House of Eyes

The house hadn’t creaked this much since she was little.

Dominique moved through the upstairs hallway like a ghost, bare feet silent against polished hardwood floors. It was just after midnight. The air was dense with late-summer humidity, sticky and slow, clinging to her skin like sweat she hadn’t earned.

She had barely slept in days.

Between streams, false flags, and the Fox’s cryptic messages, her mind was fraying like silk under too much strain. She told herself she was in control. But control was a currency. And the exchange rate was brutal.

Tonight, she wasn’t hunting the Fox online.

Tonight, she was going back to the beginning.

To her childhood attic.

To the place her therapist once called “the nest.”

It was the one place no one else ever entered—not her mother, not even the maids. Just dust, old trunks, and memories she didn’t trust. That made it the perfect hiding place.

Or the perfect origin point.

She gripped the antique brass knob and pushed the attic door open with a groan. The scent hit her instantly—mothballs, cedarwood, and old perfume. The air was thick with forgotten time.

Her flashlight beam sliced through the dark.

Stacks of boxes. Faded coats on wooden racks. Dolls with missing eyes and gowns yellowed with age. A cracked mirror covered in gauze.

And in the far corner: the trunk.

Not just any trunk. His.

Her grandfather’s, supposedly. The one she wasn’t allowed to touch growing up. The one her mother said held “things better left buried.”

But Dominique didn’t care about family warnings anymore. Warnings didn’t stop the Fox.

She dropped to her knees, heart hammering, and brushed off the dust. Her fingers trembled as she unlatched the metal clasps and lifted the lid.

Inside?

Photos.

Stacks and stacks of them. Polaroids. Film reels. Typed transcripts with names she didn’t recognize.

But one thing chilled her blood:

The recurring symbol.

On every corner of every photo was a barely visible watermark—an eye, stylized and inked in violet. The same eye she had seen once before.

On the Fox’s encrypted profile.

She picked up a photo at random and turned it to the light. The edges were scorched. A girl in leather heels stood in what looked like a cathedral—smirking, holding a whip, surrounded by masked men kneeling at her feet.

Dominique’s throat went dry.

The girl…

It wasn’t her.

But it looked like her.

Hair twisted in a high ponytail. Cheekbones sharp. Lipstick blood-red. Same eyes. Same mole under the right eye.

She turned the photo over.

A single word was scrawled on the back in fountain pen ink.

Domina.

Her pulse roared in her ears. She grabbed another—this time a group shot. The same girl, now surrounded by others in masks. One wore a carved fox mask made of porcelain, the kind used in old carnivals.

She blinked hard.

That mask...

She had seen it before.

On her private stream two months ago. The masked subscriber who never spoke, never tipped, only watched.

Always watching.

Always there.

Dominique staggered back from the trunk, clutching the photo like a weapon. This wasn’t just a stalker. It wasn’t even about her. This was generational. Ritualistic.

Inherited.

Blood for blood. Identity for identity.

The Fox wasn’t trying to destroy her.

He was trying to rebuild her into someone he had already lost.

She stayed in the attic until morning, curled up in an old velvet blanket, the photo clutched to her chest like a cursed relic. Her dreams were warped and fragmented—girls in masks, voices calling her Domina, whispers of "you were chosen."

And when she woke?

There was a message on her phone.

No name. Just a video.

Dominique tapped play.

Static.

Then her bedroom. The one she was in now. The one upstairs.

And the final frame?

Her sleeping face from last night.

Then black.

A single sentence appeared across the screen:

The House of Eyes never sleeps.

Dominique didn’t remember falling asleep.

She only remembered the weight of the photograph.

When she woke—her cheek pressed against musty velvet, a thin beam of morning light slicing through a broken windowpane—it was still in her hand. Her fingers had curled around the corners in sleep, crumpling them slightly. Her heart beat slower now, heavier. As if the attic itself was pressing down on her chest with invisible hands.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and stared at the boxes once more.

How long had these been here?

How many years had this history been hidden behind her own bloodline, behind her mother’s cold silences, behind that carefully constructed world of charity luncheons and designer lies?

And why did the girl in the photo look so much like her?

Was it just lighting, or lineage?

Or was it something far more intentional?

Her eyes flicked to the corner of the attic where a cracked porcelain mask lay half-hidden beneath an old satin slip. She moved to it slowly, dragging her knees across the wood until she reached the pale, foxlike face. Lifting it carefully, she turned it over in her hands.

Hairline fractures ran from the edges of the eye holes. One ear was chipped.

But the most disturbing part?

Inside the mask, scrawled in faded ink like a signature:

For D.

Her breath caught.

D… as in Dominique? Domica? Domina?

She wasn’t sure which truth frightened her more.

Suddenly, a rustle below. A door slamming. Footsteps.

Her heart leapt.

She grabbed the mask and stuffed the photograph down her bra before dousing the flashlight and crawling to the attic door. She cracked it open an inch, holding her breath.

Downstairs, her mother was arguing on the phone.

“—Don’t you dare bring that name up to me. I erased her. I buried her! If that old trunk was opened, you know what happens next. And she’s not strong enough to handle it. She’s too much like—”

The voice dropped to a whisper. Murmured curses. A slammed drawer.

Dominique closed the attic door softly and leaned her forehead against it, swallowing a scream.

Too much like who?

The puzzle was snapping together. Pieces she never knew existed were suddenly slotting into place with cruel symmetry. That photo. That mask. The videos. The whispered word: Domina.

She’d thought Domica was just a role. A rebellion. A fantasy she shaped into her own armor.

But what if she wasn’t the first?

What if the persona she had created… wasn’t hers at all?

Later that evening, Dominique sat curled in her bed, the attic’s dust still clinging to her skin. She hadn’t showered. She hadn’t spoken. Her phone buzzed, but she didn’t check it—until the screen lit up with a contact not saved in her phone.

A single letter:

F

And the message:

“Did you find her mask? It suits you.”

She dropped the phone as if it burned.

Because he knew. He had been watching. Or worse—he had been here.

Her fingers reached for the mask, now sitting on her dresser like a relic from another life. She stared at its smooth, broken face. Then slowly, deliberately, she lifted it and slid it on.

It fit.

Too well.

And for the briefest moment, as her breathing slowed inside the porcelain hollow, she swore she heard a voice that wasn’t hers echo from deep within the mask:

“Welcome back.”