The next morning brought a weak sun, barely visible through the sea mist. Evelyn wandered the manor's hallways like someone walking through a forgotten dream. The wallpaper peeled like shedding skin, but beneath it, she noticed something odd — delicate writing, inked into the walls themselves.
One phrase repeated, over and over, in fine, almost loving script.
"We always return."
She paused outside the locked bedroom. The door remained closed now. She didn't dare try the handle again.
Instead, she descended the west hall stairs, drawn to a place she hadn't yet explored.
The library.
The heavy double doors groaned as they opened. Inside, the air smelled of ancient paper and something faintly sweet — like roses that had long since dried to dust. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined every wall, filled with books whose spines were cracked and titles faded.
It was colder here. Still. Sacred, almost.
In the center stood a reading table. One book was already open.
She didn't remember touching it.
The title was handwritten inside the front cover:
"A Study of the Spiral: Obsession, Reincarnation, and the Curse of Blackthistle."
She flipped a few pages. Someone had underlined a section in dark red ink:
"In matters of cursed love, the house acts as memory — a place of reliving, of looping. Tragedy becomes architecture. Desire, a haunting."
Evelyn slammed the book shut.
Behind her, a voice said calmly, "That book was meant to be burned."
She spun.
Elias.
He stood in the doorway, the collar of his coat turned up against the chill, his eyes unreadable in the dim morning light.
Evelyn's heart hammered in her chest. "Do you always enter houses uninvited, or is that just a charming local custom?"
"I knocked," he said, stepping inside. "You didn't answer."
"Most people would take that as a hint."
Elias's eyes roamed the shelves. "Most people wouldn't stay here at all."
She folded her arms. "You said this place hasn't been lived in for twenty years. How would you know that book should've been burned?"
A pause.
Then: "Because I was here. Before it was abandoned."
"You lived here?"
"No. I loved here."
That silenced her. Her breath caught in her throat. Elias walked slowly to the table, placed a gloved hand on the book, and closed it gently, as if sealing a wound.
"I don't understand," she said softly. "You're not... old enough."
He looked up at her with a strange intensity.
"You'd be surprised what age means in a place like this."
Her skin prickled. "What happened here?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he stepped closer. Not touching — not yet — but close enough that she could feel the heat of him. Or was it cold?
His voice was low. "You're not the first. The house has a type. Women who carry sorrow in their blood. Women who leave behind broken things."
"You think you know me?" she asked, sharper than she meant.
"No." He tilted his head. "But the house does."
They stood in silence.
Then he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something small — a locket. He placed it on the table.
Evelyn hesitated, then picked it up. Opened it.
Inside was a miniature portrait — a painted face of a woman who looked disturbingly like her.
Her voice was barely a whisper. "Who is she?"
"Her name was Lenore," Elias said. "She lived here. A long time ago."
Evelyn couldn't tear her eyes from the face. "She looks like me."
He nodded.
"She loved someone who couldn't love her back the way she wanted. She died in this house. But she never really left."
She looked up at him sharply. "Are you saying… she haunts it?"
"I'm saying this place doesn't let go of love. Even when it turns cruel. Even when it rots."
A shiver traced her spine.
Elias turned to leave, then paused in the doorway.
"You should go," he said. "Before it remembers too much."
Then he was gone.
That night, Evelyn didn't sleep.
The fire in the hearth refused to stay lit. The radio, which had been silent for years, suddenly crackled to life and played an old waltz, one that sounded like it had been scratched into wax a century ago.
She stood in front of the mirror in the hallway, staring at her reflection.
It was changing.
Not her face — not exactly. But her posture. Her expression. The curve of her lips when she wasn't paying attention.
The woman in the mirror was beginning to look less like Evelyn.
And more like Lenore.
[End of Chapter 3]