The handle stilled.
Elara's breath came shallow, caught between fight and flight, though neither seemed possible. The knock, the voice—it had been too calm, too deliberate. Not the voice of a servant. Not Agnes.
Her hand brushed the edge of the bedside table, searching blindly for anything she could use. Her fingers closed around the candleholder, its brass stem cool against her skin.
"Miss Veyne," the man's voice came again, muffled through the thick oak. "I would speak with you. We share a history… though you may not yet know it."
The raven shifted above her, its talons scraping wood in a sound that made her teeth ache.
Elara's throat felt tight. She forced the words out.
"You should leave. This house isn't open to strangers."
A pause. Then the faintest chuckle.
"Stranger? No. I belong here far more than you do."
The door rattled as if someone leaned against it. Elara tightened her grip on the candleholder. Her pulse throbbed in her temples.
Then silence.
She stood frozen, straining her ears. Seconds stretched, then minutes. The footsteps retreated, faint against the stone hallway until they vanished completely.
The raven croaked low, as though confirming he was gone.
Elara let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her knees threatened to give way, but she forced herself to move. She crossed to the door and pressed her ear against the wood. Nothing.
When she turned the lock, her hand trembled. She opened the door a crack and peered out into the corridor. Empty.
But the floor held a trace of him: faint muddy prints, leading down the hall toward the grand stairwell. They stopped at the landing, cut off as though the man had vanished into thin air.
Elara shut the door quickly and bolted it again.
She did not sleep that night.
The candle burned low, and when the flame guttered out, she sat in the moonlight, watching shadows creep along the draped walls. Every groan of the old house made her flinch. At some point, she began to write—pages and pages of words she could barely recall, her hand moving almost of its own accord.
When dawn bled pale gray across the windows, she finally noticed what she'd written.
Not sentences. Not thoughts.
Symbols.
Strange looping marks, jagged strokes, repeated again and again until the pages were filled.
Elara dropped the pen, staring at the ink-stained patterns with a mix of dread and disbelief. She had never seen these shapes before, yet her hand had written them flawlessly, like a language she had always known.
The raven, still perched on the canopy, gave a single croak. Its black eyes glittered.
At breakfast, Agnes stood stiffly behind the table as Elara pushed food around her plate.
"Was anyone here last night?" Elara asked at last.
The housekeeper's brow furrowed. "No one but myself and the cook. Why?"
"I heard… footsteps. A man's voice."
Agnes's expression remained unreadable, but her pause was just long enough to betray something.
"You must have been dreaming," she said finally. "This house does that to newcomers. It unsettles the senses."
"And the footprints?" Elara pressed.
Agnes's eyes flicked to hers, sharp for the first time. "What footprints?"
Elara set down her fork.
"I know what I saw."
Agnes leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Miss Veyne, if you wish to last in this house, there are things you should learn not to mention aloud."
Elara's stomach knotted. She wanted to demand answers, but the weight of the house itself seemed to press her into silence.
Later that day, Elara wandered the corridors, each turn of the hall leading her deeper into the house's strange geometry. Doors led to locked rooms, windows looked out on courtyards that did not exist from the outside. The manor was a labyrinth, echoing with drafts and whispers that never quite resolved into words.
In one hall, she came upon a portrait she did not remember.
A woman sat in black silk, her features sharp, her eyes dark. But it was the bird on her shoulder that made Elara's breath catch. A raven, feathers gleaming, its gaze unnervingly like the one that had followed her since childhood.
Beneath the portrait, a brass plate bore the name:
Selene Veyne.
Her grandmother.
The resemblance to her mother was striking, but the resemblance to herself was worse.
Elara stepped back, unsettled, and nearly collided with Agnes, who had appeared silently behind her.
"Admiring your lineage?" Agnes said, voice low.
Elara glanced at the housekeeper sharply.
"You could have warned me."
"Of what?"
"That this family carries shadows."
Agnes's thin lips curled in something like a smile.
"Warn you? Miss Veyne, you are not here to be warned. You are here to inherit."
That night, the knocking returned.
Three slow, deliberate raps.
This time, Elara did not answer.
The raven stirred, but she pulled the blanket tight around herself and stared at the door until dawn.
When the first light of morning crept across the floor, she rose. The door was unlocked, though she had sworn she'd bolted it.
And on the inside, drawn across the wood in what looked like ash or soot, were the same looping symbols she had scrawled the night before.
Beneath them, a single word in careful, precise script:
WELCOME.