When 28-year-old Mara Kessler returns to the isolated mountain town of Blackbridge to settle her late father's estate, she expects grief, awkward reunions, and a house full of old memories. What she doesn't expect is the unmistakable feeling that someone has been living inside the house long after her father died. 
Every night at 3:11 a.m., the clocks in the home resets themselves to that exact time-no matter how many times she replaces them. In the walls, Mara hears a low knocking sound, rhythmic and deliberate, almost like someone trying to communicate. The townspeople avoid her questions, insisting her father became "strange" in his final months, obsessed with something he believed was spreading through Blackbridge. 
Mara soon finds evidence that several residents have gone missing over the last 30 years, all erased from public record except for cryptic notes left in her father's journals. Each disappearance is marked by the same symbol: a circle hollowed into the wood near where each missing person was last seen. 
As Mara digs deeper, she uncovers a disturbing truth: Blackbridge has a second population-people who look ordinary in daylight but lack something essential inside. They move almost correctly, speak almost normally. and yet feel wrong in ways that make Mara's skin crawl. 
When knocking on the walls escalates into full conversation- mimicking voices of people Mara knows, even voices of the dead- she realizes the house is trying to warn her. Her father wasn't paranoid; he was trying to protect her from the entity that has lived beneath Blackbridge for centuries, feeding on memories until nothing is left but a shell. 
Now Mara must solve the mystery of the missing townspeople and the origin of the Hollowed before she becomes one of them. But every night, 3:11 grows closer...and the voice behind the wall begins to sound more and more like her own.

First thing Mara notices is the ticking.


Her father's old mantel clock—silent for years—begins to tick again at 3:10 a.m.By 3:11, every clock in the house joins in. Digital displays flicker. Analog hands jump backward. The alarm on her phone resets in her hand.


It starts in the living room wall—three slow knocks, spaced evenly apart. Then behind her bedroom. Then beneath the floorboards.


A voice follows. Soft. Measured. Almost familiar.


The voice inside the wall whispers again—this time in her father's voice.


"You came back. Good. I need you to listen."


"You have to leave the town before—"The voice stops. Silence swells.


Then, from inside the same wall, a second voice speaks. Her own.


"Mara… don't be afraid. We've been waiting for you."


Everything in the house resets.Everything but the knocking.


Prologue- 3:11 a.m.