker.
A heartbeat.
Not hers.
The house's.
And then came the voice.
Not a question this time.
But a memory.
A lullaby in a language lost long before the Manor had windows. It filled her head, soft and terrible, like snow falling on graves. She saw a woman—eyes like her own—singing to a crib filled not with a baby, but a book. A black book bound in skin, pulsing like a living thing.
The woman whispered to it:
"If they forget your name, my love, the house will not."
"If they burn your bones, the house will remember."
"If they curse your blood, the house will still open for you."
Larissa's breath returned with a violent gasp.
She wasn't on the thread anymore.
She was inside the first memory.
The beginning.
The foundation stone of the Manor was beneath her knees—a slab soaked in the blood of the first bargain.
The woman looked up at her.
Not a ghost.
Not a vision.
A memory made flesh.
"You are the last," the woman said.
Larissa's mouth was dry. Her voice cracked. "The last what?"
"The last Queen," the woman replied. "Unless you choose differently."
The book in the cradle pulsed, heartbeat matching her own.
She stepped forward. "I didn't come to rule."
"Then don't." The woman gestured to the book. "Burn the house. Or bind it. Or walk away and let it rot. But choose. Because the house is listening, Larissa. And it is hungry for direction."
Suddenly, fire raced up the walls. The cradle caught first, flames licking across the book's surface, curling its cover like a dying flower.
The woman didn't move.
She smiled—soft and proud.
And she vanished.
The floor cracked.
The thread shattered.
And Larissa fell—through time, through selves, through a thousand choices she had not yet made.
Above – In the Hall of Smoke
Lukyan grunted as the barrier shattered with a deafening crack. His hand—bleeding, burned—was clenched around the silver knife he'd drawn from his coat's lining. He didn't remember when he took it out. He only remembered needing it.
Dimitri stood beside him now, eerily calm. "She's crossed into the spine of the house. If you follow her, you won't return the same."
"She needs me."
Dimitri's eyes gleamed. "No. She needs to decide."
Lukyan ignored him.
The corridor bent again, forcing him to crawl forward as the ceiling dropped. Roots pushed through the walls like veins under skin, pulsing in rhythm with something buried deeper still.
He heard her scream again.
Then silence.
Then a whisper, closer than before.
Lukyan.
He froze.
It wasn't her voice.
It was the voice from the pool.
The one that wore Larissa's skin like a mask.
"You gave her a choice," it whispered from behind his ear. "But you never gave her a reason to choose you."
Below – The Awakening
Larissa's body hit stone.
Cold.
Rough.
She groaned, rolling onto her side.
The light had changed. No longer the silver of thread-space, nor the fire of memory.
Now it was red.
Pulsing.
Alive.
The cathedral had changed.
It breathed.
The roots were gone—replaced by spines of obsidian bone and walls that wept with ancestral ichor. The black pool had boiled away, and in its place was a spiral staircase leading straight into the heart of the house.
Larissa stood slowly.
She looked down at her hand.
The spiral had fully marked her now—glowing faintly, its shape shifting each time she blinked. Not pain anymore.
Power.
She turned toward the staircase.
And she knew:
The thing that waited at the bottom wasn't Anya.
It wasn't the house.
It wasn't even the Forgotten One.
It was what the house had been guarding all along.
And she—
She was the key.