Entry 24: January 9th
It's snowing again. Thicker this time, the kind that falls in slow, heavy flakes like the sky is trying to bury everything it can reach.
I haven't left my apartment since the last time I came back from Thorne Hollow. The pendant hasn't burned again.
Not physically. But there's a heat in me now, a simmering presence that doesn't sleep, doesn't flicker.
It waits.
That's worse, I think, than fire. Because it means something's coming.
I've been trying to piece everything together. The fragments from the ledger. The House script.
The dream that wasn't mine. The word Valen, still heavy on my tongue.
The mirror crack. The way Ash... or what remains of him appears in silence and fades without sound.
Ash. Or Veyrix.
I found his name again today.
It was in a folded slip of paper inside the back of the ledger. Thin vellum, folded into fourths and tucked beneath the stitched spine.
I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't been desperate enough to shake the whole thing upside down.
Written in delicate ink:
"Veyrix Thorne. Bound to the oathless flame. Broken for love. Awaiting the unsealing."
I stared at it for an hour.
So many pieces make sense now. Or almost sense. Ash isn't his name. Ash is what's left of a name too powerful to be spoken, or too dangerous to be remembered.
And if Valen was the one my mother loved, then Veyrix was the name the House tried to destroy.
Maybe the same person, maybe not.
Or maybe one became the other.
The question I keep returning to is this.
What does it mean for someone to break?
We talk about broken hearts, broken trust. But this feels deeper. More ritualistic. Like something sacred was shattered on purpose.
I lit another candle tonight. Not because I'm scared, but because I'm starting to understand. The darkness isn't empty. It listens.
And right now, I need it to hear me.
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Entry 25: January 10th
I went back to Thorne Hollow.
I didn't tell anyone. Not Cara. Not my advisor. Not even this diary until now.
There's a rhythm to the Hollow. A way it breathes, even when it sleeps. I can feel it the moment I cross the tree line, like stepping through a veil.
The forest muffles the wind, snow falls slower, sound stretches. Like time forgets itself here.
The gate creaked open without a touch. The path, half-frozen but clearer than before, led me past the twisted sundial and up to the door.
This time, I knocked.
A pause.
Then the sound of the bolt sliding back.
But when the door opened, no one was there.
Only candlelight. And silence. And the faint scent of rosewood smoke.
I stepped inside.
The house is changing. Or maybe I'm just seeing more of it now. The hall had become longer than I remembered, lined with mirrors that didn't reflect quite right.
Some showed me from behind. Some, younger. One was cracked, but the crack moved, like it was following my steps.
I passed the place where the conservatory should have been, but it was gone.
Or hidden
Instead, I found myself drawn to the stairs
At the top was a corridor that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps it always was, but only now had chosen to reveal itself
At the end of it: a door. Black wood, carved in that House script I still can't fully read. But I recognized the sigil.
Crescent moon. Blood rose. And something new.
A pair of interlocked hands.
I didn't knock this time.
The room inside was a study. Dim. Shelves lined with artifacts, not books. A desk. A high-backed chair.
And sitting in the chair
Ash.
Only… not quite.
He looked the same, but older. Or maybe more solid. The edges of him were sharper, like someone had drawn over the ghost and filled him in. His eyes, still gray, now held something deeper.
Memory.
He didn't smile. But he spoke first.
"You came back."
I nodded. I didn't trust my voice.
"It's waking," he said.
"The House. The Hollow. The blood. You."
I asked him who he really was.
He looked at the fire burning in the hearth and didn't answer for a long time. Then, softly:
"I was called Veyrix. Once."
The word made the air heavy. Like it didn't belong in the present.
"Was?" I asked.
"Veyrix died the night your mother chose silence. I became what was left. Ash."
I felt it like a pulse between my ribs.
"And Valen?"
He looked at me then.
Really looked.
"He was her promise. I was her cost."
Then he vanished.
No smoke. No sound. Just absence.
And in his place, a single feather. Black. Tipped with silver.
I didn't touch it.
Not yet.
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Entry 26: January 11th
I took the feather home.
I don't know why. Maybe I needed proof that he'd been real. That something had happened. That I wasn't building this all inside a grief-warped mind.
It sat on my desk all night, catching the candlelight in a way that made it shimmer like metal.
This morning, when I reached for it, it turned to ash in my fingers.
It left a mark on my skin. A faint spiral, like the House sigil.
It hasn't faded.
And I haven't told anyone.
Cara knocked on my door this afternoon. She brought soup. Said I looked pale. I told her I had the flu. She didn't believe me.
She reached for my hand, the one marked by the feather, and pulled back immediately. Said it was cold as ice.
It didn't feel cold to me. It felt like iron.
After she left, I stared at the mark again and said his name.
Not Ash.
Veyrix.
The mark warmed.
I don't know what that means.
But I think it means he hears me now.
