The storm had not relented. It prowled across the moors with relentless fury, lashing against the manor as though some unseen beast sought entry. Within Blackthorn, however, the storm was quieter, like a muffled roar beyond the thick, ancient walls—except that tonight, the silence felt too deliberate. Every creak of the floorboards, every flicker of the candles, seemed to carry with it the weight of a hundred secrets pressing in from all sides.
Seraphina could not sleep. She lay beneath the heavy velvet canopy of her bed, staring at the carved rafters above her, listening. It was then that she heard it: a faint tapping. At first, she dismissed it as the restless branches outside her window, yet the sound grew sharper, more deliberate. Tap. Tap. Tap. A rhythm too precise to be natural.
Her breath quickened. Gathering her courage, she drew her shawl tightly around her shoulders and slipped from the bed. The chamber was plunged in half-shadow, her single candle throwing trembling light across the stone walls. The sound seemed to come from the corridor beyond her door.
Every instinct screamed at her to remain within the safety of her room, but curiosity, ever her undoing, pulled her forward. The iron latch gave way with a reluctant groan as she opened the door. The corridor stretched before her like a dark artery, lined with tall windows against which the storm hurled itself in vain. And there, halfway down the passage, stood a figure.
A man.
He was tall, his frame imposing even in shadow. For a terrifying instant she thought it was Dorian, but then the figure turned, revealing nothing but a pale, hollow face with eyes that glowed faintly in the candlelight—eyes that did not seem entirely human.
Seraphina gasped and stumbled back, nearly dropping her candle. In that instant, the figure dissolved, like smoke dispersing into the air.
Her pulse thundered. She spun, heart hammering, and collided with something solid—someone.
"Seraphina."
It was Dorian. His hands closed around her arms to steady her, but the intensity in his dark eyes rooted her to the spot.
"What are you doing wandering these halls at this hour?" he asked, his voice low, edged with a dangerous note.
"I… I thought I saw someone." She tried to control the tremor in her voice. "A man, standing there. His face was—"
"There was no one," Dorian interrupted, though his gaze flicked warily down the corridor, as if betraying the lie his lips spoke.
Her eyes searched his face. "You know something, don't you? About this house. About what haunts it."
The storm rattled the windows violently then, as though punctuating her words.
Dorian's grip tightened for the briefest moment before he released her. "You should not ask questions whose answers you are not prepared to bear."
"I am not afraid," she whispered, though the tremble of her candle betrayed her.
A faint smile ghosted his lips, bitter and unreadable. "You should be."
He turned and walked away, his dark cloak trailing like spilled ink across the stone floor. She stood frozen, torn between fear and the aching pull of him, the terrible beauty of his warnings only deepening her resolve.
But when she finally returned to her chamber and shut the door against the storm and the shadows, she realized something else: her candle had nearly burned down, and she had been so consumed by Dorian that she had not noticed until then that the whispering had begun again.
Not tapping. Not branches. But voices.
Murmurs threading through the stone walls as though the manor itself had begun to speak.
And though the words were indistinguishable, one thing was certain: they were calling her name.