Long before Jolene Sparks set foot in Redlands, before she ever heard the name Larkspur House, the mansion stood alone atop its wooded hill—half-shadow, half-memory. Some said it was haunted, others that it was enchanted. Most who lived in the city below simply pretended it wasn't there at all.
But on certain nights, when the fog crept low and the moon hung heavy over the rooftop spires, the air around the mansion shimmered with a presence that was more than just wind and time. There was music, sometimes—a faint waltz floating through the garden, a candle flickering in a window that hadn't opened in years. Locals whispered of grand parties, of noble guests who vanished before dawn, and of a master who never aged, never appeared, and never quite let go.
For a century, Larkspur House was the keeper of secrets—a place suspended between worlds, where sorrow echoed and love lingered, unfinished and unresolved. No matter how many caretakers came and went, the house waited with patient hunger for the one soul who might unravel its mysteries.
Inside its silent halls, dust gathered but nothing was truly forgotten. A rose pressed between the pages of a diary, a cufflink lost beneath a stair, the hush of footsteps in a corridor where no living being walked—all these were promises kept for a future yet to come.
And somewhere, in a room untouched by sunlight, a man waited too. Cursed by regret, haunted by memories, Edward Valdemort watched the seasons change through glass that remembered every face and every heartbreak. For a hundred years, he drifted between the past and what might be—searching for hope, for forgiveness, for the spark that would set him free.
He did not know her name. He did not know when or how she would arrive. But he felt her coming—a new story rising on the wind, a voice on the edge of sleep whispering, Soon.
The house sighed, longing for its next chapter.
And far away, Jolene Sparks boarded a plane, her heart hungry for purpose, her future about to entwine with the mansion between worlds.