Part I: The Sound of Scratching
Summary: After Ash disappears, Isolde returns to the manor and begins hearing scratching beneath the floorboards of her room. Ms. Winter warns her not to listen. But when the sounds become whispers—children calling her name—Isolde begins to unravel. She discovers an old nursery hidden behind a sealed wall. What's inside it isn't just memory… it's hunger.
---
Echo (from Chapter Three):
> "You'll have to choose soon."
---
That night, the silence in Graymoor was worse than the noise.
Isolde sat curled beneath the window in her room, the brass key still clutched in her hand. It had cooled since the chapel—but it wasn't dead. Every few minutes, she swore she felt it twitch, like something trapped inside trying to turn.
The candlelight flickered low.
The fire had gone out hours ago, but she hadn't dared relight it.
Because of the sound.
It began faintly. Just after midnight.
A low, uneven drag across the floorboards. At first, she thought it was the wind. Then an animal.
But then—
The scratching came.
From beneath her feet.
Soft at first. Then deliberate. Rhythmic.
She stood slowly, her bare feet cold on the wood, and pressed her ear to the floor.
It stopped.
She waited.
Nothing.
Then—
A voice. A child's voice.
Muffled. Singing.
> "Roses cry in red and white,
Seven sleep alone tonight…"
Her heart stopped.
She scrambled back, standing, scanning the room for something—anything—that could explain it. The mirror over her dresser was veiled now, covered in black silk she'd nailed in place. The windows were locked. Her door, bolted.
Still the voice came.
And now it spoke.
> "Isolde…"
"We remember you."
She covered her ears.
It didn't help.
---
Morning.
The scratching had stopped just before dawn.
Isolde emerged from her room, wild-eyed, trembling. She found Ms. Winter already seated in the library, a dark green ledger open in front of her, her hands folded neatly.
"You heard it," Isolde said.
Winter didn't look up. "Yes."
"You knew they were there."
"I hoped they would stay asleep."
"Who are they?"
Winter finally looked up.
"They are what's left."
"Of what?"
Winter closed the ledger. "The nursery."
Isolde blinked. "There's no nursery here."
"There was. It was sealed after the Hollow-Faced One first came."
"Show me."
Winter's jaw tightened. "No."
"I need to see it."
"No, you want to. And that difference is what keeps you alive."
Isolde crossed the room, furious. "You said I'm the Veil. The last gate. Then I have a right to know what I'm guarding."
Winter stood.
And her next words were quiet. Final.
"You are not guarding them, Isolde."
"You're guarding us."
---
Night Two.
The scratching returned.
This time—closer.
This time—louder.
Ms. Winter had locked her in from the outside. "For your own safety," she said.
Isolde didn't care.
She dragged her writing desk aside. Tore up the rug.
And found it.
A seam in the wood—barely visible.
She fetched the fireplace poker, wedged it into the crack, and pried.
With a groan, the floor lifted.
And beneath it—
A crawlspace.
The smell hit her first.
Sweet. Rancid. Like spoiled milk and roses left too long.
And beneath that—
laughter.
She descended.
---
The crawlspace stretched farther than it should have. It shouldn't have connected to any room. And yet… it led her to a narrow stone hall.
A door waited at the end. Small. Painted in flaking white.
Above it, carved in iron:
> Lambs Rest
She opened it.
And found the nursery.
Old rocking chairs. A cracked crib. Dolls with rotted eyes.
And in the far corner—
Tiny handprints.
Pressed into the dust.
They were still warm.
And then the voices came again.
Soft.
Pleading.
> "Isolde… you forgot us."
"You left us here…"
She turned—
And saw them.
Seven shadows.
Children.
Some missing eyes. Some mouths sewn shut.
One with no face at all.
They stepped forward in perfect silence.
Not rushing. Not threatening.
Just reaching—
Hands outstretched.
"Help us," one rasped.
"Feed us," said another.
The third only stared with hollow sockets and grinned.
She backed away, but the door slammed shut behind her.
> "The Hollow-Faced One watches," they whispered.
"And we are so hungry…"
---
Part II: The Feast of the Forgotten
Summary: Isolde must play the children's deadly game to escape the nursery. They offer her a test called "The Feast," which mimics an old family ritual. If she plays, she might learn a way to stop them. If she refuses, they'll feed on her instead. But when she makes the wrong move, one child slips through—a shadow-child who enters the waking manor.
---
Echo (from Part I):
> "The Hollow-Faced One watches," they whispered.
"And we are so hungry…"
---
The door had sealed behind her.
Not locked—gone.
The stone wall was seamless now, smooth and mocking, as though it had never been open.
The nursery was colder.
The shadows of the children had not advanced, but their presence deepened. They pressed in from all corners like fog with shape—tattered gowns, broken teeth, fingers too long for their hands. Their voices overlapped as they circled her in slow, disjointed paths.
