Lyra kept the key in a velvet pouch near her window, not to guard it, but to remind herself it no longer turned any locks. The Hollow was open now—bared, breathing, alive in a way it hadn't been for generations. And yet, echoes still moved through its halls.
Some nights, the house murmured.
Not in voices meant to haunt or frighten, but like sighs pressed into the wood—memories uncurling gently, seeking only to be heard.
She had begun to write them down.
A book now rested on the corner of her desk, its cover soft with wear, its pages filled with the voices of the Hollow. Names. Dreams. Warnings. Songs. Pieces of lives long devoured by the roots, now given back their place in the world.
It was not a history book.
It was a resurrection.
---
Elias found her there one evening, lit by the dim golden glow of the oil lamp.
"You haven't slept," he said, leaning on the doorway.
Lyra looked up with a smile. "The house talks more at night."
Elias crossed the room, sitting beside her on the floor. "Does it say anything new?"
Lyra ran her fingers over a passage she'd just transcribed: The woman in the mirror is not always a warning. Sometimes she is the one who stayed too long.
"She stayed for us," Lyra murmured. "So we wouldn't have to."
Elias nodded. "And now you stay for them."
---
They spent the next day sealing the final room—the one where Lyra had first heard the piano play on its own. There was no piano now. Only silence and a circle of dust where the amber basin had once stood.
She knelt and pressed her palm into the floor. No surge of heat. No pull of magic. Just cold stone.
"It's done," she said.
And it was.
---
Outside, the estate had begun to soften. Ivy bloomed in new directions, curling upward rather than clawing down. The orchard—once filled with shriveled, bitter fruit—had begun to sprout green again, like it had taken a breath after too many years of holding one in.
Villagers had started leaving small offerings at the gate: tokens of thanks, curiosity, even forgiveness. Someone left a jar of honey. Another, a letter with no name, only the words: The nightmares stopped.
Lyra kept them all.
Not because she needed proof, but because the Hollow deserved to know it had changed.
---
That evening, Elias lit a fire in the hearth and brought in a record player from his old apartment in town. The music echoed through the house—not haunting, not ancient—just a soft melody carried by strings.
They sat in the parlor where shadows once gathered, now filled with warmth and flickering orange light.
"You ever think about leaving?" he asked.
Lyra stared into the fire for a long time before answering. "Sometimes. Then I remember this place doesn't have to trap me anymore."
"You don't feel bound to it?"
She smiled faintly. "No. I feel chosen by it."
---
Outside the window, the wind stirred the vines.
From somewhere far below, in the earth where old things rested, Lyra felt a slow, grateful shift—like a heartbeat that had finally steadied.
The Hollow was no longer hungry.
It was listening.
And she would be its keeper—not of fear or sacrifice, but of memory.
Of peace.