Eva didn't remember leaving the chapel.
She remembered the eyes.
She remembered the child in the mirror.
She remembered the sound of cracking glass—not from the mirror itself, but from inside her ears. Like something had reached into her skull and whispered hard enough to break her.
Now she stood in front of a building she hadn't seen before.
Not on the map. Not in the town records. Not even in the fog.
It stood slightly apart from the village—tall, sharp-roofed, and humming. Not with electricity, but something older. Like a lullaby no one had sung in decades.
The sign above the door was blank.
She stepped inside.
THE ROOM walls lined in blackened portraits—faces all turned away from the viewer, their features smudged. A grand chandelier overhead, but all the bulbs shattered. In the center: a wooden phonograph playing no record, spinning silently.
Inside, the air was heavy.Wrong.
Eva touched the wall and felt something—breathing.
A man sat in the corner with a cloth bag over his head. Hands tied to his knees. A tape recorder beside him, blinking red.
He spoke before she could.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Eva froze. "Who are you?"
"No name. Just memory. And it's bleeding out."
He lifted his head. She expected to see eyes behind the cloth.
There were none.
Just an indent. As if his face had been erased.
"They come when the hour is still. They feed on what's missing. You lost something too, didn't you?"
Eva didn't answer.
The recorder clicked. She pressed play.
"This message is for her. The one who sees too much. Leave. Burn this place. And if you hear the whispers under water—don't follow them."
The room began to vibrate.
The walls undulated like lungs.
Then—
The chandelier dropped.
Eva dove aside, splinters raining over her.
The phonograph screamed.
Not music.
Not static.
A voice. Wet and close and broken:
"Give it back."
She didn't know what it meant.
But when she looked down—
There was something in her hand.
A child's tooth. Fresh. Still warm.