> "Feed us..."
"Like before..."
"The feast…"
Isolde stepped back until her heel struck the base of a rocking chair. It creaked forward, then backward, all on its own.
"What feast?" she asked, voice ragged.
The tallest shadow stepped forward. A boy—maybe ten—his face mostly missing, peeled back into a smile carved in rot.
He pointed to the center of the room, where a table now sat.
It hadn't been there before.
Small. Wooden. Set for eight.
Plates. Forks. Cups.
Seven already occupied.
By nothing.
But steam curled from the food as if the invisible guests were mid-bite.
The eighth chair waited at the head of the table.
For her.
> "Sit and remember."
"Play the game, little veil..."
"I don't remember," she said, shaking her head. "I've never been here."
> "But you dreamed it."
"And dreams are enough."
The smell of the food turned her stomach.
It wasn't meat.
It wasn't… anything.
Just wrong.
Still, her feet moved.
She sat.
At once, the room brightened—not with light, but with presence. The shadow-children leaned in, barely visible, forming a half-ring around the table.
One placed a silver cloche before her.
A single bell chimed.
> "First course: TRUTH."
She lifted the lid.
Inside was a page.
Her handwriting.
From a diary she'd burned after her mother's death.
> I saw him again. The man in the woods. He doesn't age. He watches me from the birch trees. I told no one. I don't want to share him.
The page curled in her fingers.
The children giggled.
> "You liked being watched…"
The next cloche appeared.
> "Second course: DENIAL."
She hesitated.
Then lifted it.
Inside: a tooth. Small. Still bloody.
Her own.
She remembered now.
The night she tore it out during a sleepwalk.
She never told anyone. Never explained the scratches on her gums.
Her mouth ached.
> "You denied us, sister…"
"But we still chewed."
The third cloche came before she was ready.
> "Final course: CHOICE."
Inside: two keys.
One gold. Ornate.
One black. Rusted.
The children whispered:
> "One frees us."
"One frees you."
"You can't choose both…"
Her hand hovered.
The gold one gleamed.
The black one pulsed.
Something inside her screamed: Choose neither.
But before she could act—
One of the children lunged.
The smallest. A girl with no eyes.
She grabbed the black key and vanished through the wall like smoke.
Gone.
The others screamed.
> "You've broken it—"
"She wasn't ready—"
"One of us is LOOSE—!"
The table erupted.
The room spun.
Isolde tried to stand, but the floor opened beneath her chair—
And she fell.
Through darkness.
Through the floor.
Through something thinner than sleep.
---
She landed in her bedroom.
Gasping. Clawing at the carpet.
The door swung open.
Ms. Winter stood there, pale as bone.
"You let one through," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Behind her, down the hallway—
A small figure ran giggling into the shadows.
---
Part III: The Hollow Child
Summary: The spirit-child that escaped the nursery begins to corrupt the halls of Graymoor. Mirrors shatter. Clocks stop. Objects rearrange themselves. Isolde must navigate an increasingly unstable house while the child taunts her—always just out of reach. With Ms. Winter's reluctant help, she devises a trap to contain it… but the bait must be something the child remembers: her.
---
Echo (from Part II):
> A small figure ran giggling into the shadows.
---
It started with the mirrors.
The veils she'd placed—every cloth, every nail—were torn down by morning. Slashed, ripped, unraveled with precision. As if done not in anger, but in play.
Then the clocks.
All of them.
Stopped.
Same moment.
3:33 a.m.
The hour the Hollow-Faced One had whispered from the chapel.
Ms. Winter roamed the halls with lantern and salt, muttering words Isolde didn't understand—Latin maybe, or older. She didn't seem afraid. Only disappointed.
"I told you not to play with them," she said.
"She called to me."
"She was trapped. For good reason."
"She was a child," Isolde snapped. "She wanted help."
"No," Winter said, wheeling around. "She wanted out. You gave her that."
---
Rooms rearranged.
Doors that once led to the kitchen now opened to staircases that twisted into closets. Her bedroom appeared on the second floor, then the third. The house's layout had begun to fracture—sliding between dimensions like a deck of shuffled cards.
The Hollow Child made herself known in small ways.
Laughter in the pantry.
A stuffed rabbit left on Isolde's pillow—one that hadn't existed since she was four.
A mirror placed at the foot of her bed, fogged from the inside.
And words—
Carved into the glass.
> "Let's play another game."
---
By evening, Ms. Winter had locked every room on the east side of the manor. She chalked symbols across thresholds, tied red thread around the door handles.
"Why does she want me?" Isolde asked.
Winter sighed. "She doesn't want you. She wants what you remember. What you tried to forget. Your blood tastes like secrets."
"Then help me trap her."
