Entry 9: January 5th
If you're reading this, I hope you've made it farther than I ever thought I would.
Far enough to understand what I didn't, atleast not then.
I spent the whole day trying to be normal. Go to class. Pretend the world isn't folding in on itself. But it's like wearing someone else's skin now. Ill-fitting. Wrong.
The pendant won't let me forget.
Neither will the boy from the courtyard. I saw him again.
This time in the library.
It wasn't random I was down in the basement archives, where no one ever goes except students writing theses or professors hiding from their responsibilities. I went there thinking maybe I could find something about the Thorne family. Or the Hollow Court. Or hell, even the symbol crescent and rose somewhere in the dusty piles of forgotten history.
Instead, I found him.
Or maybe he found me.
He didn't speak right away. Just stood behind one of the columns near the old law section, watching. I should've been scared, but I wasn't. I think that's what scares me the most how calm I felt.
His voice was softer this time.
"The blood doesn't sleep forever, Eira."
I didn't ask how he knew my name. I didn't need to.
He stepped into the light just a little. Enough for me to see his face. Young, maybe nineteen like me. But his eyes were wrong. They held too many years. Too much silence.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He tilted his head.
"A shadow. Like you."
And then he was gone again. Just like that. No sound, no exit. Only the faint scent of smoke and something older—rosewood? Earth after rain?
I should've left. I should've reported it. But instead I stayed. Kept digging. Not in the history shelves but in the genealogy files. Something told me to search local estates. Families with old roots.
That's when I found it.
A faded ledger with gold-leaf initials: T.H.
Thorne House.
No dates on the cover, but inside pages and pages of lineage, marriage, disappearance, death. It went back over 300 years.
And there she was.
Liraine Thorne.
My mother. Listed under "Line broken by silence."
That exact phrase.
It chilled me. Because it wasn't just poetic, it was recorded. Like a sentence passed down.
But then… something even stranger.
Under her name, a new line had been written in red ink. A single word.
"Revoked?"
With a question mark.
Like someone was waiting to see if the silence had truly lasted.
Or if it had finally… been broken.
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Entry 10: January 5th
I'm still shaken from what I found in the archives tonight.
The ledger with my mother's name Liraine Thorne and that haunting phrase: "Line broken by silence." It's like someone deliberately sealed her story off, then left the door cracked, daring whoever followed to pry it open.
And that red ink word: "Revoked?"
Who would revoke a bloodline? Who would have the power to erase someone from the House? Or was it a question... like a threat that her silence might not be enough?
I'm starting to understand that the House isn't just a family. It's a system. A court. A network of alliances, betrayals, and rules written in blood centuries old.
I have to know more.
But I'm scared, too.
Every step I take deeper feels like sinking into quicksand.
Why didn't my mother tell me any of this? Was she protecting me? Or hiding from something worse?
And the boy he's still out there. The shadow who calls me by name. Who says the blood doesn't sleep.
Why is he watching me? Is he friend or foe?
I tried to find him again tonight went back to the archives after hours, but the place was empty. No sign of him. No scent, no shadow.
Just the cold.
And the weight of the pendant heavy against my skin.
I'm going to need allies.
If I'm going to survive this if I'm going to find out what the House remembers I can't do it alone.
But who can I trust when everyone is hiding something?
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Entry 11: January 5th
There are moments when the world splits into two. The one I lived in before… and this one.
Today was full of those moments.
After what happened in the archives, I couldn't stay still. I skipped my afternoon lecture and went straight to the public records office. Most of it is digitized now, and I had to fake being a grad student to get access to the old estate files, but I didn't care. I'm done waiting for things to reveal themselves.
If the House isn't going to speak, I'll make it.
I searched for Thorne just the name first. Over two dozen matches came up. Most irrelevant. But one caught my eye.
Thorne Hollow. A private estate registered in 1792, marked as "abandoned" in 2003... the year I turned eight.
The year my mother burned all the family photos.
The location made my stomach twist: east of the city, near the old woods that used to be part of a much larger manor district. It's barely marked on any modern maps, but it's there half-faded roads, overgrown paths, and a symbol I recognized etched in the estate's seal.
Crescent and rose.
Same as the pendant.
There's more. In the property notes, it lists the owner as "Liraine Thorne, daughter of the House." Last updated before she died.
I printed everything I could. It's sitting next to me now, in a folder I've labeled in big black letters: INHERITANCE. I don't know why I chose that word. It just felt right.
Because something is being passed to me. Something old and buried. And maybe dangerous.
