Entry 14: January 6th
I can't sleep. I don't think I even want to.
The air in my apartment feels... wrong. Like something followed me back. Or maybe I brought something with me. It's subtle, but I notice it now... shadows that cling too long, the way my reflection lags half a second behind, the faint scent of smoke lingering in corners I haven't touched.
Ash hasn't appeared. Not since the library. But I feel him. Like a tether stretched thin between us. Watching. Waiting.
The word Return won't leave my mind. It's not a command, not exactly. It feels more like… prophecy.
I've been researching again... obsessively. I found an obscure forum thread about forgotten noble families and private courts in Europe that migrated underground when monarchies collapsed. One user mentioned blood-sealed lineages, curses passed through matrilineal descent, old houses where silence was both law and punishment.
One comment chilled me:
"Some bloodlines cannot be ended. Only paused."
Paused.
Is that what I am?
The pause before something ancient continues?
I looked up the family motto from the Thorne family. It took hours to track down. But I found it in a dusty digital archive from a university in Vienna.
"Custodes Sanguinis, Vox In Silencio."
Keepers of the Blood. A voice in the silence.
It doesn't make complete sense yet, but I think I'm starting to see the shape of what I was born into.
And the shape of what my mother tried to escape.
I should leave town. I know that.
But something inside me is shifting. I don't want to run. I want to understand.
Even if it ruins me.
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Entry 15: January 7th
Ash came back.
Not in a dream. Not in a whisper. In flesh and silence.
It was just after sunset. I was in my apartment, lights off, pacing. The pendant was still around my neck, but the word "Return" had begun to fade. Or blur. Almost like it was sinking into the metal.
Then there was a knock at the window.
Third floor.
I should've screamed. Called someone. But I didn't. I just… opened it.
Ash was crouched on the ledge like he belonged there. No coat, no breath fogging in the air, snowflakes dusting his shoulders like they didn't melt.
"You're changing," he said. Like it was a greeting.
I asked him what he meant. He didn't answer.
Instead, he stepped inside, eyes fixed on the pendant.
"I left it for them to see," I told him. "And they answered."
He nodded slowly.
"They know you're awake now. And they won't wait long."
I felt like a child again, like the night I woke up from a nightmare and knew something was in the dark, but my mother wouldn't come. Ash didn't comfort me. He didn't explain anything. Just stood in the corner like a shadow peeled away from the wall.
"You need to go back," he said.
"Why me?"
His eyes flickered. Pain? Pity?
"Because the line spoke again through you. And once a voice breaks the silence, it can't be silenced the same way twice."
He left through the window. Not a goodbye. Just a vanishing.
And now I'm sitting here, trembling, trying to decide whether I'm ready to return.
Thorne Hollow isn't just a place.
It's a threshold.
And crossing it again might mean becoming something I can't ever walk away from.
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Entry 16: January 8th
I didn't go to class. Didn't answer texts. I packed a bag.
Not much. Just clothes, water, flashlight, the old printed documents, this journal, and the pendant. I didn't even tell Cara. It wouldn't be fair.
I took the train as far as I could, then walked. The snow had melted just enough to turn the forest path to mud, but the trail still knew me. The vines had moved again, thinner now, pulled back like the Hollow was exhaling.
The gate was already open.
The house… looked different.
Larger. Or maybe I was smaller.
I pushed the front door. It creaked open without force.
Inside, it was dim, but not cold. The air was heavy with scent... rosewood, yes, but something sweeter now. Warmer. Like honey over ash. The walls were lined with portraits. I didn't remember those from before.
Faces pale as moons. Eyes dark. And every single one… looking at me.
There were candles lit in the hall. Fresh wax. Dancing flames. Someone had been here recently. Or something never left.
At the base of the staircase, I found a mirror.
Cracked.
But not broken.
And for a second... just one... I didn't see myself.
I saw her.
My mother.
Younger. Barefoot. Dressed in black with the same pendant around her neck. She didn't speak. Just placed her hand on the glass.
And I, without thinking, did the same.
The mirror warmed under my fingers. Then the flame of every candle flickered, and bent toward me.
Like they were bowing.
Or breathing.
Something old lives here. In the walls. In the air. In the blood.
I should be afraid.
But I'm not.
I think I've come home.
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Entry 17: January 8th
I stayed in the house.
Not for long, just long enough to realize that Thorne Hollow doesn't behave like other places.
