Novels by Wakoo

It wasn’t the wind this time. It was the silence after.A silence so vast, so complete, it felt as though the estate had been cut out from the world. No echoes. No footsteps. Not even the creak of old beams settling above their heads. Just stillness.Yvette lay on her side in Elise’s bed—what was once Elise’s, before the fire and the hauntings and the things buried beneath the walls. The old canopy above her had begun to unravel at the edges, lace unraveling into fine threads like spider silk.Cara hadn’t spoken since the ritual.Her body was healing. Skin soft, bruises fading. No burns, no external signs of what had happened when Elias passed through her and reached for Yvette. But her mind... her eyes had stayed strange. Clouded. Not like fog—like static. As if she were watching too many realities at once.Yvette reached for the girl’s hand now, fingers gently brushing hers. Cold. But not lifeless.Tristan had gone quiet too. He hadn’t slept in two nights. When Yvette asked him earl

The wind didn’t come back the next morning.That was what made it worse.It was too still. Too heavy. Like something was waiting just beyond the reach of breath, crouched behind the veil of fog that hadn't lifted since dawn. The trees didn’t rustle. No birds sang. Even the creek nearby had quieted, as though the water knew better than to stir.Yvette sat at the windowsill in the study Elise once used, her hand closed tightly around the ring. It was warm again. Not hot—just alive. Just enough to remind her that something old and dangerous pulsed within it. Something that remembered.She could feel Cara’s breathing before she heard her footsteps. The child didn’t walk like a child anymore. She moved with precision now, like someone who had been trained to stay silent. And when she stepped into the room, her eyes glinted with that terrible gold that came and went like lightning behind clouds.“You didn’t sleep,” Cara said, not as a question.“No,” Yvette replied, watching her. “You didn’

The wind howled all night, not like a storm but like a warning. As if the forest around the estate remembered something it shouldn’t. As if the earth itself regretted what it had given up.Yvette barely slept.The ring—reborn, reformed—sat on the bedside table, humming so faintly she could feel it in her bones but not hear it. Like a distant lullaby, too low to decipher but too present to ignore.By dawn, she was already dressed.Not for mourning.For war.---Cara was at the kitchen table, legs swinging, still in her nightgown but with eyes wide open. Awake in a way no child should be.“You felt it too,” Yvette said.Cara nodded.“He’s not hiding anymore. The well told him something. Or you did.”Yvette swallowed. “It called me ‘little flame.’”“That was Elise.”“How can you be sure?”“Because he calls you something else. He calls you… ‘vessel.’”---Tristan was already outside, pacing the property with a device Yvette didn’t recognize—half old-world compass, half something ancient a

The air was still. Not quiet—still. Like the earth itself was holding its breath.Yvette sat on the porch of the old estate, her knees drawn to her chest, a blanket draped around her shoulders. The morning fog hadn’t lifted, though hours had passed since the mirror shattered in her hands. Since she’d crawled out of something that had no floor, no ceiling, no name.The ring still lay on the ground by the front door—cracked, blackened. Useless now.But a symbol, maybe.Of what had been broken.Inside, Tristan moved through the house like a man searching for something already stolen. He hadn’t spoken more than a few words since she came back. He just checked the mirrors. The door locks. The windows. Over and over.Not for safety.For signs.Of Elias.Of the Network.Of whatever came back with them.And then there was Cara.Yvette turned, glancing through the broken front window toward the child curled on the living room couch. She was asleep again, her hand clutching the remnants of a ri

The gravel crunched beneath the tires as the car wound up the road, the familiar sharp turns and unspoken dread settling deeper with every mile. Fog pressed thick against the windshield, curling like fingers across the glass, obscuring what lay ahead—though Yvette already knew.They were going home.Or what was left of it.The ancestral estate sat just beyond the tree line, shrouded in ivy and decay, as if time itself had tried to bury it. The windows stared out like hollowed eyes. The front gate hung from one rusted hinge, and the path that once gleamed white with crushed stone now looked like a scar leading into the woods.No one spoke as Tristan killed the engine. Cara, nestled between them, stirred but didn’t wake.“She’s been dreaming the whole way,” Yvette murmured. “Smiling.”“She hasn’t smiled like that since the mirror came back,” Tristan said darkly. “That’s not comfort. That’s invitation.”Yvette stared at the house. Her throat closed around old dust and deeper memories. “I

The song ended in silence that didn’t feel like peace.Yvette stood frozen in the doorway, her breath caught in her throat. Cara’s fingers still hovered over the piano keys, unmoving, as though something unseen held her there—like a marionette whose strings had not yet been cut.The mirror stood behind her.Whole.Undisturbed.Wrong.Yvette didn’t remember putting it back. She remembered shattering it. She remembered the sound of glass falling like rain, the cold bite of its magic fading from the room. But there it stood, pristine and cruel, its surface too still, too dark—as if it reflected not the world behind but something else entirely.“Cara?” Yvette’s voice came out barely above a whisper.The girl flinched. Her hands dropped into her lap as though she had only just noticed them. Slowly, she turned her head toward Yvette.Her eyes were not her own.They were too wide. Too bright. Lit from within.Then, just like that, the light was gone.“Yve?” Cara blinked, confused. “What… why