## Chapter One: The Stain of Gold
The air in the grand hallway of Blackwood Manor didn't just feel old; it felt heavy, like walking through chest-deep water. To a normal person, the house was merely a decaying relic—dust motes dancing in shafts of afternoon light, velvet curtains rotting on their rods, and the smell of stagnant time. But to Calla Vance, the hallway was a riot of screaming, visceral color.
She clutched her specialized extraction kit to her chest, her palms slick against the cold metal. There, near the curve of the grand mahogany staircase, was the Echo.
It was a "High-Intensity Loop," a shimmering, translucent blur of deep amber and gold. It took the form of two figures—a man and a woman—locked in a frantic, joyful dance that had happened decades ago. The joy radiating from the Echo was so bright it made Calla's teeth ache. It was beautiful, yes, but in the world of emotional physics, beauty was a biohazard.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Calla gasped, spinning around. Her boots squeaked on the hardwood. Standing in the shadows of the gallery was a man who looked like he had been carved out of grey stone. He was handsome in a way that felt unfinished—sharp, architectural cheekbones, deep-set eyes the color of a winter sea, and a mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to form a smile.
This was Elias Thorne, the master of the manor. He was the man the papers called "The Leaking Architect."
"It's a Level Four," Calla said, her voice trembling as she regained her breath. "Mr. Thorne, you shouldn't be standing this close. A joy-echo of this magnitude is addictive. It'll pull the remaining warmth right out of your skin to feed its loop."
Elias took a step closer to the shimmering golden figures. He reached out a hand, his long, elegant fingers passing through the light like smoke. He felt nothing. No warmth, no tingle of the dance, no spark of the memory. "I don't feel anything, Miss Vance. That is exactly why I hired a Remover. The house is full of my family's life, and I am... empty. I want it scrubbed. I want to live in a house that is as quiet as I am."
Calla looked at him with a mix of professional focus and a sudden, sharp pity. She knew the medical diagnosis: *Emotional Hemorrhage.* Every time Elias felt something powerful in this house, his soul didn't stay inside him; it bled into the walls. He was becoming a "Blank," a hollow vessel, while the house was becoming the "Person."
"If I scrub this," Calla warned, stepping toward the golden light, "that joy is gone forever. It doesn't go back into you. It goes into *me*. I am the filter. I carry the weight so the room doesn't have to. You'll never remember the feeling of this dance again."
"Do it," Elias said. His voice was a flat, tonal desert.
Calla took a deep breath, centered her weight, and stepped into the center of the golden light.
The moment her skin touched the Echo, the dusty hallway vanished.
*Suddenly, she wasn't Calla Vance, a girl with a heavy kit and a mortgage. She was a woman in a silk dress. She felt the rough callouses of a man's hand on her waist—Elias's father? No, Elias's grandfather. She smelled expensive brandy and wild jasmine. Her heart leapt with a sudden, violent burst of love—a love so pure it felt like a physical weight in her lungs. She laughed, but the laughter came from the Echo, not her own throat.*
Then, the "Pull" began.
Calla's body jerked. This was the part they didn't tell you about in the brochures for the Academy. The gold mist began to flow up her arms, turning her veins into glowing threads of light. It burned. It was the heat of a thousand suns condensed into her marrow. She was a sponge for emotions she hadn't earned, a thief of a dead woman's happiness.
Across from her, Elias watched with a haunting intensity. For a split second, as the joy left the hallway and surged into Calla, his eyes flickered. A tiny, microscopic spark of recognition. He wasn't feeling the joy, but he was feeling the *vacuum* it left behind.
"Stop," he whispered, though he didn't move to help.
But a Remover never stopped until the air was grey. Calla gritted her teeth, her vision tunneling, until the last spark of gold vanished from the air and settled deep in her chest.
The hallway snapped back into reality. The light was gone. The warmth was gone. Calla slumped against the banister, gasping for air. Her skin was humming. She felt like she wanted to dance, to cry, and to kiss a stranger all at once. The Echo was inside her now, a borrowed soul.
