The night air was thick with mist, curling around Blackthorne's towers like fingers. Lila woke with a start to whispers in her room. The shadows moved—slow, deliberate. And then she saw it: spectral fingers, pale and elongated, crawling across the walls and ceiling, reaching toward her.
Her scream caught in her throat. Ezra and Clara appeared just in time, holding candles, their hands shaking. "It's testing you," Ezra whispered. "It doesn't just touch you physically—it touches your mind. It wants secrets."
Lila felt herself tremble, memories she had long buried surfacing, fears twisting into tangible shapes. The hand moved with intelligence, curling, extending, almost mocking her hesitation.
They tried luring it to a mirror, a tactic found in Elowen's journals. The hand recoiled, flickering like smoke, leaving shadowy fingers crawling along the floor. Lila noticed that her reflection now showed slightly elongated fingers, curling unnaturally, hinting that the hand was probing through her very soul.
Objects flew off shelves, candlesticks clattering to the floor. The whispers grew louder, almost shouting: "Reveal. Confess. Submit." Lila's mind screamed for her to resist, to hold on, but the pressure was suffocating.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the hand withdrew partially, leaving faint scratches along the floorboards, forming symbols she had seen in the old journals. She realized the hand could be temporarily distracted or trapped—but at a great cost.