The door shut behind them with a sound that didn't echo—it settled, like something that had just exhaled after holding its breath for years.
Inside, Thornwick Estate was silent.
Not the silence of emptiness, but something older. Heavier. A silence that had learned to listen.
Dust floated like slow snow through the air. The scent was part woodsmoke, part stone, and part something else—something faintly sweet and metallic, like rusted coins and dried flowers left too long on a grave.
Sana stood still in the entry hall, her boots on cold black marble. The others stood behind her in a loose cluster, shifting quietly, their voices hushed by instinct.
Above them, a chandelier hung crooked from a high vaulted ceiling, still strung with old cobwebs. A grand staircase curved up and split in two like a pair of open arms, leading to a long gallery of shuttered windows and portraits cloaked in cloth.
"Is it just me," Emily whispered, "or does this place smell like ghosts?"
Emma elbowed her. "That's not a real smell."
"I'm telling you, it is. It smells like if memories had a basement."
Catherine moved forward, brushing her fingers along the banister. "It's cold."
Jacob stepped in last, pushing the door until it clicked softly. He held the silver key for a moment longer before slipping it into his coat pocket.
"No one's lived here in over twenty years," he said. "It'll take time to feel like home again."
Sana glanced up at him. "Did it ever feel like home before?"
Jacob didn't answer.
---
They explored the ground floor together.
A sitting room full of dust-covered furniture and hollow hearths. A dining room with an impossibly long table and twelve matching chairs, all facing inward as if expecting guests who never arrived. A library lined with tall shelves—empty on the bottom, overstuffed above.
Catherine sneezed. "How do you have this many books and not one duster?"
Jacob chuckled faintly. "We weren't much for cleaning rituals back then."
Emily stepped into the library and spun slowly. "Can I sleep here?"
"No," said three voices at once.
Christopher stayed close to Mary, clutching her coat with one hand, the other still holding his rabbit. His wide eyes darted from shadow to ceiling to doorway. He hadn't said a word since they entered.
Sana trailed behind the group, eyes flicking over the paintings.
Most were covered in cloth. But one—just one—was exposed. A tall woman in an emerald dress stood with her back to a blackened forest. Her face was turned slightly, her hair piled high in dark braids.
Sana froze.
The woman's face looked…almost like hers.
Not exactly. But enough to feel it. The bone structure. The eyes. The tilt of the mouth.
She stepped closer.
A plaque beneath the frame read only:
"Daughter of Silence"
"Creepy title," said Catherine over her shoulder. "Do we know who she is?"
Sana shook her head.
But her stomach whispered: You will.
---
By evening, the family had settled into the least dusty wing of the house.
Jacob and Mary had the master suite. Catherine and Sana shared a large bedroom upstairs, while the twins took the smaller room down the hall. Christopher's bed was tucked beside Mary's—though he insisted on leaving the lamp on.
There was no fireplace lit, but still, the house didn't feel cold.
Just…aware.
As if the walls were waiting.
Sana sat on her bed, brushing her hair by the tall mirror near the window. It had a small crack in the upper corner, shaped like a branching river.
Behind her, Catherine was unpacking clothes, muttering about mothballs and lost buttons.
"I don't trust this mirror," Sana said quietly.
Catherine glanced up. "Why?"
"It's watching me wrong."
Catherine snorted. "That's not a thing."
Sana looked at her reflection. "It is in this house."
---
Later, when the others were asleep and the wind had gone still, Sana lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
From somewhere in the house, faintly, she heard it again.
A whisper.
It wasn't her name this time.
Just a word she didn't understand.
Soft.
And distant.
Like someone trying to remember how to speak.