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Entry 27: January 12th
The dreams are getting louder.
They don't feel like dreams anymore. They feel like lives I lived and forgot. Or maybe lives that were lived through me.
Tonight, I was standing in a circle of mirrors, all showing me different versions of myself.
Some older.
Some broken.
One that looked exactly like my mother.
And in the center.
a man, kneeling, blood on his hands.
He looked up. I couldn't see his face.
He whispered:
"You're the answer and the echo. The unsealing begins with your name."
I tried to speak it. My name.
But my voice caught in my throat.
Then the mirrors shattered, one by one, in time with my heartbeat.
And I woke up.
There was something in my hand. Not a dream. Not imaginary.
A ring.
Twisted metal and vine. A rose made of black iron. The same symbol from the Hollow door.
I didn't put it on.
Not yet.
But it's sitting here, next to the pendant.
Like an invitation.
Or a warning.
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Entry 28: January 12th, Night
I went back to the Hollow.
Not because I had questions, though I do.
Not even because I wanted answers. I went because I felt it… calling me.
Not with words, not even with the pendant, but through something lower, older.
Bone-deep.
It started with the mirrors.
The one in my room, the antique one my mother left behind, started warping. The reflection's edge shimmered, and I caught myself moving when I was perfectly still.
I blinked, and the mirror blinked back a second late. I would've smashed it if I weren't so afraid it would bleed.
Then came the voice.
Not Ash's. Not Veyrix's, if that even matters anymore. This voice was soft, rustling, feminine.
Like leaves brushing a window in windless weather.
"Witness. Witness what was buried."
So I went.
The Hollow looked different in daylight. I don't know why I keep expecting it to stay the same.
The snow was melting only inside its borders, leaving bare, muddy earth and sickly vines curling like veins through the soil.
The gate was missing today. Not open, but gone. As if there was no need for barriers anymore.
The house itself… exhaled.
I swear I felt it. A shift in pressure as I stepped through the threshold, like a giant creature stirring under stone.
This time I didn't wait for a guide or a sign. I followed the sound.
Not footsteps, but whispers. Dozens of them, fluttering behind the walls. I pressed my ear to the oak-paneled hallway, and I could hear names.
Liraine. Valen. Veyrix. Eira.
I was among them now.
I found the room again. The black door with the carved sigils. It didn't resist when I opened it. Inside, the chair was empty. The fire had long gone cold.
But someone had drawn a circle on the floor.
Chalk. Salt. Ash. I recognized the components from old books I'd read in passing, rituals for speaking with the severed dead.
I don't know who placed it there, but I stepped into it.
Immediately, the air tightened. Like breath held underwater.
And then he was there.
Ash.
Or the part that still answers to that name.
He didn't speak right away. Just looked at me. The way fire looks at wood.
The way something that has waited too long for release studies the match about to strike.
"Do you know what you are?" he asked.
I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.
"You're not a key. You're not an heir. You're the wound they tried to seal... and failed."
"Then what is the Hollow?" I asked.
He looked down, as if ashamed.
"A tomb that thinks it's a home."
I sat across from him, in silence, until the salt circle faded into dust.
When I stood, he reached out. His fingers didn't touch mine, but the heat between us was unbearable.
"If you open the Hollow fully, you open what they buried inside me."
"And what is that?"
"Judgment."
Then he disappeared.
The mark on my hand began to burn.
And the feather turned blacker.
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Entry 29: January 13th
I read the book.
The one from the library. The one that disappears and reappears depending on the House's mood.
It was on my bed this morning.
No dust. No explanation. Just sitting there—open to a page I didn't remember reaching.
The ink was faded, but I could make it out.
"Every House has a Guardian. A bloodsworn soul bound to protect its name, its memory, and its secrets. But if the House falls, the Guardian is sealed. Not in death. In waiting."
"Veyrix was the last."
It went on to describe a ritual. One I think my mother broke... but not all the way. She tried to sever the bloodline.
Tried to silence the House by refusing to name me. But names are tricky. Names, like blood, find a way through even sealed doors.
That's why I still hear the Hollow when I sleep.
That's why the mirrors twitch.
And that's why Ash... Veyrix is still bound. Because silence was never enough. I was born. And I carry the name, even if it was hidden from me.
I traced the sigil drawn at the top of the page. Crescent, rose, flame.
But now I see what I missed before.
There's a fourth mark, barely visible. Hidden in the curve of the crescent.
An eye.
Watching.
The page ends with a single line:
"She will unseal him. Not because she chooses to... but because she already has."
I closed the book and checked the mirror.
It wasn't my reflection anymore.
It was my mother.
She looked at me with eyes I'd never seen in her living face. Eyes too old. Too knowing.
She didn't speak.
She simply held up her palm.
It bore the same mark that now blooms across mine.
The spiral.
The blood sigil.
The Hollow is awake.
And I think I am too.