The wind had gone still. Elara stood before the gravestone that bore her name, her breath clouding the air like a ghost of its own. The forest pulsed faintly around her, the trees glowing with a sickly red that seemed to come from beneath the bark. Her heartbeat no longer felt like her own it moved in sync with something deeper, older. The world hummed, low and endless, as if the air itself had a pulse.
She took a step back. The ground shifted. For an instant, the trees blurred, and the manor's silhouette flashed before her its black windows reflecting a storm that wasn't there. Then it was gone again, replaced by the forest's skeletal quiet.
Her hands shook. The skin along her wrist flickered, translucent for the briefest moment, revealing veins that glowed the same crimson as the roots underfoot. She stumbled, gasped, and the light vanished.
"Elara."
The voice came from everywhere at once above, behind, within. It was Agnes's voice, but softer now, warped by distance.
"Elara, you must listen."
She spun, searching. "Agnes? Where are you?"
The air in front of her rippled, and for an instant, Agnes's face appeared fragmented, like glass breaking underwater. "The worlds are crossing. You've weakened the Veil."
"I didn't..... "
"You did when you left." Agnes's voice trembled. "The blood knows the way home."
The vision fractured. The manor flickered into being again, closer this time, its great doors yawning open to nothing but fog. A single candle glowed in one of the upper windows.
Elara's body moved before her mind caught up. Her feet sank into the moss, then into stone, then wood. When she looked down, the earth beneath her had turned to the manor's marble floor. The forest was gone.
The chandelier above swayed slightly, though there was no wind. The hall smelled of wet soil and candle wax. The portraits lining the walls changed each time she blinked her mother's face, then Agnes's, then her own, and once, the girl's.
A distant creak echoed through the corridor. She turned toward it. The sound came again a rhythmic tap, like footsteps, but reversed, moving closer yet fading.
Her reflection in the mirror across the hall twitched.
Elara froze. The mirror's surface rippled like liquid mercury. Her reflection tilted its head the wrong way, eyes slightly delayed in motion. Then it smiled.
She stepped back. The reflection didn't.
"Elara."
Her reflection spoke the word, but the sound came from behind her. She whirled, heart pounding. The air bent warped and for a moment, the walls of the manor peeled away, revealing the forest again, the red glow leaking through.
She was standing between them now. Half in one world, half in the other.
The floor groaned underfoot, turning from wood to roots to nothing. She clutched at a nearby banister it burned cold, like ice and she realized her hand was phasing through it.
The girl's laughter rang out. High, soft, musical. It echoed off both realities.
"Where are you?" Elara called, her voice cracking.
"Here," the girl whispered. "And there."
The manor folded inward. Its staircase twisted like bone. Ravens poured from the ceiling beams, flying through the walls as if they were made of smoke. Elara staggered back, the air too heavy to breathe.
And then, quiet.
The girl stood at the end of the hall. Half of her face was lit by a warm, natural light; the other half was gray, hollow, lifeless. One foot rested on the marble floor, the other on the red earth of the forest.
"You broke the boundary," she said softly. "Now it can see you."
"Who?"
"The one that sleeps beneath."
Elara's stomach turned. "What is it?"
The girl's eyes lifted toward the ceiling or perhaps the sky beyond it. "It was the first to bleed. The curse isn't a thing that was made. It's what was left behind."
As she spoke, the two worlds began to merge faster. The walls cracked, bleeding light. The air shimmered with flickering fragments of sound Agnes praying, a raven's cry, her own voice shouting from somewhere far away.
"Elara," Agnes's voice came again, faint but desperate. "Don't let it take your name."
Elara clutched her head. "What does that mean?!"
But the girl only smiled sadly, knowingly. "Names bind. And yours is already carved."
The gravestone flashed before her eyes, the letters burning red: E. Veyne.
The sound of wings filled the air, deafening. Shadows poured from the walls, crawling across the floor like living ink. The girl's form began to fade, the line between her and the reflection in the mirror collapsing.
"Elara…" The child's voice fractured into echoes. "If you want to live, follow the sound of your heart. Not the one you hear the one you feel."
Then she was gone.
The manor screamed. Every door flew open at once. Light and shadow collided, swirling upward in a storm that shattered the windows without breaking the glass.
Elara fell to her knees, hands pressed over her ears. She could hear everything now the whispers of the dead, Agnes crying, her mother singing. Each voice overlapped, forming a single word that made her blood run cold.
"Remember."
The light snapped out.
When she opened her eyes again, she was standing outside the manor. The forest surrounded her but not the same one. The sky above her glowed red, the trees whispering her name. The manor loomed behind, half-sinking into the ground, its upper floors dissolving into fog.
And in the distance, standing on the horizon between both worlds, she saw it: a shape rising from the earth, vast and formless, its surface glistening like wet stone.
The heartbeat returned, slow and thunderous, shaking the ground beneath her.
Then, faintly, a whisper so close it brushed her ear.
"You can't wake what you've already become."
Elara turned but there was no one there. Only her reflection in a nearby pool of dark water, smiling back at her with eyes that no longer belonged to her.