Elias tried to stabilize his breathing, leaning against the heavy mahogany wardrobe. The silence in the master bedroom was relative; it was constantly underscored by the low, subterranean hum that he had first noticed on the landing. He told himself it was the old house settling, the wind rattling a loose pane, anything but a spectral whisper. But the metallic, acrid smell lingered, a scent that tasted of ancient malice.
He moved to the small writing desk, illuminating the room with a flickering oil lamp he had found earlier. The warm, unsteady light chased away the deepest shadows, but only seemed to make the existing ones more aggressive. He laid the locket on the wooden surface. The silver was still impossibly cold, contrasting sharply with the warmth radiating from the lamp.
He picked up a letter opener and began to scrape gently at the hinge, determined to unlock the trinket that seemed to be the epicenter of the manor's dread. "Aperi Oculum Noctis." Open the Eye of Night. The inscription mocked his efforts. He applied more pressure, and just as he felt the thin metal of the opener might bend, the locket didn't open—it split.
It didn't swing on a hinge; the circular shape fractured down the middle, separating into two perfect, crescent halves. Inside, there was no miniature portrait or lock of hair, which he had half-expected. Instead, the interior was lined with a material that looked like dried, cracked obsidian, glistening faintly. Embedded in the centre of the lining was a single, unsettling object: a small, tightly coiled hair. It wasn't the grey of his great-aunt's hair, nor the brown of his own. It was a pale, almost translucent white, as fine as spider silk, yet possessing an alarming tensile strength.
As soon as the locket split, the low, steady hum in the house intensified, rising in pitch to a dizzying, resonant whine that vibrated through the floorboards and up into Elias's teeth. The single oil lamp, which had been burning steadily, suddenly flared an intense, blinding white before the flame choked itself and died, plunging the room into absolute darkness.
Elias gasped, the silver halves of the locket tumbling from his numb fingers.
And then, he heard the footsteps.
They were slow, deliberate, and undeniably heavy. They weren't coming from the grand staircase; they were directly overhead, in the sealed, inaccessible attic. Thump… Drag… Thump… Drag… The sound was not of someone walking, but of something enormous, shifting and pulling a great weight across the dusty floorboards, directly above his head.
He scrabbled on the desk for his flashlight, his hands trembling so violently he could barely operate the switch. When the beam finally cut through the black, it landed on the locket, resting on the floor.
But it was no longer open. The two halves had seamlessly fused back together. And the almond-shaped eye engraved on its surface—that cold, unblinking eye—was now looking directly at him, and it was no longer tarnished silver. It was moist, black, and reflecting the flashlight's beam with an uncanny, liquid sheen. The eye of night was open, and it was watching