Mason Wilder is a man haunted by silence—by a past he buried and a girl he never said goodbye to. His life is quiet, cautious, and forgettable until the day he receives a mysterious black box on his doorstep. No return address. No explanation. Inside, a single word was scribbled on a folded slip of paper -LUCKY—and the chilling knowledge that the box knows more about him than it should.
The box becomes a fixture in his home, refusing to be thrown away, returned, or forgotten. Then it starts changing. At night, it moves. Its contents shift. One morning, Mason wakes to find a photo inside, a girl with green eyes, red hair, and a smirk that hasn’t changed in over a decade. Emily. The girl who vanished in a fire the night Mason ran and never looked back.
From that moment, the box begins counting down.
Each day, something new appears: a photograph of Mason sleeping, a key that fits a door he doesn’t remember locking, a note that reads only “REGRET.” The air in the house thickens. Shadows stretch too long. The number 3:14 begins repeating—on clocks, in dreams, etched in fog on his windows. He begins to dream of a long hallway with black tiles and no ceiling, a door marked “EMILY’S ROOM,” and a whisper that follows him everywhere: ” This is what you owe.”
As Mason is drawn deeper into the mystery, the physical and metaphysical boundaries of his home begin to dissolve. Footprints appear in the dust. Voices echo through the vents. The box reveals a candle—white, pristine, paired with a single match. A note appears beneath it: “FIVE DAYS.”
With each candle he lights, the ritual tightens its grip. Mason discovers he is not the first to receive the box, and he won’t be the last. Through haunted crawlspaces and buried memories, he finds records, boxes from others before him, ledgers of names, and signs that this “test” has been going on for decades. He uncovers the story of Leonard Kasner, a physicist turned recluse who vanished after documenting “the system of inheritance” Mason now finds himself trapped in.
The candles change color. From white to black. From black to red. Each flame opens a door, not just in the house, but in Mason’s mind. He relives the night of the fire. The choice he made. The moment he turned his back on someone who ran into danger while he ran away.
But the flames aren’t just memory; they’re transformation. As he lights the third candle, the line between victim and vessel vanishes. The haunting is no longer about guilt. It’s about passing the fire on. Emily reappears not as a ghost, but as a figure bound to the ritual Mason is beginning to understand.
In the end, Mason is no longer running from a curse. He is the carrier of it.
He receives a final message: “TAKE.”
A red candle. A mirror image of himself. A choice.
And when he lights the last flame, Mason becomes part of something much older, much deeper, and far more terrifying than a haunting.
He becomes the next name in the box.
The fire doesn’t end.
It moves forward.
The novel closes with a seventeen-year-old girl waking up at 3:14 a.m. in a home that doesn’t belong to her, where nothing ever sticks. She finds a box on her nightstand. Inside: a candle, a match, and a note.
“Light this when you’re ready to know the truth.”
The cycle continues.

The basement smelled like wet stone and mildew.


That deep, earthy damp that clings to your skin and sinks into your bones. It hit Mason the moment he opened the door—stronger than usual. Older. It felt like something that had been sealed up for years was suddenly breathing again.


He stood at the top of the stairs, hand on the wall, listening. His breath caught as a sound reached him from below—soft, rhythmic.


Like something being dragged across the concrete floor.


Each step down creaked like it hadn't been used in years.


The air thickened with each one. Colder. Staler. He felt it in his teeth, in his chest. A chill that wasn't just temperature—it was dread made real.


He turned on his phone flashlight. The thin beam cut a narrow path through the dark.


The basement looked exactly how he remembered it. Old boxes. A cracked workbench. A water heater that always hissed at the wrong times.


It felt like a place that had been waiting for something. Or someone.


He reached the bottom, swept the light in wide arcs.


Pressed into the dust on the floor. The prints were clear, as if made moments ago—no smudging, no signs of time.


They led away from the stairs, curving around the heater and pointing directly to the crawlspace door in the far corner.


He hadn't opened that door in years. Had barely thought about it. It led to a tight, forgotten area that stretched under the back half of the house. Maybe ten feet wide. Used to store old insulation and plumbing junk.


He reached for the handle, slowly, cautiously.


The door let out a low, wooden groan as it moved.


His flashlight revealed a tight tunnel. Pipes lined the ceiling. The walls were packed dirt, crumbling in places. Spiderwebs thick enough to brush with your shoulders.


The air shifted again—cooler and much wetter. It smelled like rot.


The ceiling was barely four feet high. He had to drag himself forward on his elbows, knees scraping against the ground. His phone stayed clenched in one hand, the beam twitching with each movement.


The tunnel twisted slightly. Curved to the left. Then right.


The space at the end of the crawl was slightly larger. Maybe eight feet across. High enough for him to kneel.


Old. Wooden. Bolted directly into the concrete floor.


Its back was high. Its arms wide. Something about it was wrong, even before he saw what sat in it.


Mason stopped crawling. His breath caught in his throat.


The figure was facing away from him, head bowed.


Chapter 6 - Chapter 6: Below