Velaria POVThe sound didn’t stop.It lingered beneath the quiet like something breathing in the dark, faint and uneven, not loud enough to be obvious but too present to be ignored, and the more I stood there in front of that door, the more it pressed against my mind, pulling at something deeper than curiosity, something instinctive, something that made my chest tighten in a way I couldn’t explain.This is nothing.It has to be nothing.My hand hovered over the handle for a moment, my fingers trembling slightly despite the logic I kept repeating to myself, because there was no way—no possible way—that something truly wrong could exist beneath this house, beneath his house, beneath the place where I had been welcomed, cared for, accepted like I belonged.There is no way.Slowly, I turned the handle.It didn’t move.Locked.Of course it was locked.That should have been the end of it.That should have been enough for me to turn around, go back upstairs, crawl back into bed, and forget t
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