The rain didn't stop for three days after the engagement.
It drummed against the cottage roof like a warning that refused to quiet. Elara sat by the window, staring at the letter Adrian had sent that morning a neatly folded note reminding her of their next dinner together. The words were kind, almost gentle, but they carried the same weight as a command.
She tucked it away in a drawer she rarely opened. Beneath old books and trinkets lay a wooden box that had once belonged to her grandmother. She'd never dared to look inside before, but something restless had been stirring in her since the night of the banquet something that whispered there were truths buried in her family deeper than their debts.
The box creaked open, releasing a faint scent of lavender and dust. Inside lay a leather-bound journal, its corners softened by time. Across the cover, her grandmother's name was carved faintly: Maeve Venn.
Elara turned the first page. The handwriting was graceful but hurried as if the writer feared someone might be reading over her shoulder.
The fire took everything… yet I still dream of him. The man in the ruins calls to me, even now. The curse did not die with the Vale name. It only sleeps.
Elara's pulse quickened.
She flipped through more pages, each one filled with half-told memories, mentions of the Vale Estate, of a "lord bound by blood and sorrow," and of a promise made beneath a crimson moon.
Then she found one entry written in trembling ink:
If you ever hear him call your name, do not answer. His love is a hunger that never ends. The Crimson One is not a tale, Elara. He is a debt of the heart and our family owes him still.
Her name, Elara.
The letters swam before her eyes. How could her grandmother have written her name in a book decades before she was born?
A chill passed through the room. The candle flame bent sideways, though the window was closed. She looked up and for a split second, she saw him.
A reflection in the glass.
A tall man with dark hair, his face pale as moonlight, standing in the mist outside her window.
She gasped and spun around but there was no one there. Only rain sliding down the glass like tears.
The wind outside rose, whispering through the cracks of the house. It almost sounded like a voice, low and deliberate, shaping her name again.
Elara…
Her breath caught in her throat. She slammed the journal shut and pressed her hands against it, heart pounding. The voice faded, leaving only the echo of her own fear.
The next morning, she went to her parents, journal clutched to her chest, and said she didn't want to marry Adrian.
Her father's answer was firm and final: "You will. For us, for your future. There's nothing else left for you out there."
But as Elara looked out toward the mist-shrouded forest beyond the fields, she couldn't help but think maybe there was something else. Something waiting. Something that already knew her name.