The Manor Is Breathing Again
It begins with a creak in the floorboards Theda hasn't heard in months.
Not a haunting.
A sigh.
As if the house itself has loosened its laces.
Rooms that had been locked tight are open now.
Mirrors stay still.
Windows unwarp their views.
Even the air smells different—less like memory, more like rain.
She walks the halls alone in the early morning, fingers brushing the walls, like reading Braille from the bones of the past.
The manor is no longer resisting her.
It is rewriting itself.
And it's leaving her breadcrumbs to follow.
---
The New Room Was Never There Before
Past the east gallery, where once only cold brick stood, there's a door.
It's small, rounded like a fairy tale, painted with peeling white and sky-blue stripes.
Theda frowns.
She's walked this hallway a hundred times. It wasn't here.
But today it is.
So she opens it.
Inside is a nursery.
Soft light.
Mobiles made of pressed glass.
A rocking horse carved from blackwood.
A crib untouched by dust.
Everything inside pristine.
And in the center, a velvet chair.
On it rests a single object:
A music box in the shape of a heart.
---
She Doesn't Touch It Yet
Theda steps carefully. She can feel the old magic here — not Mara's volatile spellwork, but something older. Deeper.
The box glows faintly at her approach, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Etched on the underside: one word.
> Irlenne
Theda freezes.
This room wasn't Mara's.
This was built for someone else.
A girl who never arrived.
Or who was remade so many times, she forgot who she was supposed to be.
Theda cradles the music box carefully, winded by a strange ache she can't name.
She turns the key.
The tune is haunting. Sweet. Familiar.
A lullaby Mara used to hum when she thought no one was listening.
---
Later, She Brings It to Irlenne
They sit in the greenhouse, where new vines grow across shattered glass.
Theda places the music box in Irlenne's lap.
"I think it was meant for you," she says.
Irlenne turns the box over, fingers trembling.
"How did you find this?"
"The manor gave it to me."
Irlenne opens it.
The melody plays.
She begins to cry.
"I used to hum this," she whispers. "When I was six. Before I knew what envy sounded like in another girl's mouth."
Theda doesn't say anything.
She just holds her hand.
---
Lucien Joins Them at Dusk
He looks tired. But not burdened.
"I keep thinking the house will trap us again," he says. "Like we've imagined this peace."
"It's real," Theda replies. "But so is the rebuilding."
Irlenne glances at them both.
"I want to do something with the manor."
Lucien raises an eyebrow.
"Like what? Sell it? Burn it again?"
"No," she says. "I want to make it a sanctuary. For girls like us. For people who've been rewritten."
Theda exhales slowly.
And smiles.
"You think a cursed house can become a home?"
Irlenne meets her gaze.
"I think anything can."
---
The House Listens
That night, the mirrors shimmer faintly—not with illusions, but with images of what could be.
A classroom.
A garden.
A library where no one is punished for what they read.
The manor is changing.
Because they stayed.
Because they survived.
And because someone—at last—chose to love what was real, not what was reflected.
---