The rattling stopped.
Aria's throat burned from holding her breath, as though even the smallest sound might summon whatever waited beyond the third door. The hallway stretched endlessly on either side, the shadows shifting as if they too were listening.
Her mind clawed at the whisper: She's waiting.
Who was waiting? Pari? Or something wearing her name?
A sudden draft slithered beneath the door, cold and damp, carrying with it the briny scent of seawater—as if the ocean itself seeped through the cracks of this house. She stepped back, heart ricocheting against her ribs. The lighthouse wasn't near enough for the salt to reach this far. Not unless…
Not unless the voice came from there.
The air thickened, pressing against her chest. A low hum began to vibrate through the walls, subtle at first, then rising like the murmur of a thousand unseen mouths. Aria pressed her palms to her ears but it did nothing—the sound was inside her skull, filling her with a dread too vast for words.
And just when she thought she would break, the hum stopped.
Dead silence.
Her trembling gaze lifted.
The door was no longer closed.
***
Aria's breath lodged in her throat. The darkness wasn't just absence—it felt alive, a vastness that knew her name without ever having spoken it. Every instinct screamed to shut the door, to flee back to the safety of her room, but her feet betrayed her. They inched closer, drawn by the gravitational hush of the void.
Then, faintly—like chalk dragged against stone—she heard it.
A scraping.
Not from beyond the door, but beneath the floorboards on which she stood.
She froze. The sound pulsed in rhythm with the old clock's ticking, as though whatever lay below was imitating time itself.
Her eyes darted to the wall across from her, where moonlight cut a pale line across the plaster. And there, etched so faintly she almost thought she'd imagined it, were words scratched into the surface:
"The light keeps secrets the shadows never will."
Before she could move, the door creaked wider by an inch, as though acknowledging that she had read it.
And from the void, a new sound seeped through. Not a whisper. Not a scrape.
A laugh.
Low, fractured, and hollow—yet deliberate.