Gravemarsh didn't greet Evelyn with the silence she remembered—it greeted her with the noise beneath it. A static, whisper-thin thrum that pulsed in the soil. The kind of noise you didn't hear so much as feel—behind your teeth, behind your ribs. It was the kind of sound grief made when it had been waiting too long for you to come back.
She stood at the edge of the crooked road, the same one she had walked months ago, the one that had led her here the first time. Now, she came not as a woman seeking answers, but as a storm dragging a reckoning behind her.
Gravemarsh was where it had all started. Not her pain—that was older. But the forgetting. The rewiring. The reaping. Whatever force lived here had made her into something hollow once, and she had come back to refill herself with the truth, no matter how jagged it was.
The house stood still, waiting, watching.
She stepped inside.
The air didn't move. No spiders scurried, no moths flapped. Even the dust held its breath.
Evelyn walked the corridor, and with each step, she saw remnants. A teacup split in half. A red thread wound around a nail. Names scratched into wood like someone had tried to remember and failed.
Isla. Maribel. Therin.
They came to her now—not like ghosts, but like memories peeled from the bone. They were real, and they were angry.
At the end of the hallway, she found the parlor. It hadn't changed. The couch still slouched to one side. The fireplace sat dead and black, and the mirror above it reflected nothing. Evelyn stared into it anyway.
"Show me," she said.
The mirror rippled.
She saw herself—no older than seventeen, her hair longer, her eyes dull. She sat at this very fireplace, lips sewn shut with red ribbon.
Behind her, something stirred. Not Lenore.
A shape, shadow-cloaked and bending inward like light refused to touch it, loomed in the corner of the mirror. It reached for the girl-Evelyn. Whispered something.
The real Evelyn shook. "I remember you."
The mirror cracked.
You weren't supposed to.
The voice didn't echo. It folded.
"You tried to make me forget. But I kept the hurt. I kept it all."
You shouldn't have.
"I was meant to."
The mirror shattered. Shards fell, but never hit the floor. They spun in the air, catching glimpses of every girl who had ever been broken inside these walls.
Lenore's voice surfaced, quiet, reverent. "They're all here."
Evelyn turned slowly. The room shifted. A circle of figures stood around her now—girls with stitched mouths, girls with hollow eyes, girls who looked just like her. Some were crying. Some were screaming. All were waiting.
The house pulsed.
A door opened by itself. Not one Evelyn remembered. Behind it, only black.
She stepped through.
The black gave way to gray. She was underground. A basement that hummed. Not electric—organic. Walls that pulsed. Roots that breathed.
In the center, a bone altar. And on it—a book.
She approached.
The book bore no title. Its pages were thin and red. Each was a name. Each a life. And on the final page:
Evelyn Wren.
Her fingers hovered above it.
The presence behind her returned.
We kept you safe.
"No. You kept me quiet."
You loved too loudly. You remembered too much. We softened you, so you wouldn't shatter.
"And in doing so, you broke me."
The shape shifted. From shadow to shape, from shape to him.
Evelyn's breath caught.
He had brown eyes. Warm hands. A smile that curled more on one side.
"Theron," she said. The name tasted like blood and bells.
You buried him in your marrow.
"I loved him."
And we took him from you. So you could survive.
Evelyn stepped forward. The illusion flickered. The warmth of his eyes became the cold of the shadow beneath it.
"You don't get to wear his face."
She grabbed the bone book. Flames erupted around it. The names inside screamed. Not in pain—in release.
She dropped it to the floor. It split, cracked, and bled light.
The shape screamed too. Not just one voice—all the voices it had stolen, overlapping and frantic.
The girls behind her stepped forward. Hands outstretched. Threads of red ribbon spilled from their palms.
Evelyn took the longest one and tied it around her wrist.
"We're not your pieces anymore."
The shadows recoiled.
"We're the whole story."
The room trembled. The altar cracked. The roots burned from within. Evelyn lifted her hand and whispered the names aloud—every name she had seen, every name she had felt.
They became real.
The girls smiled.
The house above groaned.
Then collapsed.
She stood in the ruins, breathless, beneath the night sky.
The presence was gone.
Only her own voice remained.
"I remember."
Lenore exhaled inside her.
"Then we're free."
Evelyn walked from the rubble, into the dark.
The town didn't look back.
But the stars burned like names etched in fire.
And she knew none of them would be forgotten again.
End of Chapter 24 .