Grey light seeps through the curtains, thin as watered milk. I sit up slowly, quilt heavy against my chest, breath fogging faintly in the cold room. The storm has gone, leaving only the steady hiss of waves far below.
The window bears proof it wasn't a dream. Fine scratches score the glass—thin grooves running vertical, too straight for branches, too deliberate for chance. They catch the morning like threads of silver inside the pane, as though carved from within.
I dress quickly, pushing the thought down until it lodges sharp under the ribs. The wardrobe mirror shows only a tired man buttoning his collar, shadows etched beneath his eyes. The corridor beyond my door is quiet. Too quiet for a house this size.
The dining hall yawns wide, ceiling beams dark as old bone, windows flooding a pale, winter light across a long table set for one. Silverware gleams. A single chair waits at the head, where Adrian eats with mechanical grace—knife exact, fork steady. Not indulgence. Ritual.
I sit opposite. Steam curls from bread and eggs I didn't see anyone place. He glances up, eyes calm slate. "You slept?"
"Fitfully." My gaze touches the windowpanes. "The house keeps… company."
A pause fine enough to shave with. "Ashgrave Hall speaks in its own ways. You will learn which voices to heed, and which to ignore."
Something inside me tightens, and the hum lifts in my bones:
Status Ping: Conversational anomaly detected.Passive Unlocked: Social Acuity I — sharper recognition of hesitation, emphasis, concealed subtext in dialogue.
The passive threads through his words, highlighting the pause that shouldn't exist. He knows what I mean. He chooses not to name it.
"You've heard them too," I say.
Grey eyes meet mine, unwavering. Silence stretches, thin as wire. Then his mouth composes a courteous line. "Some guests find the sea restless."
The lie isn't in the words. It's in what he refuses to say.
Adrian leaves first, chair sliding back without a scrape. The doors sigh shut. When I look along the table, the far plates have already vanished. No footsteps. No hands.
A flick of motion at the edge of vision—plain livery, a tray glinting. A narrow-faced man slips through a side door near the kitchens. Eyes downcast. Steps deferential.
But last night, Adrian said there were no servants.
I follow into a narrow passage shelved with dull crockery. A faint clink of cutlery, a scuff on stone. "Excuse me," I call.
The sound halts. A breath. Then the steps retreat, faster.
The passage forks. Left smells of coal and damp; right is carpeted, swallowing sound. Dust lies thick—except where recent shoes pressed deep, heading right. Toward the West Wing.
I follow, throat dry. Cold gathers under the oak at the end, the same locked door iron-clamped and ancient. The tracks lead straight to it and stop. No turnabout. No return trail.
System Ping: Identity anomaly logged.
The seal sits heavy with dust. The lock is firm. Yet someone walked into a place that denies being opened. I back away. When I glance again, the dust looks smooth, undisturbed—as if no one passed here at all. The tray is gone.
The rest of the morning drags like wet cloth. I pace the east corridors, counting windows, cataloguing shadows, failing to quiet the image of a man who doesn't exist carrying a tray toward a sealed wing. By noon, I give up and go where the house seems to steer me—the library.
One door stands ajar; hinges creak wider as if they've decided I belong. Dust lifts in lazy spirals. Shelves lean like old jurors, waiting for testimony. I cross to the ledgers. The same register lies near the top, placed as though it wants finding. My fingertips rest on the page, and the hum sharpens:
Status Ping: Residual layering detected.Passive Unlocked: Ink Trace I — perception of overwritten, altered, or concealed text layers.
Columns resolve to a microscopic topography. Some lines glisten faintly where no sheen should be. Dates flow steady, amounts neat—until a name bleeds under another. Eleanor Harrow, thin as a ghost beneath the newer hand that overwrote it—Evelyn Hart. A clumsy mimicry of age. The pen pressed light, too light to bury the truth.
My pulse trips. I flip forward. More substitutions. More masks. Always Eleanor surfacing like a bruise beneath makeup. The air thickens; the paper tastes of iron and salt on my tongue.
A thud shivers deep in the stacks. I snap the ledger shut. Ladders loom in a forest of shadows. Nothing moves. Yet the passive hums hard against bone.
Someone else knows I've seen it.
By dusk the sea has turned iron, clouds dragging themselves low. I retreat to my room before the corridors can swallow me whole. The wardrobe mirror greets me, tall and dulled, its surface smeared by age. I've avoided it since the first night. Now it feels unavoidable.
I sit on the bed, eyes fixed on the glass. My reflection stares back: hair unruly, collar undone, a man pulsing on too little sleep. The longer I watch, the less the reflection behaves like me. When I lift my hand, it lags—a fractional delay, too exact for trick light.
I rise, step closer. My breath fogs the pane. The reflection exhales a beat after I do. Depth pools behind the surface as if something is darkening the glass from inside.
System Alert: External presence proximity rising.
She becomes clearer.
The same figure from the window, from the winter garden. Narrow shoulders, hair trailing damp as seaweed. Eyes wide, catching stormlight where none falls. She does not mirror me. She stands apart, gaze level, unblinking.
My fingers hover close. She does not copy. She lifts her own hand—pale, long fingers pressing from within. Nails whisper across the surface, etching thin lines like cracks in ice.
A wire hums through me, too taut to bear. "Who are you?" I whisper.
Her mouth shapes a word. No sound, only the soft tremor of lips.
Lightning rolls across the sea; the mirror snuffs to flatness—only my hollow-eyed face, hand raised to emptiness. Then the surface ripples once, faint as breath across water.
The ripple lingers, a shiver the glass can't shake. My reflection swims like a figure under ice—indistinct, unstable. I take one step, the floorboard complains. The house disapproves.
Condensation blooms in a handprint from the inside.
Her hand. Pale, nails sharp enough to score. Trails drag down in the mist, more wound than smudge.
"Who are you?" My voice is a thread.
Her lips shape it again, slower, deliberate. I catch it this time: Eleanor.
The name from the ledgers.
The system cuts in, cold and metallic:
System Alert: External entity recognized. Classification: Unstable. Proximity: High.
The glass bulges outward, subtle but real, as if a membrane thins. My stomach flips. Her palm rises to meet mine.
I should pull away. I don't.
Our hands meet through the pane. Ice needles flood my skin, racing up the wrist. For a heartbeat, the barrier isn't there. For a heartbeat, I touch her—skin clammy, thin as paper soaked in seawater; nails pricking, almost breaking.
Her eyes flare, pupils swallowing light. Her mouth opens—no whisper, no breath—just a soundless scream that rakes my bones though the air never moves.
I wrench back. The mirror snaps flat, giving me only myself, gaping. The chill remains in my palm.
And the scratches now run both ways—etched inside and out.