Elias walked over to her. He didn't offer a hand. He simply looked at the space where the dance had been. "Is it gone?"
"Yes," Calla choked out, wiping a stray tear from her eye—a tear that belonged to his grandmother. "The hallway is clean."
"Good," Elias said, turning on his heel. "There are twelve more rooms. My study is next. It's... red. I think it's anger. I'd like that one gone by dinner."
---
### The Red Room
Calla followed him, her legs feeling like lead. As they entered the study, the atmosphere shifted instantly. If the hallway had been a summer afternoon, the study was a slaughterhouse.
The walls were stained with a pulsing, jagged crimson. This wasn't a loop of a dance; it was a loop of a scream. The red Echo was centered around an oak desk, vibrating with such force that the pens on the table rattled.
"This isn't just anger," Calla whispered, her hand moving to the neutralizing injector in her kit. "This is betrayal. Mr. Thorne, this is dangerous. A Red Echo can cause physical bruising if the Remover isn't careful."
Elias stood in the center of the red storm, his face impassive. "My father found out his partner had stolen the designs for the National Library in this room. He died of a stroke three hours later. This 'stain' has been screaming for twenty years. I can't think. I can't design. I hear his rage in my sleep."
Calla prepared a sedative for herself. She knew that absorbing anger was the hardest part of the job. It didn't just stay in your chest; it went to your head. It made you want to break things. It made you want to break people.
"I need you to leave the room for this one," she said firmly.
"No," Elias replied. "I want to watch it die."
Calla didn't argue. She stepped into the red.
It hit her like a physical blow to the stomach. The air turned into shards of glass. She felt a phantom pain in her chest, the ghost of a heart failing. She saw the image of a blue-print being torn in half. She felt the urge to roar at the ceiling.
She gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles turning white. The red mist began to climb her throat, choking her. She began the extraction, but this time, the Echo fought back. It didn't want to be forgotten. It wanted to be heard.
"Calla!"
She heard her name, but it felt miles away. Her eyes rolled back as the rage of a dead man flooded her system. She felt a sudden, irrational hatred for the man standing in the corner—Elias. Why was he so cold? Why didn't he care?
She lunged toward him, not as herself, but as the Echo. She grabbed the lapels of his expensive coat, her eyes glowing a dull, angry crimson. "Why don't you feel anything?" she screamed, the voice a terrifying mix of her own and a man's gravelly roar. "He died for you! He built this for you!"
Elias didn't flinch. He didn't even move. He simply looked down at her, and for the first time, his icy blue eyes softened into something resembling grief. He reached up, his hands hovering near her face.
"Because," he whispered, his voice finally cracking, "he took all the feeling with him when he left."
The honesty of his words acted like a vacuum. The Red Echo, sensing a true void, rushed out of Calla and tried to leap back into Elias. But he was a "Blank"—he couldn't hold it. The rage hit him and bounced off, dissipating into a fine, harmless mist.
Calla collapsed. This time, Elias caught her.
As she lay in his arms, the remnants of the gold joy from the hallway and the red rage from the study swirled together inside her. She looked up at him, and through the haze of borrowed emotions, she felt something that was entirely her own.
A spark. A connection. A terrifying realization that she was becoming the only person in the world who truly knew what was missing inside him.
"You're shaking," Elias noted, his voice returning to its flat, calm state. But he didn't let her go.
"It's the Echoes," Calla lied, her heart racing. "They... they don't like being alone."
"Neither do I," Elias said, though he said it as if he were describing a weather report. "But I suppose that's what I paid you to fix."
Calla looked around the room. The red was gone. The study was grey, silent, and dead. She had done her job. She had made him "peaceful." But as she looked at his empty eyes, she realized that "peace" was just another word for "nothing."
She had twelve more rooms to go. By the time she was done, Elias Thorne would be a ghost in a living body, and she would be carrying a hundred years of his family's ghosts inside her own heart.