The fog rolled over the cliffs like a living thing, curling through the black iron fence and creeping across the overgrown driveway. Amara Blake stepped out of the rusted taxi, her boots crunching gravel that hadn’t been touched in years. The mansion loomed above her—three stories of rotting wood, shattered windows, and a roofline that seemed to sneer at the sky.

She held the brass key in her palm. It was colder than the wind.

Why me? she thought again.

The letter had arrived two weeks ago. A lawyer’s name she didn’t recognize. A will from a grandmother she’d never met—Elspeth Blake. Deceased. The property was hers now. No conditions. No cost. Just a signature. She’d signed without thinking.

She needed out of the city. Needed quiet. Needed to be anywhere but where he could find her.

The cab driver didn’t even wait for a tip.

The gate groaned open when she pushed it, metal protesting like it hadn’t been moved in decades. She crossed the garden, overgrown and thorny, and made her way up crumbling stone steps to the front door.

It opened before she could put the key in.

Amara froze.

The wind, maybe. Old hinges. She stepped inside, ignoring the way her skin prickled.

The house smelled of damp wood and something sweeter—lavender, maybe, or dried roses. Dust spiraled in the slanted sunlight that leaked through cracked windows. The hallway was long, lined with old portraits whose eyes followed her.

She shut the door behind her. The echo was louder than it should have been.

A grandfather clock in the corner ticked slowly. But it was broken—the hands didn’t move.

Amara set her backpack on a side table. The air felt thick, like walking through honey. Her breath fogged in front of her, and she rubbed her arms.

A sound echoed above her.

Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.

She looked up. The ceiling stretched two floors high, with a grand staircase to the left. Shadows played on the walls. Nothing there.

You’re alone, she told herself. Old houses make noise. Old wood shifts.

The lawyer had said utilities were still connected, that the caretaker had kept the place livable. She didn’t believe it for a second.

The chandelier above her trembled slightly, casting sharp reflections on the floor. She walked deeper into the house, drawn toward a hallway on the right. It led to a dining room. The table was still set. Plates, silverware, a dusty candelabra.

Someone had left in a hurry.

Or had never left at all.

She paused by a painting—larger than the others. A woman in a high-collared dress. Hair pulled back. Pale eyes. The plaque read: Elspeth Blake, 1901–1976.

Amara swallowed hard. The woman looked just like her.

That night, she made a fire in the hearth and laid her sleeping bag on the floor of what must have been a study. She tried not to notice the way the bookshelves rearranged themselves when she turned away. Or how the old radio on the desk clicked on by itself, crackling with static for three full minutes before stopping.

She drifted into sleep.

And dreamed of drowning.

Cold water filled her lungs. Hands dragged her down—small hands, like a child’s. The sky was grey above her, the waves black. She saw a house underwater, the same one she now slept in. And it was smiling.

She awoke with a gasp.

Wet.

Soaking wet.

Her hair clung to her face. Her clothes were drenched. And around her, the floor of the study glistened with puddles of seawater. Strands of seaweed curled between the wooden floorboards.

And from somewhere above her...

A whisper.

“Welcome home.”

Amara spent the morning drying herself with old curtains she found in a hallway closet. The fire had gone out hours ago. Her skin was ice. But the seaweed—that was real. She held a strand of it in her hand now, slimy and dark green, the kind that only grew in cold ocean waters.

There’s no ocean for miles, she thought.

She shoved the strand into a trash bag and tied it tight, trying to dismiss it as leftover from some previous storm—or maybe a prank. Maybe someone was in the house. A squatter. Someone who didn’t want her here.

She explored the rest of the first floor with a flashlight. The light flickered often.

There were nine rooms total—library, dining room, kitchen, conservatory, a small chapel, and three rooms that appeared to be for guests or staff. One room, though, had no door handle. Just a carved symbol etched into the wood. A circle with jagged edges, like a sun that had lost its rays.

She pressed her palm to it.

It was warm.

She stepped back.

Turning around, she went into the library. Dust coated everything, but the books were neatly shelved. Too neatly. Titles from all over the world. Some were in languages she didn’t recognize—no title on the spine, just strange symbols. Others were burned on the edges, or wrapped in chains.

A single red leather journal sat in the center of the desk.

It wasn’t dusty.

She picked it up and flipped to the first page.

March 12, 1974

The house has begun speaking again. First through mirrors, then through the mouth of my dead sister. She walks the halls at night, head always tilted like she’s listening. I’ve sealed the room again. If it opens, I’ll know I’ve failed. But I hear scratching already.

The entry wasn’t signed, but Amara had a good guess whose handwriting it was.

Elspeth Blake.

Her grandmother.

She flipped forward through the journal—each entry more unsettling than the last. Mentions of “the house choosing,” of sacrifices and gifts, of a veil between rooms growing thin. There was one entry, dated weeks before Elspeth’s death:

Amara is coming. She will be the last key. The house knows her better than I do. She was born under the sound of the storm, just like me. But it wants her whole. I will not let it have her.

Amara dropped the journal.

