Elara awoke in the early dusk, though she could've sworn it was morning when she collapsed into bed. The manor's sense of time had always been slippery, but now it seemed to dance deliberately just out of reach, like a memory on the edge of recall.
The pendant throbbed faintly against her collarbone — warm now, like a heartbeat too close to her own. She sat up groggily, the robe of the Third Elara slipping from one shoulder, and blinked blearily at the fireplace. The embers were still glowing, though she hadn't lit them. Something had left her a steaming cup of something herbal on the nightstand.
A note was tucked beneath the handle in looping ink.
> "You'll need your strength for the second trial. Try not to scream this time. — V."
She drank it anyway.
---
The corridor outside her door had changed again. Gone were the rusted candelabras and crooked paintings. Now the walls wore smooth blackwood paneling, lit by sconces made of antlers. It looked like a hunting lodge built by someone who hunted more than just deer.
The East Wing.
Eryx waited at the end of the hallway, already dressed in charcoal and storm. He looked older today — not aged, but like he'd remembered something painful and decided to wear it as armor.
"Elara," he greeted.
"Elaborate," she replied. "Trial number two? Are we talking trivia night or more ancestral beatdowns?"
He handed her a scroll.
She unrolled it, eyes narrowing.
"What the hell is the Revenant Pact?"
---
"The Second Trial," Eryx explained as they walked, "isn't held in the manor."
"That's comforting. Do I get a field trip sticker?"
"It's older than the house. A rite held in a place where the dead don't rest — not because they refuse, but because they're bound. You must go there. Make the pact. Return."
Elara frowned at the scroll again. It bore a map — the ink drawn in what smelled suspiciously like grave moss — leading into the Black Hollow Woods, just beyond the manor's eastern edge.
Balthazar caught up to them, tail high and eyes glowing. "Did he tell you the part where you have to enter alone?"
"Oh come on."
"And unarmed," Eryx added.
"Of course."
"And fasting."
Elara blinked. "He didn't mention that one."
"I wanted to see your face," Balthazar grinned.
"You're all horrible."
---
By noon (or what the manor claimed was noon), Elara stood at the edge of the Black Hollow Woods, dressed in a coat too thin for the wind and boots too heavy for silence. The pendant pulsed under her collar. The scroll was tucked inside a leather pouch, which the house had kindly "provided" by pushing it off a shelf onto her head.
She turned to Eryx, Valeria, and Balthazar. "Any last advice?"
Valeria offered her a silver thread. "Tie this around your wrist. If it breaks, you're too far gone to save."
"That's comforting."
Eryx handed her a small silver bell. "Only ring this if you need to call something older than the pact. And hope it doesn't answer."
"I'm walking into ghost-infested woods alone to sign a deal with... what exactly?"
They exchanged glances.
Balthazar finally said, "We call them the Bound. Spirits too powerful to pass on. Once kings, queens, monsters, martyrs. They grant favors. But only to those they see as... kin."
"And if they don't?"
"You'll know. Just... make sure they don't see fear."
"Great. I'll just tape over that part of my face."
---
The woods swallowed her whole.
The trees were tall, their limbs twisted into shapes that hinted at hands and horns and hollowed mouths. No birds sang. No leaves rustled. Even her boots didn't crunch.
She walked.
And walked.
Hours passed, or none at all. The path twisted inward like a spiral, and somewhere along the curve, the air changed.
It grew... intelligent.
The fog rolled in.
A shadow moved beside her, but when she turned, there was only her own silhouette, elongated and breathing.
She reached the clearing marked on the scroll.
And found the circle.
---
Twelve stones stood in a ring. Each bore a sigil older than language. Some pulsed faintly. Others bled.
In the center, a slab. Upon it — a quill made of bone, a bowl of shadow, and a page that shimmered in air instead of lying still.
A voice, deep and layered with time, spoke from nowhere.
> "Who comes to the Bound?"
Elara stepped forward. "Elara Valeblood."
Another voice, this one higher, melodic and sad:
> "Whose blood stains your name?"
"Mine. And the one before me."
A third voice, whispering like silk in water:
> "Do you come seeking power, or remembrance?"
She hesitated.
"Neither," she said. "I came because the house opened a door. And I'm tired of being a question mark in someone else's story."
Silence followed.
Then — laughter.
Dozens of them.
Some human.
Some not.
> "She speaks truth," said one.
> "And not without teeth," said another.
> "Let the pact begin," said the third.
---
The page settled on the altar.
The bone quill twitched.
The bowl of shadow rippled.
> "One truth. One offering. One pact."
Elara picked up the quill.
It didn't feel like bone.
It felt like memory.
She didn't hesitate.
> "Truth," she said aloud. "I was born from grief. I was raised in silence. But I refuse to vanish like a footnote in a haunted house."
The page shimmered.
> "Offering?" the voices asked.
She reached into her coat and withdrew a lock of hair she'd saved from childhood — something her mother had tied with a red ribbon. She hadn't known why she'd kept it.
Now she did.
She dropped it into the bowl.
The shadows swallowed it.
> "Pact?" they asked.
She pressed the quill to her palm.
Wrote her name in red.
Not Graves.
Not Valeblood.
Just Elara.
---
The circle pulsed.
The stones began to glow.
A figure emerged.
Formless at first, but condensing — into a tall woman in a mourning gown stitched from funeral veils, her eyes hollow and mouth lined with teeth like pearls.
> "You have made the pact," the Revenant said. "The house may feed from your line. And in return... it shall protect what remains."
Elara stood firm. "What does that mean?"
The Revenant stepped closer.
"You cannot escape what made you. But now, what made you cannot consume you."
The pendant flared bright.
The stones sang.
And just like that —
Elara was standing at the manor's gates again.
---
They were waiting for her.
Valeria first. Arms crossed, brows raised.
"You returned whole. Disappointing."
Eryx's eyes searched hers. "What did they say?"
"They laughed."
"Good."
Balthazar sniffed her boots. "She didn't even get devoured. I had money on devoured."
Elara exhaled.
Then fell into the grass.
"I hate magic."
---
That night, the manor threw a dinner.
It was less a celebration and more a ritual — a formal acknowledgment of her survival. Ghosts drifted in and out of the great hall, hovering over silver platters of nothing, raising goblets filled with history. A violin played itself in the corner. Someone had animated the chandelier into a swaying, overly affectionate mimic.
Valeria clinked a knife against a wineglass and cleared her throat.
"Elara of the Blood, She Who Walked the Hollow, She Who Returned Without Screaming—"
"I did scream once," Elara muttered.
"—is hereby acknowledged by the Bound as a Living Heir. Let it be known: the house has a voice again."
Cheers, spectral and otherwise.
Balthazar climbed onto the table and dipped a paw into Elara's soup.
"To trauma!"
Everyone, inexplicably, echoed: "To trauma!"
---
Later, long past the laughter, Elara stood at the window of her chambers, watching the moon reflect in a pond that hadn't been there yesterday.
The pendant was silent.
The journal — the one in the Chronicle Room — now had three new pages.
Written in her own hand.
She hadn't gone back to the room.
Hadn't touched a pen.
And yet it recorded everything.
A living record.
She whispered, "What happens next?"
The pendant warmed.
A whisper floated through the curtains.
> "Now we begin the calling."