Chapter 5: The Eye in the Floor

Amara didn’t know how long she sat there—breathing hard, staring at the wall where the door had vanished. Her palms were slick with sweat. The iron poker trembled in her grip, suddenly useless in a house that didn’t follow the rules of the world she knew.

No phone signal.

No time.

No exit.

She stood, legs unsteady, and forced herself to keep walking down the narrow hallway. The sconces flickered behind her, as though the house was trying to decide how much light she deserved.

The passageway opened suddenly into a large room she hadn't seen on any floor plan. It was circular, domed like a cathedral. Stone walls curved upward into a pointed ceiling, where strange symbols glowed faintly in red ink—or blood.

Beneath her boots, the floor changed. No longer wood, but stone tiles, uneven and cracked. In the center of the room was a grate—large, square, and rusted. It looked like something from a sewer, but older. Ancient.

As she stepped closer, she felt it.

A presence.

A slow, deliberate awareness rising from below.

She knelt beside the grate, careful not to touch it.

There was something down there.

Moving.

Breathing.

Then she saw it.

An eye.

It blinked once, massive and yellow, its slit pupil expanding like a predator’s.

Amara staggered back, nearly tripping over a broken tile.

The eye didn’t follow her. It didn’t need to.

It had seen her.

And somehow, she knew it had always known she would come here.

She ran from the room, the sound of her boots echoing through the stone like bones rattling in a coffin. The corridor shifted as she moved—new doors appearing, old ones vanishing, the hallways twisting in ways that made no architectural sense.

The house wasn’t built this way.

It grew this way.

She found herself in a stairwell she didn’t remember. It spiraled downward into darkness, no railing, no light. She stood at the top, the scent of mold and seawater wafting upward.

And something else.

Burned hair.

She took one step down.

Then another.

Each stair creaked differently—some groaned like wood, others gave under her weight like flesh.

Halfway down, she heard the whispers again.

But not the same as before.

These were not calling her name.

They were speaking to each other.

In a language she didn’t recognize. Guttural. Wet. The sounds twisted in her ears and made her stomach turn.

She covered her mouth.

The whispers grew louder. Arguing. Demanding.

Then they stopped.

Silence.

And just below her feet—

A voice.

Male.

Rough, with a dry edge like someone who hadn’t spoken in years.

> “She’s here.”

The stair below her snapped.

Amara fell—crashing down into pitch blackness, hitting stone and splinters, the poker flying from her hand.

When she opened her eyes, groaning, she was in a small room again.

But not alone.

In the corner sat a man.

Or what had once been a man.

He was wrapped in bandages from head to toe, filthy and bloodstained. Only one eye was visible through the wrappings—milky white and unfocused. He rocked gently, muttering nonsense.

She reached for the poker—but he didn’t move.

Only when she stood did he speak, in that same rasping voice:

> “You’re Elspeth’s blood. That’s why the house let you in.”

Amara froze.

“How do you know my grandmother?”

He laughed.

Or tried to. It came out like coughing sand.

> “She brought me here too. Said it was the only place left where the dead still whispered... and listened.”

He turned his head toward her.

> “You’re not leaving, you know. None of us are. You think the house kills you. But no. It keeps you. Piece by piece.”

His voice dropped lower.

> “And soon... it won’t just remember you. It’ll become you.”