The mansion was silent_eerily so. Amanda tiptoed through the dimly lit hallway, her footsteps muffled by the thick, patterned rug beneath her feet. The east wing have been strictly off limits, One of the places Mr Adrian warned her about. Yet here she was, drawn by something she couldn't explain, a chill in the air, a flickering light and the whispers.
They weren't loud. In fact they were barely audible. The words were unintelligible, distorted,as though carried by the wind from another time. She pressed her ear to the door, heart pounding out of fear.
"Why did she come back?" Was the word she heard at the other side of the carved wooden door,chills ran through her spine, she wasn't alone.
Amanda's breath caught in her throat.
She looked down the hallway still empty. The air felt heavier now, charged with something she couldn't name. She slowly reached for the doorknob. It was cold.Too cold.
The whispers had stopped.
The door creaked open with a painful slowness,revealing a dark room cloaked with dust and shadows. Moonlight shined in through a cracked window, highlighting furniture draped in white sheets and portraits on the wall- faded, with eye that seems to follow her every move.
She stepped inside.
On the floor, half covered by a fallen curtain was another note.
This one wasn't typed like the last. It was handwritten, hurriedly, like someone has scrawled in fear:
"You don't belong here."
Amanda's hand trembled.
The air suddenly shifted, cold breeze brushing past her neck. She spun around.Nothing.
Then the door slammed shut.
Locked.
She rushed to the door, jiggling the knob, but it wouldn't budge. Her heart pounded like a drum.
"Okay… okay, stay calm," she whispered to herself.
Turning back to the room, she scanned it for another way out. Her eyes landed on a dusty bookshelf pushed against the far wall. Strange—it looked newer than everything else in the room. Amanda approached it, running her fingers along the wood.
That's when she noticed it—scratches on the floor, faint, but in the shape of a curve. The bookshelf had been moved. Recently.
Her curiosity, stronger than her fear, took over. She gripped the edge of the shelf and pulled. It groaned in protest but gave way, revealing a narrow opening in the wall—like a passage.
A hidden corridor.
The whispers started again. Closer this time. Behind her.
She didn't wait. She slipped into the passage, heart racing, and pulled the shelf shut behind her just as footsteps echoed outside the door she had been trapped in.
Darkness swallowed her, but she kept moving, one hand against the wall, the other clutching the note.
She didn't know where the passage would lead, but something inside her whispered that she was getting closer—to the truth, to the secret she had come here for... and maybe to something much more dangerous.