Below – At the Core
The heart of the house pulsed like a dying star.
The space was vast, domed in roots and whispering threadlight, but there was no floor beneath Larissa's feet. She hovered—suspended in memory, in magic, in something that once had a name but now only screamed.
Lukyan stepped across the boundary, silver knife drawn, blinking against the crimson glow that bathed everything.
He saw her silhouette first: Larissa, bathed in shifting light, spiral on her palm burning like wildfire.
He didn't speak at first. Just watched.
Watched the way the light moved inside her. Watched the way her back trembled like a thread pulled too tight.
Finally: "Larissa."
She didn't look at him.
"You came anyway," she said softly. "Even after everything."
"I couldn't leave you in here."
She turned—slowly, carefully, as if any wrong motion might cause her to vanish.
"I already told you. This part isn't yours."
Lukyan took another step forward. "Then make it mine. Bind me to it. Whatever the house needs, I'll give it."
"No."
Her voice was quiet. Unshakable.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because you want to save me."
"Of course I do—"
"That's not what this is. The house doesn't want a hero, Lukyan. It wants a catalyst."
Behind them, the threads shimmered—and from their glow, Dimitri emerged.
His presence was weightless, unnatural. As though the house was wearing him like a cloak.
"Finally," he said. "We're all here."
Larissa stiffened.
"You brought him here?"
Dimitri laughed—a sound like glass cracking under ice. "Oh, no. He followed his own thread. I just let him through."
"I don't need either of you," she said, stepping back.
"You do," Lukyan said. "Even if you don't want to.
"No," Dimitri corrected. "She doesn't need us. The house does."
The floor split open beneath them—revealing the true heart.
It was a void. A burning eye. A book. A thousand voices screaming in sync.
And it spoke.
"Choose."
Larissa looked at the spiral glowing in her hand.
And for a moment—she saw every choice she could make.
Burn the house.
Bind it.
Become it.
She took a breath.
And stepped forward.
~~~~~
Inside – Beyond the Heart
She passed through the veil of memory like a body falling through water.
There was no pain.
There was clarity.
Everything she'd been was peeled away. Every childhood scream. Every lie told in her mother's voice. Every kiss Lukyan had stolen. Every promise Dimitri had twisted. All of it, stripped from her like old skin.
She stood now in the womb of the house—not metaphorically, but truly. The first room ever imagined. The foundation stone around which all things had been built. This was not architecture.
It was intention.
A woman waited here. The same woman from the vision, the lullaby.
She sat on a throne of ash, her mouth full of broken names.
"You came too soon," the woman said.
"I didn't choose the time."
"You never do. That's the first lie they teach you."
Larissa stepped forward. "Are you the first Queen?"
"No," the woman said. "I'm the one who walked away."
"Then why are you here?"
"To show you what that looks like."
The ash around them shifted, whispering secrets.
"What if I don't want to bind it?" Larissa asked.
"Then the house rots. Slowly. And everyone it remembers dies with it."
"And if I do?"
"You stop being Larissa."
That stopped her.
"I… I don't know how to be anything else."
"Good," the woman said. "Because the house doesn't need who you were. It needs what you are."
Larissa looked down at her hand.
The spiral moved now—not just on her skin, but beneath it. In her blood. In her bones.
And in that moment, she understood.
She could burn the house. Yes.
She could walk away.
But she wouldn't be free of it.
Because the house lived inside her now.
So she made the only choice that would end it.
She stepped into the heart.
And opened her mouth.
Everywhere – At Once
The scream tore the house apart.
But it wasn't a scream of pain.
It was a scream of release.
Every thread snapped.
Every wall cracked.
The rooms began to eat each other—mirror devouring staircase, corridor swallowing attic. Memory fell like ash from the ceilings.
Lukyan was hurled backward by a force he couldn't see. He landed hard, the knife clattering across the floor.
He reached for it—only to find the floor gone.
He tumbled through memory after memory: his childhood, his father's betrayal, the moment he first saw Larissa kneeling beside the Thread Tree, eyes like frost and fire.
Then nothing.
Dimitri stood still, unmoving, as the house consumed itself.
"Let it burn," he whispered. "Let it forget."
But the house did not burn.
It transformed.
It folded in on itself, threads reweaving, roots twisting tighter, memory condensing into one final shape—
Larissa.
Floating.
Changed.Crowned in spiral light, clothed in the house's own skin.
She did not speak.She simply looked at them—at Lukyan, at Dimitri—and then vanished.
The heart collapsed.
And the house was no more.
~~~~~
Days Later – The Edge of the Forest
Smoke still drifted from the crater.
Nothing had grown back. Nothing had moved. The land remained as dead and cracked as if something had crawled out of it and taken the life with it.
Lukyan stood at the edge, hair longer, jaw bruised, hands scarred from the spiral that had once clung to Larissa's palm.
He held a thread in his hand. White. Glowing faintly.
It pulsed when he spoke her name.
"Larissa."
No answer.
Dimitri stood a few feet away, face unreadable. His coat hung in tatters. A black thread coiled around his wrist like a promise he hadn't kept.
"She's still alive," Lukyan said.
Dimitri didn't deny it.
"You saw her too," Lukyan continued. "That… thing she became. That wasn't the end."
"No," Dimitri said. "It was a door."
Lukyan looked at him.
"Then we find her."
"Do we?"
"We have to."
Dimitri tilted his head. "What if she doesn't want to be found?"
Lukyan's expression darkened. "Then we find her anyway."
A wind stirred the ash.
Far beneath the ruined forest, where no human foot had ever walked, the spiral glowed again.
Not dead.
Not dormant.
Waiting.
And far away, in a forgotten city that hadn't yet been named, a little girl opened a book bound in skin.
The pages whispered a name she didn't know was hers.
"Heir."