Still no sign of the boy. I've started calling him Ash in my head. I don't know why maybe it's the way he disappears like smoke, or how he makes me feel like something burned down inside him long ago. Maybe I'll ask him next time I see him. If there is a next time.
Tonight, I couldn't go home. My apartment felt too thin, like the walls couldn't hold me anymore. So I went walking.
It's snowing again hard, and steady. The kind that makes everything sound quieter than it should be.
I ended up at the cemetery.
It's not as dramatic as it sounds. I walk there sometimes. It's old and peaceful and full of stories carved in stone. And now, I know my mother is there. Section D, row twelve.
I haven't visited since her funeral.
Her grave is simple. No epitaph. Just her name and two dates.
Liraine Thorne
1967 — 2007
But someone else had been there.
Fresh footprints in the snow. A single white rose, frost clinging to the petals. And something tucked beneath the flower.
A note.
"You were brave to leave. She will be braver still to return."
No signature. No blood. Just that sentence, hand-written in fine cursive.
Was it for my mother? Or for me?
I don't know what it means yet. But I'm starting to think my mother didn't leave the House out of fear. Maybe it was defiance. Maybe she wanted to cut the bloodline off to end the cycle.
And maybe, in some twisted way, she failed.
Because here I am.
Wearing the pendant.
Following the trail.
Hearing the House whisper again.
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Entry 12: January 6th
I shouldn't have gone. Not alone.
But every page I turn, every buried record I find, leads back to the same place. Thorne Hollow. It's the root. The forgotten house. The place they tried to erase from every map and every tongue.
So I went.
I borrowed my friend Sara's car. Told her I was heading out of town for the day to clear my head. She offered to come with me, said I looked pale and paranoid and hadn't slept... but I couldn't risk it. Not yet, I'm not even sure what's mine to carry and what might poison anyone who comes too close.
I drove east, past the industrial districts and out toward the woods. The roads narrowed, cracked, and finally faded into little more than frostbitten dirt and gnarled tree roots. My phone lost signal ten minutes before I reached the gate.
Yes... there was still a gate.
Iron, rusted, tall enough to make me feel like a trespasser. Vines had wrapped around the bars like they were trying to pull it underground. But the emblem was still there. Faded, but intact.
The crescent moon above the bloodrose.
Just like the one etched into the back of my pendant.
I didn't even need to open it. When I reached out, the gate creaked, shuddered, and swung inward like it had been waiting.
The path was narrow and half-choked by thorns and brittle branches, but I followed it. The snow muffled everything no birds, no wind, just the sound of my breath and the crunch of my boots.
It took fifteen minutes of walking before I saw it.
Thorne Hollow.
The estate sits half-buried in snow and shadow. Three stories tall, black-stone and slate-roofed, with windows like dark eyes and a front door painted blood-red, flaked and faded. The house is… strange. It looks ancient, but not ruined. Like time passed around it, but didn't quite settle in.
I couldn't bring myself to knock. Instead, I walked the perimeter, half-expecting someone or something to be watching.
There's a broken sundial in the garden, its shadow stuck pointing north. A fountain frozen in time, its statues cracked. The scent of rosewood was faint but familiar... like what Ash left behind in the library.
And then… the most unexpected thing.
A lantern, glowing in the second-floor window.
Flickering. Alive.
There's no power out here. No caretaker. No signs of habitation. But someone... or something is in there.
I didn't go inside. Not yet. Not alone.
But I left something behind.
I placed my pendant, the one my mother left.
I don't know why. It felt right. Like leaving a question on a doorstep. Like challenging the House to answer.
Maybe it will.
On the drive back, I didn't look in the rearview mirror. I didn't want to see if anything or anyone was watching from that glowing window.
But I couldn't stop thinking about the words on the letter.
"You were brave to leave. She will be braver still to return."
I did return.
And I think… they know now.
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Entry 13: January 6th
I haven't taken my eyes off the pendant since I got home. I retrieved it.
It was still on the front step of Thorne Hollow, untouched. But the strange thing is, it felt… different when I picked it up. Cold, as always, but humming, like a heartbeat caught inside the metal.
And when I turned it over, I noticed something new.
A fine scratch beneath the crest. So faint I almost missed it.
One word.
Return.
I swear it wasn't there before. I've held that pendant in my hand more times than I can count. I've studied every detail, even dreamed about it. But now that word sits there, carved like a whisper, like a decision has already been made for me.
I haven't told anyone. Not Cara. Not the faculty advisor who keeps asking why I missed our last meeting. Not even this diary until now.
But something changed when I left that pendant behind. It was like offering blood into a quiet mouth. And the Hollow answered.
Now the question is... what did I invite in?