CHAPTER 1: Whispers in the Dark-Part 3

As she turns down the main hallway, Evelyn feels a strange pull towards the east wing, even though she has promised herself she would leave it alone a few minutes ago. She knows what lays beyond the grand hallway is not to be discovered, yet the pull is there, tugging at her senses, whispering to her to discover it.

 She brushes it off, telling herself it’s nothing, just her mind playing tricks on her. She has come to work, not to face her past, yet.

The hallway twists and turns, leading her into the depths of the mansion. Shadows cling to the walls, pooling in the corners like thick, inky blackness. She can feel the weight of the air pressing down on her, cold and heavy, as though the very walls are alive. She remembers her father’s warnings, his insistence that certain doors were meant to stay closed. But her curiosity fights against those memories, whispering to her that it is time to understand, to uncover the secrets that had shaped her life.

She will have to confront the truth eventually, but not today, she knows that much. She is content to stay in the parts of the mansion she remembers, places where the shadows don’t seem so thick, where she can still pretend that the Blackwood estate is just another old, empty house.

……………………..……………………………………………………………….

Tonight, sleep eludes her. She wakes up to a nightmare. In her dream, she was running through an ancient, crumbling crypt. She could hear the distant sounds of chains rattling and eerie whispers calling her name, beckoning her deeper into the shadows. As she approached the crypt’s heart, she saw a figure trapped in darkness, but before she could reach it, she woke up and rose from bed, only to be welcomed by the chill of the mansion wrapping around her like a ghost’s touch.

“It’s just a dream…. I guess it happens it being the first night here after 12 years” she mummers to herself. It seems like the right thing to do right now.

Deciding against the futility of sleep, she decides to take a stroll around the mansion, recreating memories she had forgotten. She pulls a shawl over her shoulders and slips quietly into the hallway. She is home, yet she feels like a stranger. 

Her footsteps echo, stirring the dust that seems to cling to every surface, remnants of memories best left forgotten. She wanders aimlessly, letting the mansion’s silence pull her into forgotten corners, until her gaze falls upon the most feared place in the mansion—the east wing, that she did not realize she was heading to.

The mansion’s east wing has been sealed off for as long as she can remember, but her curiosity grows the more she looks its way with each passing second of the night.

Something calls to her, something deeper than curiosity, a primal urge to confront the shadows she has tried to escape. She pads silently down the hallway; her heart pounding and pulse quickens as she approaches and reaches the door to the east wing. 

The wood is old and splintered, but it cracks open with surprising ease when she touches it. It does not pulse this time round like it did when she was young. Dust swirls in the dim moonlight, casting ghostly shadows across the walls of the hallway. The smell of decay and abandonment fill her nostrils; a reminder of the years this place has been untouched. 

Evelyn steps cautiously into the East Wing hallway. It is dark, but she moves forward to look for a candle to light. However, her breath catches the moment the door to the East wing closes by its self, and the atmosphere shifts entirely. It’s as if she has walked through a veil, leaving behind the decay and the gloom that infects the rest of the mansion, to a new world.

It’s as though it was waiting for someone, a Blackwood to step into it to bring it back to life.

Here everything feels alive yet ancient, preserved in a way that defies logic. “What………what is this place?” she whispers, her voice trembling as it fades into the stillness.

The walls draw her attention first. They are lined with intricate carvings-symbols she doesn’t recognize, their shapes twisting and interlocking like secrets waiting to be deciphered. Her fingers hover over the surface tempted to trace them, but something about their energy stops her.

Unlike the peeling, tattered wallpaper of the other wings, these walls seem untouched by time, smooth and radiant as if freshly crafted from ancient artifacts. “How is this even possible?” she murmurs, stepping further inside.

Golden sconces just form from the walls, their bases carved to resemble twisting vines and blooming flowers, each petal so lifelike, that she kind of half-expects them to open. She looks and her eyes drift on to the candles. Though the candles are unlit, their shadows flicker, moving as though alive. She stares, a chill running down her spine.

“This doesn’t feel right,” she says under her breath, her voice barely more than a whisper. The floor beneath her feet gleams with polished stone, it’s cool surface a stark contrast to the creaking wooden boards she’d grown used to.

Patterns etched into the stone spiral outward, forming currents that seem to ripple as she steps over them. “It’s like…... like walking on water,” she mutters, her voice tinged with awe and fear. Columns rise around her; their towering forms draped in shimmering vines. The vines move ever slightly, as if responding to her presence. She shudders but doesn’t stop.

She tilts her head back, taking in the vaulted ceiling, high above beams stretch across the room, painted with constellations in radiant gold. The stars glint faintly, almost winking at her, casting fractured light from narrow, stained-glass windows. 

