The manor loomed. Up close, it was worse. The air hung thick and heavy, saturated with the pungent stench of wet rot and old ozone. The grand double doors were splintered; one hung precariously on a single, massive iron hinge, lolling open like a dislocated jaw.
Elara paused on the threshold. Her hand came to rest on the cold, worm-eaten wood, feeling the decay beneath her palm. She pulled a small flashlight from her pack, clicking it on. The beam was a frail, shaking thing that cut a tentative path into the swallowing darkness.
She took a breath and stepped inside.
The foyer was a cathedral of decay. As Elara's light danced across the vast space, it revealed a grand staircase sweeping upward into impenetrable shadow. On the marble floor below, a monstrous crystal chandelier lay shattered, its remnants glittering like a thousand dead eyes. Tattered portraits lined the walls, the faces of the Blackwood ancestors long since peeled away by moisture and time, leaving behind nothing but vague, menacing smudges of paint.
Her footsteps echoed, the sound unnervingly loud in the profound silence.
"Liam?" she whispered.
Her voice was instantly swallowed by the sheer scale of the house. The only answer was the steady, rhythmic drip... drip... drip... of water falling somewhere deep within the bowels of the manor.
She moved forward, her light scanning the floor. A layer of dust as thick as fallen snow covered everything, but it wasn't undisturbed. In the powder, she found marks—not footprints, but wavy, intricate patterns, as if someone had dragged the tines of a fork through the dust. Following one of these trails to the base of a wall, she watched a cluster of large, black beetles with iridescent shells scuttle into a crack. She shuddered, pulling her leather jacket tighter against her frame.
Entering the adjoining main hall, she found a space even more cavernous, dominated by a massive, dead fireplace. Furniture sat shrouded in white sheets, resembling a silent congregation of ghosts. The flashlight beam caught a single portrait on the far wall that remained intact. It depicted a severe, beautiful woman with dark, piercing eyes and a cruel, thin smile: Matilda Blackwood. At her feet, a small, dark-haired boy held a crow-shaped idol. He was not smiling.
A floorboard creaked directly behind her.
Elara spun around, the flashlight beam slicing through the dark. The light landed on a man.
Jonah Blackwood stood at the very edge of the beam, appearing as if he had been born from the shadows themselves. He was tall and gaunt, his face a landscape of sharp angles and deep hollows. A long, ragged scar tracked from his temple down to his jaw, and unkempt brown hair fell over haunted eyes. He wore a patched cloak that seemed to blend into the manor's gloom. In one bandaged hand, he clutched the same crow idol from the painting.
"Get out," he said, his voice low, gravelly, and laced with threat.
Elara's heart hammered against her ribs, but she stood her ground, her grip tightening on the flashlight. "I'm looking for my brother."
"There is no one here but the dead and the damned," Jonah replied. "You have five seconds to turn around and walk out that door. Four."
"His name is Liam Thorn. He was researching this place. I have a letter—"
"Three," Jonah interrupted, his voice rising and cracking with a frantic edge. "You think you are the first? The curious, the greedy, the desperate? They all come. They all think they can unravel the knot. They all become part of the tapestry. Two."
He took a step forward, his eyes wild and desperate. It wasn't just a scare tactic; it was a plea. "Please. You don't understand what you're doing."
"Then make me understand!" Elara challenged.
"One."
The temperature plummeted instantly. Their breath began to fog thickly in the air, and the constant dripping sound stopped as if frozen in time. From the wreckage of the shattered chandelier, a single, pristine shard of crystal began to tremble. It rose into the air, defying gravity.
Jonah's eyes widened in pure terror. All his previous menace vanished. "Too late," he whispered.
The crystal shard hissed through the air. It wasn't aimed at Elara, but at Jonah. He threw himself aside just in time, and the shard shattered against the wall where his head had been a second before.
A low hum filled the hall, vibrating up through the floorboards. On the floor, the dust began to shift, the intricate patterns swirling and reforming into new, aggressive shapes—like grasping thorns.
From the darkness of the grand staircase, a figure emerged.
It was the Shadowkeeper. The entity had no distinct form, appearing only as a pillar of shifting, liquid darkness that seemed to drink the very light from Elara's flashlight. Where a face should have been, emotions flickered and melted in rapid succession—rage, sorrow, mockery. A soft, chittering whisper emanated from the thing, the sound of a thousand cockroach legs skittering over dry leaves.
As it took a step toward them, the air warped, the room itself seeming to lengthen and contract. Jonah scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of grim resignation. He looked from the advancing shadow to Elara, who stood frozen in terror.
"Well?" Jonah said. "You wanted to stay. Welcome to Blackwood."