IXORA POVI don’t know what pulled me from sleep.Not a sound. Not a dream. Just… a tightness in my chest. Like someone had reached into my ribs and started twisting, slow and cruel. My breath came shallow, lips parted in confusion. The room was dark, too dark, but my skin felt lit from within, anxious, buzzing, too aware. Like something had shifted. Like I’d missed the moment when the air changed.I sat up, heart skittering. The sheets were tangled around my waist, damp with sweat I didn’t remember shedding. The window was open, letting in a chill that didn’t feel like the usual night air. It felt… thin. Like the veil between things had worn too close.I slid my legs out of bed.Cold floor.Sharp. Unforgiving. Grounding.The air tasted metallic, like rain had tried to fall but changed its mind halfway down. The pendant around my neck burned hotter than usual, a warning maybe, or a nudge from something I couldn’t name. It pulsed faintly against my chest, warm in a way that felt con
FLORA – POVShe found the pendant.I knew she would.There was always something fragile about the way she searched for meaning in objects. Like she thought the past owed her answers. As if memory could be wrapped around a chain and clutched to her chest like safety.She held it like it mattered. Pressed it against her chest like a prayer, like a warning, like the last thread of a life she was so certain still belonged to her.That pendant had weight, yes, but not the kind she imagined.It was never hers.It was never our mother’s.It belonged to something else now. Something deeper. Something hungrier.I placed it carefully, deliberately, where I knew her eyes would land. Then I waited. Just a shadow beyond the bend of the hallway, heart stilled, breath low and slow like smoke curling in a locked room. I didn’t need to be close. I felt it the moment her fingers brushed the stone.That thread between us snapped taut.She doesn’t know it yet. Not completely. But the truth is settling un
IXORA POV I couldn’t sleep again, not with the pendant under my pillow and the echo of her voice still swimming through my head. I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. Every sound the house made felt louder. Every shadow stretched longer.I wanted to believe the footprints were just dirt. Maybe a guard. Maybe Celeste. Maybe anything else.But they weren’t.They weren’t from shoes. They weren’t even whole. They were the kind of prints that smeared as they moved, like whatever walked there had no weight. Or too much.I got up again before the sun. I didn’t light a lamp. I didn’t need one. My body remembered the path too well.The corridor felt colder this time. Even in my sweater, I felt it, something had passed through, and the air hadn’t healed from it.I stood in front of the same wall again. The one with no door. The one I’d touched the night before.And now?Now the warmth was gone.The stone was cold and dry and silent.But the air was different. Still.Still, like it
FLORA POVNo one ever checks the places that feel forgotten.The west wing was closed off long before I learned to walk these halls. They said it was cursed. That a fire once ate through its walls and left only silence in its place. They boarded it up, sealed it shut with rusted nails and cowardice, and told stories about how nothing could survive what burned here.But people always fear the wrong thing.It was never the flames they should have feared. It was what survived them.I move barefoot across the cold stone floor, the dust clinging to my toes like breath from a long-dead ghost. The air here is thicker. Still, but not silent. Something moves beneath it. Something that never left.Ash still lines the edges of the walls, smudged like fingerprints, like soot that remembers. The warmth that lingers in the floor isn’t natural, it's not from firewood or ember. It’s from memory. This place hums with what it used to be. With what it still is.I lower myself to my knees, the stone b
IXORA POVI couldn’t sleep. Again.The air in the house felt heavier these days. Like something ancient was breathing just beneath the walls, too quiet to be heard but loud enough to be felt. Even the wind had lost its rhythm. It came in strange pulses, like broken sobs across the rooftop.I sat up slowly, letting the blanket fall off my shoulders. My skin was cold, but I didn’t reach for warmth. I listened.The whispering had returned.At first I thought it was the house. Old places groaned when no one was awake to hear them. But this wasn’t groaning. This wasn’t wind.It was words.I stood barefoot on the wooden floor. The chill didn’t bother me. My fingers brushed the edges of my robe, tightening it loosely as I stepped into the hallway.The west wing.That side of the house had always been sealed, closed off since the Luna before me died. I never questioned it. Until now.Until Flora.I moved slowly, careful not to let the floorboards creak. The whispers grew louder the closer I
IXORA POVThe letter came in the morning, tucked neatly under the door as if it had always belonged there. At first, I thought it was something Ronan left. Maybe a note, something he couldn’t say out loud. But the paper was thin and aged, its edges fraying like it had been handled too many times. When I picked it up, something in me went still.No name. No seal.Just four words scrawled in shaky ink:"She is not who she seems."My breath caught. I read it again. Then again. The writing wasn’t familiar, not completely. But the tone… the warning... it made something cold move through me.My first thought wasn’t fear. It was clarity. Like a mirror snapping into focus.Flora?Could it be?I folded the letter and slipped it beneath my robe, pressing it close to my skin like the heat might melt some truth out of it. I didn’t go to Ronan. Not because I doubted him , I never could. But because I needed to hold this alone for a moment. To think. To breathe.Downstairs, Celeste was already in