The light dances across the walls, bathing the space in an otherworldly glow. “This… this isn’t a wing,” she murmurs shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s a world.”

Every step she takes feels significant, the echoes of her footsteps soft and reverent, as though the room itself is acknowledging her presence. The weight of it all presses down on her shoulders, making her feel both drawn in and unwelcome. 

“Who built this? And why?” she wonders aloud, her words dissipating into the thick air. She starts to feel uncomfortable, like something is wrong, like she shouldn’t be here. She decides to head back since all this feels wrong. As she turns, but something starts writing on the wall. She turns in the direction, ancient writing on the wall.

She moves closer, her curiosity now beyond ordinary. “Klesrisyellay” she reads out. “What does that mean?” she wonders. But the moment she speaks those words, at the end of the hall, a massive door starts to glow, commanding her attention. A room calling to her, its burnished metal surface gleaming, etched with symbols that pulse faintly like a heartbeat. It is the same glow she saw when she was a child, when her father stopped her.

She moves closer to the door forgetting the fact that she has to leave. No one is around to stop her this time round. She looks at the door pulsing and lifts her hand to tough it. Hesitantly, her hand hovers just shot of touching it. 

“I shouldn’t be here… whatever lies beyond this door, it…...it isn’t just hidden- it’s been preserved, protected, and not to be discovered.” She whispers, her voice trembling as her heart pounds against her heart. She decides to move backwards back to where she came from.

However, the moment she takes her first step back, the door stops pulsing, and the whole wing goes dark. The only light that remains is the moonlight shining right at the door. 

The door opens slowly right in front of her by itself, revealing a dark room. A mirror, tall, ornate, and covered in dust is standing against the far wall of the room. It is intricately carved; its edges lined with ancient symbols she cannot decipher because of the distance. She starts moving closer to see the symbols more clearly.

As she moves closer, her fingers itching to wipe away the grime, to see what lays beneath or perhaps decipher the symbols, she recognizes the symbols, from her dreams. They are ancient, powerful, and unmistakably tied to the lore of the Blackwood family. She has been seeing these symbols in all her dreams about the Blackwood mansion.

The mirror hums softly the moment she moves closer, a sound almost too faint to notice. She hesitates but her curiosity wins over. Slowly, she wipes the dust from the glass, revealing a flawless reflection of the room around her, except for one detail.

In the reflection, a figure stands behind her, a shadowy form draped in darkness, its face obscured. She rubs her eyes with an assumption that she is mistaken, and nothing is there when she opens her eyes again. The house being creepy makes her calm down a little. Looking at the mirror again, she freezes, her breath catching in her throat. The figure does not move, or make a sound, but whispers her name, faint at first, then growing louder.

Evelyn………

She spines around, but there is nothing—just the empty room, creepier than ever. A cold sweat breaks out on her skin. She glances back at the mirror. The figure is gone.

She stumbles backward, her heart hammering. The voice is familiar, its one from her nightmares. She stands paralyzed, as whispers multiply, filling the room with frantic, overlapping voices. 

“Evelyn…………………”

She stumbles back, away from the mirror and towards the door. But as she turns to leave, she collides with something solid. She gasped, stumbling back in fear as her eyes land on a man standing in the doorway.

Alexander Thorn, his dark coat blended into the shadows, his features sharp and unnervingly calm. He is impossibly close, as though he has appeared from the shadows themselves.

“You shouldn’t be here, Evelyn Blackwood” he says, his voice low, almost a whisper.

Evelyn’s heart pounds in her chest. “Who……….who are you? How did you……..”

Before she can finish the words, the mirror behind her cracks—a single fissure running down the center of the glass. A chilling sound echoes through the room, like a thousand whispers that were trapped inside the mirror have come out all at once.

Evelyn turns, her eyes widening as something dark begins to leak from the crack. A black mist, thick and swirling, pours out from the mirror, crawling across the floor towards her. The whispers grow louder, more frantic, as if the voices are trying to escape.

“What is that?” she whispers, fear gripping her.

Alexander steps forward, his face hardening. “You’ve awakened it,” he says, his tone grim. “The mirror… it’s not just a reflection. It’s a doorway. And you, Evelyn Blackwood, have just opened the games of hell.”

The black mist continues to spread across the entire room, and within it, shadowy figures begin to form—dark, indistinct shapes that move with unnatural fluidity. Evelyn backs away, her pulse racing. The figures start reaching out with hands made of darkness, their shapes twisting and contorting as they come closer.

“We need to leave,” Alexander says, grabbing her arm. “Now.”

But Evelyn cannot move, her eyes are locked on the figures creeping out of the mirror. One of them whispers her name, its voice the same as the one from before, the one from her nightmares.

“Evelyn…………” 

Evelyn freezes, her body no longer her own, consumed by fear, terror and panic.