Winter gave her a long look. Then, at last:
"We'll need three things: a mirror, your heartbeat… and your shadow."
---
The trap was simple in concept.
Terrible in execution.
Isolde would act as bait.
They placed the mirror in the ballroom—one of the few rooms still behaving normally. High windows. Broken chandelier. Empty.
Winter lit a circle of black candles around it, muttering her phrases, laying salt lines in geometric precision. "She'll come through here. The mirror is her tether."
Isolde sat cross-legged at the center.
Her heart was pounding.
Winter pressed a blade to her palm—just enough to draw blood.
Let it drip into the salt.
"She'll smell you," Winter said. "She'll think it's feeding time."
Then Winter stepped back into the shadows.
And waited.
---
The mirror fogged.
Then cleared.
No reflection.
Just the hallway.
Then a figure.
Small. Barefoot. Grinning.
She walked with that strange lurch all children have when they think they're playing a joke.
Isolde held perfectly still.
The child reached the mirror.
Tilted her head.
And placed her palm flat to the glass.
> "You're prettier than I remember," she whispered.
Then she stepped through the mirror like water.
The salt hissed.
The candles flared.
And Ms. Winter surged forward with the thread and the binding charm—
But too late.
The child smiled.
And split.
Her form shimmered and broke into dozens of thin, black insects—like smoke made of limbs—and crawled into the cracks of the manor.
Gone.
---
Winter fell to her knees.
Isolde stared in horror.
"She's inside the house now," Winter said, voice hollow. "Every corner. Every echo."
"She tricked us."
Winter looked up.
"No. She remembered you. That made her stronger."
"Then what do we do?"
Winter stood slowly.
"You find Ashcroft."
"Why?"
"Because only someone who's been broken by the Veil knows how to re-seal it."
---
Part IV: A Shadow in the Mirror
Summary: Isolde enters the mirror Ash once passed through—risking her sanity to reach him in the place between. There, reality bends. Echoes of her childhood memories mix with nightmares. The Hollow Child follows. Isolde finds Ash—but not alone. The Hoods are watching him, waiting for her to reach him. And one of them speaks her name.
---
Echo (from Part III):
> "Because only someone who's been broken by the Veil knows how to re-seal it."
---
She waited until midnight.
That's when the mirror stopped showing her reflection.
It showed him instead.
Ash—motionless—seated in a room she'd never seen before. The walls were fluid. The ceiling rippled like the inside of a lake. Candles burned upside-down. And the floor was nothing but mist.
The Veil.
She stood before the mirror with trembling fingers, the warmth of the brass key in her palm.
> "You said not to open doors," she whispered.
> "But you are one, aren't you?"
She took a deep breath.
And stepped forward.
---
The glass didn't shatter.
It dissolved.
Like breath against breath.
She fell forward—and gravity abandoned her.
There was no weight.
No time.
Only shift.
Then—
A soft landing.
Not on ground, not on floor, but something firm enough to move.
She stood slowly.
She was in a hallway of mirrors—each one humming faintly, showing images that flickered: her face, her mother's voice, the woods on fire, the Hollow-Faced One watching a crib.
None of them were real.
But all of them had happened.
---
She walked.
There was no sound except her breathing.
And then—
Footsteps behind her.
Tiny. Barefoot. Wet.
She didn't turn.
She knew.
> "You cheated," the Hollow Child whispered.
> "You weren't supposed to leave the house."
The mirrors began to crack as she passed.
Not break—crack, like ice under weight.
Isolde walked faster.
The footsteps followed.
> "You left us down there," the girl hissed.
> "You let me out. That means I belong to you now."
> "Feed me."
Isolde turned sharply into a fork in the corridor—and found herself back in the same place. Again. And again.
A loop.
The Veil's trap.
> "You can't find him without me."
The girl appeared in the reflection beside her.
Not in front.
In the mirror's version of the hallway.
She pressed her face to the glass.
It warped around her like jelly.
> "I'll help you find Ashcroft," she said.
"If you let me wear you."
Isolde backed away.
"You want my body."
> "You're already halfway hollow."
She spun—
And slammed her fist into the mirror.
It cracked—then shattered.
The world blinked.
The hallway vanished.
---
Ash knelt before her.
Breathing hard. Eyes wild.
They were on the Threshold.
No floor. No sky. Just fog and bones beneath them, like the ribs of a dead god.
He caught her hands.
"You shouldn't be here," he gasped. "They see you now."
"I needed to find you."
He looked past her.
And Isolde turned.
Seven Hoods.
Standing in a circle.
Watching.
Not moving.
Not whispering.
Just… waiting.
Then one stepped forward.
Slow.
Deliberate.
And spoke her name.
> "Isolde."
The voice was Ash's.
But it came from the Hood.
Ash pulled her close, shielding her with his body.
"That's not me," he said. "That's the one I left behind."
************************