The mist was thicker than usual when Isla returned to the Hallwell estate. It clung to the trees like cobwebs, veiling the world in a pale hush. Her boots left no sound on the damp cobblestone path winding up to the iron gates. A low wind howled through the hedgerows, rustling the ivy that curled along the manor's cracked stone.
The paused at the gate.
Something about the boy from the market lingered like smoke in her mind. Caius. He was a thief—she'd known that the moment his fingers brushed her coin pouch—but there had been something else in his eyes. Something familiar.
That haunted edge. As though he, too, lived in the company of ghosts.
The gates creaked open before she touched them. Isla blinked and glanced around, but the grounds were empty. No servants. No one at all.
She stepped inside.
The Hallwell manor loomed ahead, its tall, gabled structure silhouetted against the bleeding sky. Once grand, it had grown worn with age—its windows dim, its walls cracked with ivy and time. Yet within, there was comfort. Order. A kind of safety Isla hadn't known since—
She swallowed hard.
Lady Hallwell had always been kind in a formal, distant way. Lord Bastian less so. He was rarely home, and when he was, he regarded Isla with a cold politeness that made her skin crawl. But they had taken her in after her mother vanished. Fed her. Dressed her. Enrolled her in Hollowmere Academy as if she were one of their own.
Still, the manor had never felt like home.
She entered through the servant's side door and slipped into the kitchen. It was quiet, save for the ticking of the longcase clock and the occasional groan of settling wood. A silver tray of untouched tea sat on the counter, the steam long vanished.
Isla climbed the narrow stairs, avoiding the creaky ones out of habit. Her room was small, tucked away at the end of the west wing, overlooking the garden and the edge of the mist-choked forest.
She shut the door behind her and leaned against it.
The encounter at the market replayed in her mind—Caius's smirk, the glint in his eyes, the way he vanished without a sound. He hadn't been just a thief. No ordinary thief moved like that. And no ordinary thief would leave behind that strange, unspoken feeling that gnawed at her chest.
Something's coming.
She could feel it again—the prickling chill at the base of her neck. The quiet whispers curling beneath her skin like shadowed tendrils.
She pressed her hands to her ears.
Stop. Stop it.
But the whispers only grew louder.
"You shouldn't be here."
Isla spun.
The room was empty.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stumbled backward, knocking into the writing desk. Her lamp flickered, then sputtered out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
And then—
A shape. Just at the edge of her vision. Pale and blurred. Almost human, almost not. It hovered near the mirror, indistinct and flickering like candlelight behind water.
Isla clenched her fists. "Leave me alone."
The thing tilted its head.
"You are marked, Isla Blackwood."
She didn't scream. She'd learned not to.
Instead, she grabbed the vial of valerian from her cloak—the one she'd bought just before the thief showed up—and swallowed two drops. Her hands trembled as she collapsed onto the bed, curling into herself
The shape faded.
The whispers quieted.
But the fear didn't.
--
Later that night, she sat by the window, clutching her knees to her chest as she stared into the garden. The mist coiled and writhed, thick as ever, hiding the world beyond.
Somewhere out there was a boy with eyes like storm clouds and a spiral-shaped mark beneath his shirt.
And somewhere deeper… the darkness stirred.
The bell tolled twelve.
She did not sleep