Chapter 2: The Locked Room

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.