Ashford had become a ghost town. Curtains were drawn tight over windows as if the houses themselves were cowering from the night. The only illumination came from the sickly, bioluminescent glow of the moss clinging to the village well and the distant, trembling lantern of Old Man Harris—a bobbing firefly lost in the deepening gloom ahead.
Elara walked with a new, sharp purpose. The shock she had carried from the general store had been metabolized into a cold, focused energy. Her boots struck the stones with certainty. The name repeated in her mind like a rhythmic drumbeat: Blackwood. Blackwood. Blackwood.
At the edge of the village, the cobblestones simply ended, and the civilized world ended with them. A crude wooden arch, rotten and draped with withered vines, marked the entrance to the forest path. It looked less like a gateway and more like a waiting jaw.
Standing beneath it was Old Man Harris. His lantern hung from his crooked stick, its flame burning a steady, sober yellow. He didn't look at her as she approached; his gaze remained fixed on the oppressive darkness thriving between the trees.
"I told you to turn back," he said.
"And I don't take orders from strangers," Elara countered.
He finally turned his head. His sunken green eyes were not unkind, but they were filled with a profound, weary sorrow.
"This is your last step on solid ground, Elara Thorn," he warned. "Beyond this point, the path… changes. It has a mind of its own. It leads where the house wants it to lead."
"My brother is in there."
"Is he?" Harris asked, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper as he took a limping step toward her. "Or is what's in there simply wearing his face? The thing in that manor feeds on memory. It twists love into a weapon. Your love for your brother will be the hook it uses to reel you in."
He leaned closer, the smell of damp earth clinging to him. "It is not a place of stone and wood. It is a living wound. And Matilda Blackwood's rage is the infection that will never heal. It seeped into the soil. It poisoned the roots of the trees. It birthed the things that crawl in the walls. Turn. Back."
Elara met his gaze. The wind whipped her silver-streaked hair across her face, and for a moment, the gut-wrenching certainty in his voice gave her pause. She could see the truth in his eyes; he believed every word of the nightmare he described.
But then, the image of the moths returned to her—forming her brother's screaming face. She felt the cold, heavy weight of his letter in her pocket. She looked past the old man, straight into the throat of the forest.
"I have to know," she said.
A deep sadness settled over Harris's features. He nodded slowly, as if he had always known it would end this way. He stepped aside, clearing her path.
"Then may whatever gods have abandoned this place have mercy on your soul," he said softly. "You'll find none in there."
He turned and began his slow, limping walk back toward the village. His light receded, leaving Elara alone in a darkness that felt heavier than before. She took a deep, shuddering breath. The air here was different—colder, tasting of decay and wet earth.
She stepped forward.
Her boot crunched not on gravel, but on a carpet of dead, brittle leaves and the tiny, delicate skeletons of insects. The path ahead was a tunnel of gnarled, blackened trees, their branches tangled into a claw-like canopy that blotted out the sky. The fog here seemed alive, coiling around the trunks like serpents.
She walked ten steps, then twenty. The familiar sounds of the village—the creaking signs, the drip of water—faded into an absolute, suffocating silence. Then, a new sound emerged: a faint, papery rustling, like a thousand tiny legs moving in unison just beyond her sight.
The path began to slope upward. Suddenly, the trees thinned.
And there it was.
Blackwood Manor.
It wasn't just a house; it was the carcass of a forgotten age, a monstrous growth of jagged spires and broken windows. Its silhouette was a scar against a sky boiling with bruised, purple clouds. Silent, distant lightning flashed, illuminating the sheer, oppressive scale of the ruin. Towers leaned at impossible angles, held together by thick veils of creeping ivy that looked like exposed veins.
One of the topmost windows resembled a single, unblinking eye—a round pane of glass that, for a fleeting moment, seemed to reflect the lightning not as light, but as a shard of perfect darkness.
The mystery had vanished, replaced by a presence. A weight pushed down on Elara's chest, making it hard to breathe. The rustling in the forest fell silent. Everything was holding its breath.
Elara Thorn stood at the edge of the clearing, a solitary figure before the decaying giant. Her face was a mask of terror and unwavering resolve.
She took one more step forward.