Time feels thinner here, like it stretches and recoils depending on where I walk.
Sometimes I hear footsteps in the rooms above me, even though the floors don't creak.
Other times, I stand completely still and hear breathing that doesn't match mine.
The walls echo in strange ways, like they remember what was once said, and now they're rehearsing the lines again.
I explored the ground floor first. Dust lay thick across most of it, but not everywhere. A few shelves were clean.
Some doors swung open without resistance. And in the dining hall, one chair was pulled slightly away from the table, like someone had just left the room and forgotten to push it back in.
A half-burned candle rested in the middle of the long, dark wood table. Still warm to the touch.
It sounds impossible. Maybe it is.
But so is everything else.
In what looked like a drawing room, I found a strange painting covered by a sheet. I hesitated before pulling it down. The last time I found something hidden, it unraveled everything.
But I needed to see.
The painting was of a woman... tall, dressed in velvet, her hair coiled into braids threaded with silver. Her face was turned slightly, as if caught in motion. She wore the same pendant I did. No label. No title.
But I knew her.
My mother.
Not the way I remembered her. Not the quiet woman who hummed lullabies and made tea during storms. This version of her looked regal. Commanding. Almost dangerous. It sent a shiver down my spine.
Below the painting, carved into the wooden frame, were the words:
"Blood that leaves still echoes."
I stepped back. The floor groaned softly.
And then I heard something that made my heart seize.
A voice.
Not Ash's. Not my own.
A woman's voice, distant but clear. Speaking my name.
"Eira."
I spun around, expecting to see someone behind me. But the room was empty. Silent again.
Until the piano in the corner pressed a single key.
No one was near it.
I didn't scream. I don't know why. Maybe I'm beyond shock now. Maybe the House wants me to listen more than it wants to scare me.
I left after that. The house didn't try to stop me. The gate was still open when I got back outside. The sky was darkening fast, and the trees leaned toward me like old things eager to gossip.
When I reached the car, the windshield had fogged over from the inside.
Written in the mist was a symbol.
Crescent. Rose.
And below it, in the same fine script as the note on my mother's grave:
"The blood remembers."
I wiped it away before driving back.
But it didn't leave me.
It's still etched behind my eyes.
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Entry 18: January 9th
It's only been a day since I went back to Thorne Hollow, but it feels like it's been weeks.
My sleep last night was fractured... dreams filled with candlelit hallways and whispers in languages I don't understand.
I woke three times, sweating and breathless, each time with the sense that someone had been standing at the foot of my bed.
I checked. There was no one.
But the pendant glowed faintly under my shirt. Warm again. It shouldn't be. It's just silver. There's no logical explanation.
Except logic left the room when I saw my mother in the mirror of a haunted house.
I haven't told anyone I returned. Not Cara. Not even Sara, who keeps texting to ask if I'm okay.
She said she drove by my apartment and saw my lights off all day. I don't know how to respond. What am I supposed to say?
"Hey, sorry I've been distant. Just investigating the blood-ruled legacy my mother tried to abandon and might've triggered a centuries-old House into waking up."
Yeah. That'll go over well.
I started transcribing the family ledger I found earlier. I scanned what pages I could when I was at the university archives, and some of it… it's bizarre.
The Thorne family didn't just keep records. They wrote in codes. Ink that faded under regular light but appeared under heat.
Pages that folded into shapes to reveal new names. Some entries were scratched out entirely with red wax.
One name appeared repeatedly alongside Liraine's:
"Valen."
No surname. No title.
Just Valen.
And in parentheses beside it:
"Bound by oath. Severed in silence."
I don't know who he was. A lover? A guardian? An enemy?
But whoever he was, he was important enough to be named in the blood records. And someone didn't want him remembered easily.
Ash hasn't shown up again. Not since the window. But I think he's near.
There's something in the way the shadows behave now. I see them ripple slightly when I walk down the hall.
They lean when I'm not looking directly. And when I sit in silence, sometimes I can feel a second breath, like someone standing just behind me.
I haven't looked in the mirror again.
Not yet.
But I feel it watching.
Everything's moving now. Faster than before. Like the House was waiting for one thing... and now that it's happened, it can't be undone.
Return.
That one word scratched into the pendant still haunts me. It wasn't an invitation.
It was a declaration.
And I think something else is returning too.
Not just me.