Stillness swallowed the cliffs. The train groaned along the tracks, iron wheels thrumming against stone, but the world outside absorbed every sound as if it had never existed.
Seraphine Duskbane leaned her forehead against the cold glass, her breath fogging faintly. The sea below raged, slate-gray and merciless, foam gnashing against jagged rocks like hungry teeth. The horizon had vanished into mist, leaving nothing but an endless expanse of white and the hollow rhythm of the waves.
She had chosen Ravenshollow for its obscurity. A place no one thought of, no one searched for. Yet as the train creaked toward its final stop, she realized that stillness did not soothe—it listened.
The station emerged, a skeleton of wood and iron, so small it seemed ashamed to exist. A single lantern swung on a rusted hook, bleeding a circle of gold into the fog. Seraphine stepped down, boots meeting damp planks slick with sea spray. Her suitcase, dark leather worn at the edges, pressed cold against her palm.
Her hair, black as raven's wing, fell just below her shoulders, untamed by wind. Her eyes—storm-lit violet, rare and unsettling—held more memory than the years she had lived. She wore a long coat of moss-green wool, tailored but travel-worn, with silver clasps dulled from touch. Around her neck hung a pendant: a glass vial threaded with silver wire. Its contents a swirl of muted, earth-toned dust, suspended in shadows. She never removed it.
The town uncoiled slowly as she walked. Cobblestone streets curved upward, narrow and slick, flanked by cottages pressed close as though huddled for warmth. Roofs sagged with moss; shutters trembled at each gust of wind. Lamps burned low, halos blurring in mist, bending like watchful eyes. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled from a church long abandoned, fractured and stripped of comfort.
And then she saw it.
The Blackwell Inn.
It rose at the edge of the cliff, dark stone hewn from the very rock it stood upon, a fortress against the sea. Ivy clung stubbornly to its walls, blackened with age; windows were bolted with heavy shutters, as though even light needed permission to enter. The iron sign above the door creaked in the wind, its lettering worn away until only faint scars remained.
Seraphine paused. The house was no refuge. It was a threshold.
The door opened before she could lift her hand.
A man stood framed in firelight.
He was tall, taller than most men she had known, shoulders broad enough to fill the doorway. Hair black as spilled ink fell just short of his collar, unruly as though he had walked through storms and not cared to tame it. His face was carved in sharp lines: high cheekbones, strong jaw, a mouth more accustomed to silence than speech. But it was his eyes that stopped her—gray-green, deep as stormwater, carrying the weight of unsaid things.
"Miss Duskbane," he said. Low, resonant, vibrating through the wood of the house itself. He did not speak her name as confirmation—he spoke it as remembrance.
Her throat tightened. "Yes. I wrote ahead… about the room."
For the faintest heartbeat, his gaze softened—just enough to suggest a man beneath the shadow. Then it vanished, replaced with something unreadable.
"Caelum Nocturne," he replied at last, his name falling like a note struck in an empty room. And when their fingers brushed, a current shot through her chest—a cold spark where warmth should have been. It was not desire. It was recognition.
The words were welcome, yet tethered her, binding her to the place.
She stepped inside.
The inn was no warmer than the night outside, though a fire burned in the hearth. Shadows clung to corners, stretching long against walls lined with portraits—stern ancestors painted in oils, eyes gleaming with intent that unsettled her. Floorboards creaked beneath her boots, carrying her presence through the house as if announcing her to its bones. The air smelled of cedar and salt, with a faint metallic tang that reminded her uncomfortably of iron.
Caelum moved with an elegance that seemed unpracticed, as though his body had always known how to command a room. His coat was black, well-made but unadorned. On his left hand, a leather glove clung tightly, never removed.
Outside, the sea thundered against the cliffs, relentless, as though reminding her it had always been here, waiting. Inside, the house seemed to hold its breath, thick enough to hear the quickening of her own heart.
And in that tension, Seraphine understood: Ravenshollow had not merely received her.
It had claimed her.