Tonight, I sparked up a truce between light and shadow. Not just any candle—a white one I had carved with runes from the diary, symbols I traced from fragments of my parents' notes. I called it a usual summoning routine, though I am not sure if it was meant to summon or to protect. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps the house did not care which.
The wick ignited with a spark that trembled like a heartbeat. I whispered the words I had written over and over in the margins:
"By shadow, by echo, by blood remembered—reveal what waits in the space between."
The flame shivered, and then, impossibly, it steadied, glowing brighter than it should have. I expected the wax to melt, the flame to flicker with each breath of air—but it did not. It burned steadily, pure, unclaimed by hands, as though the candle itself had become alive.
I watched it, a thunderstorm beneath my ribs, and felt the first subtle pull in the air. The room shifted. Shadows from corners stretched, elongating unnaturally, reaching toward the flame, as if drawn to its life. And the whispers returned. Soft, layered, unintelligible at first—but then clearer, as if responding to the ritual:
"Marisol… daughter of those who answered first… we watch… we wait… we remember."
The candle's light revealed the hallway beyond in a strange, spectral way. The mirror from last night reflected not my own image, but a figure standing behind me—tall, pale, with eyes hollowed by absence. I spun around. Nothing. Only the shadows stretching unnaturally across the floorboards.
I returned my gaze to the candle. Its flame flickered once, and I swear, I saw my parents—not alive, not fully gone—leaning in the firelight, faint and trembling. My chest tightened.
I whispered their names. "Mother? Father?"
The shadows responded. They swirled around the candle, pressing closer, and the room filled with a soft humming—like wind trapped inside glass, or perhaps voices singing just beneath the veil of the living.
I dared to place my hand over the candle. The warmth was immediate, unlike anything a normal flame could give. The wax did not burn me, but it pulsed against my palm like a heartbeat, alive. I felt something stir within me, as though my parents' memories, their voices, and the house's ancient essence had pooled into this one glowing point.
I knelt, holding the diary open beside the flame. The ink began to swirl, words forming without my hand:
"The flame cannot die. Neither can the watchers. Neither can the past. Neither can the inheritance."
My heart raced. The moonlit procedure was working. I could feel it. But the sensation was not comforting. It was a tug at my soul, a pull into shadows I did not fully understand.
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat. When I opened them, the candle flickered—but it did not die. And in its light, I saw more: hands pressed faintly against the walls, faces peering from the edges of mirrors, shadows pooling at the baseboards like liquid ink.
Sudden clarity, but precise, that the ritual had done more than summon or protect. It had awakened something. Something that had waited, patient and hungry, for someone brave—or foolish—enough to call it forth.
The whispering began again, louder now, more insistent, curling through my hearings, humming in my bones:
" Curiosity—blessing wrapped in barbed wire. A gift, yes… but one that bites the hand that unwraps it. Will you follow? Will you answer? Will you remember what was never spoken?"
I shivered. I wanted to run, but the candle's light seemed to anchor me. Its flame was a tether to something greater, something older than the house, older than the whispers, older than my own fleeting life.
I tried to blow it out. I leaned close, pursed my lips, but the flame only steadied. I blew harder. It danced, swirled, and then rose slightly, taller, brighter, unyielding.
I realized then what the diary had meant by inheritance.
Curiosity is a legacy.
The shadows, the mirrors, the whispers—they were all part of it. And now, so was I.
I wrote feverishly in the diary: the candle, the flame that would not die, the shadows that circled, the whispers that spoke in my parents' voices—and voices that were not theirs. The diary trembled beneath my hand as if it, too, were alive, observing, recording.
And then it happened.
A knock—soft at first, deliberate, echoing the rhythm of my parents' heartbeat, or at least how I imagined it—resounded from the hallway. Only, it was not the same door as last time. This came from the very walls, the ceiling, the air itself. A knock that was everywhere and nowhere.
The candle flickered violently. Shadows coiled like serpents. The diary jumped open, and ink bled across the page in wild, jagged lines:
"Do you see now? You have called it forth. You have answered. The flame burns… but it does not forgive."
I tried to stop writing. My hand shook. The candle's warmth pressed against my palm like insistence. The whispering pressed into my ears. And yet, I could not stop.
Somewhere deep, I knew the truth: rituals are not simple acts. They are invitations. They are contracts. And in calling this flame, I had opened a door—a door I might not be able to close.
I want to leave the candle. I want to walk away. But I cannot. My curiosity has me in its grip. My parents' echo calls me forward. The house itself hums with anticipation.
I should end this entry here…
But the flame rises still.
The shadows stretch longer.
And the whispers will not be silenced.
(The diary trembles as I write this. The ink coils like smoke across the page. I hear the walls breathe. I hear my own heartbeat echo in the flame. I know the ritual has begun, and I know—I am no longer merely an observer.)