The candle lay cold and useless in her hand.
Lyra backed toward the desk, the boy's final words echoing in her head: You've opened the house. Now it remembers you.
The room seemed different now. Smaller. The shadows longer. The fire hadn't burned in years, and yet she swore she had felt warmth—his warmth.
Was he a ghost? A memory? Something worse?
She gathered the scattered papers from the desk, skimming letter after letter—each one written by someone named Corwin Vale. A relative, maybe. The name appeared over and over in reference to Elias.
And always in the same fearful tone.
One letter caught her eye. Unlike the rest, it was sealed in a cracked red wax, the imprint long worn away. She pried it open.
> To the next who bears the name Vale,
If you are reading this, the Hollow has chosen you. The boy will come. Do not listen. Do not follow. He belongs to the house now, and the house belongs to him. To unbind him is to awaken what sleeps beneath. Let the Hollow remain hollow, or it will swallow you whole.
Burn this letter.
—C.V.
Lyra didn't burn it.
She folded it and tucked it into her coat pocket, her fingers trembling.
---
She spent the rest of the night on the first floor, too shaken to return upstairs. She slept near the cold hearth in the library, surrounded by ancient books and the scent of wax and dust. The mirror had disappeared again—but that didn't ease her.
At dawn, she explored the east wing.
Rooms she hadn't noticed before now revealed themselves: a locked conservatory blooming with strange red flowers despite the rot, a gallery of portraits that aged and changed if you stared too long, and finally—
—a spiral staircase behind a hidden panel in the dining room wall.
Down it she went.
The air grew heavier with each step, as though pressing down on her chest. Cobwebs clung to her arms. Her flashlight flickered.
At the bottom: a stone corridor, cold and damp, lit faintly by wall sconces that somehow still burned. At the end, a wooden door. Thick. Old. A carved sigil at the center—a circle split in half by a jagged line.
She opened it.
---
The room beyond was circular, domed, lined with chains and mirrors. At the center stood a pedestal—and on it, a single object:
A book.
It was bound in dark leather, etched with ancient runes. Sealed with a black clasp that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.
Lyra stepped closer.
The mirror nearest her fogged over. Then cleared.
Elias was in it.
His eyes were no longer still. They were afraid.
"Don't touch it," he whispered, his voice distorted. "If you open it, it begins again."
Lyra stared at the book.
"I need answers," she said.
Elias looked away. "Then you'll get more than you want."
She reached out.
The clasp snapped open at her touch.
The pages fluttered wildly, as if caught in a storm. Then stilled.
The first page bore a title, scrawled in crimson ink:
THE BOOK OF BINDING
To capture the soul is to silence its scream. To bind the soul is to break it.
Beneath it, a drawing: the sigil from the door, split and burning.
And beneath that—her own name.
Lyra Vale.