It hit the desk with a thud—then the room fell silent. No wind. No tick from the broken grandfather clock. Just stillness.

Then a creak.

From upstairs.

She grabbed her flashlight and climbed the staircase. It spiraled up like a spine, lined with more portraits—some slashed, some painted over entirely with black strokes.

The second floor was colder. Floorboards groaned under her weight. There were six rooms, four with open doors. She peeked in each—bedrooms with shattered mirrors, a nursery with a rocking horse tipped on its side, and a bathroom where water still dripped from the tub, though no one had used it in decades.

Then she saw it.

A door at the end of the hall, wide open.

Inside was a small room, dimly lit by a single lamp that flickered.

And on the far wall, a mirror.

Tall. Oval. Silver-framed.

As she stepped closer, her reflection shimmered. Her hair. Her eyes. Her soaked clothes. But then—

—her reflection smiled.

She didn’t.

The lamp burst with a pop. Glass scattered. The mirror cracked.

Amara stumbled backward, nearly falling into the hallway.

When she looked again...

The mirror was whole.

And her reflection?

Gone.

Amara didn’t sleep that night.

She sat curled in the corner of the study, the flickering fireplace casting warped shadows on the peeling wallpaper. Her knees were drawn to her chest, her hands wrapped tightly around the iron fireplace poker like it was a lifeline. Every creak of the floorboards, every whisper of wind through the chimney, made her heart jolt.

But it wasn’t just the wind anymore.

It was something else.

She could still see that mirror when she closed her eyes—the way her reflection had smiled, calm and knowing, while she stood frozen. That wasn’t a trick of light. That wasn’t her imagination. That was real.

At some point, she checked her phone.

4:16 a.m.

She blinked at the screen. Waited. Watched the numbers. They didn’t move.

Battery: 73%.

Still, the time didn’t change.

She turned the screen off. Then back on.

4:16 a.m.

“What the hell?” she muttered. She stood and crossed the room, pulling open the heavy velvet curtains to peek outside.

Fog.

Thick, unnatural, clinging to the windows like moss. No sunrise. No moon. No stars.

Just grey.

She opened the window and inhaled the cold air. It smelled like seawater, even though the coast was hours away.

Then came the sound.

Soft. Whispery. Like breath against glass.

“Amara...”

She snapped the window shut.

“Nope. No. Not happening.”

She turned back into the room and nearly screamed. The red journal sat open on the floor where she’d dropped it earlier, pages fluttering as if caught in a breeze.

There wasn’t one.

She slowly approached and glanced down at the page it had settled on:

> The house obeys no clocks. Once it begins to feed, time slips through its teeth. You will wait for dawn, but it will never come until it is done with you. You are meat in its mouth.

The air turned heavy.

Meat in its mouth.

She slammed the journal shut, heart pounding.

“Okay,” she whispered to the room. “I don’t know what this is. Some kind of trap house? Gas leak? Am I hallucinating?”

But even as she said it, she knew the truth.

This wasn’t gas. This wasn’t madness. This house—whatever it was—was alive.

The whispers returned.

This time, from the walls.

“Amara... Amara... Amara...”

Different tones. Some soft and pleading, others playful, like children playing hide and seek. One voice was harsh, cracking like dried leaves. But the last one—

—the last one was her own voice.

“Amara...”

It echoed right behind her.

She spun around. No one there.

Her knees buckled slightly as a wave of dizziness hit her. She pressed both hands to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Stop it!” she cried. “Just stop!”

And for a moment, the house obeyed.

Total silence.

No fire crackling. No wind. No whispers.

Just the steady beat of her heart.

Then—Knock. Knock. Knock.

She froze.

It came from the hallway.

Slow. Measured. Like someone using the back of their knuckles.

She gripped the fireplace poker tighter and stepped out of the study.

The hallway was empty. Shadows hung along the edges like drapes.

She stepped forward, breath visible in the frigid air.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Behind her now.

She turned.

Still no one.

Her ears were ringing.

And then, the sound she feared most—tick... tick... tick...

The grandfather clock in the entry hall had come alive again.

She crept toward it. The hands had moved.

4:17 a.m.

Her chest tightened.

The house is watching me, she realized. It knows where I am. It knows what I fear.

Then she heard it—a faint scratching behind the walls.

She turned her head toward the noise, heart thudding.

The library.

She stepped inside, following the sound.

It was coming from behind the bookshelf.

A long, slow scrape. Like fingernails across old wood.

She pushed the shelf aside. Dust exploded into the air.

Behind it was a narrow wooden panel with a small, circular indent.

She pressed her hand against it—and the wall clicked.

The panel swung inward to reveal a narrow passage. Bare wooden walls. No wallpaper. Just a crawl space leading deeper into the house, illuminated by faint flickers of candlelight from sconces that shouldn’t have been there.

The air that wafted out was ice-cold—and thick with the scent of salt and something metallic.

Blood?

Her instincts screamed for her to close the panel and run.

But something deeper—something older—urged her to step forward.

She took a single step into the dark.

And the door shut silently behind her.