The road curled like a black ribbon through the woods, narrowing as the manor loomed nearer. Tall, skeletal trees arched overhead, their bare limbs clawing at the gray sky as if to tear it down. My driver said nothing as we crested the hill—only cast a furtive glance toward the house and muttered something low in a language I did not know.
But I understood enough.
The manor had stood empty for years. Abandoned after the scandal, they said. Cursed, whispered others. But it was mine now—left to me by a relative I had never met, or perhaps had long since forgotten.
I told myself I didn’t believe in curses. That I came to paint in peace. To mourn in silence.
But that wasn’t the truth.
I came because nowhere else wanted me. And I needed a place to fall apart where no one would notice.
The manor rose from the mist like a monument to sorrow. Its stone façade was cracked, ivy threading through shattered windows and snaking toward a roof that sagged in places like a breath too long held. Brambles tangled across the yard like veins beneath pale skin, and the courtyard fountain—once surely grand—had withered into a brittle husk. The statue at its center had no head.
I stepped down from the carriage. The cold met me like an old friend, wrapping fingers around my throat, sliding into my coat. As the driver unloaded my trunks, the caw of distant crows echoed through the trees.
Or perhaps it was laughter.
The wind has a way of making cruel music.
Madame Morvane stood waiting at the front doors, still as a tombstone.
She was dressed in black from throat to heel, her silver hair drawn so tightly it pulled the skin around her eyes. Sharp eyes—watchful, tired. She inclined her head with a single nod, then turned and disappeared into the house without a word.
I followed.
The floor groaned beneath us as we stepped beneath the archway, as though the house resented being disturbed.
The air inside was different. Heavier. Stale and expectant—like the manor had been holding its breath for years, and now, at last, it exhaled.
Rooms opened on either side like mouths: drawing rooms, music rooms, parlors drowned in dust and covered with moth-eaten sheets. A grand staircase loomed ahead, its balustrade shedding flakes of varnish like old skin. The whole place smelled of cedar and mildew, forgotten wood and faint decay.
“You’ll find the east wing best suited to your needs,” Madame Morvane said, her voice like parchment. “The studio windows face the forest. Morning light is best there, when the fog isn’t too heavy.”
I hesitated. “Have you lived here long?”
She paused, one hand resting lightly on the banister.
“I was born here,” she said. “And I will likely die here.” Her gaze met mine—not unkind, but unreadable.
“This house chooses who it lets in.”
“And who it keeps?” I asked before I could stop myself.
She did not smile. “Some doors are best left shut, Miss Elysia.”
Later, when I was alone in the east wing, I tried to convince myself she meant nothing by it. That old houses made people strange. That she was merely eccentric, not ominous.
But as I unpacked my paints, my brushes, my unused canvases, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was listening. That it had been waiting.
That night, I dreamed of Victor.
He stood at the edge of a black lake beneath a starless sky. His back was to me. When I called his name, he didn’t turn. The water lapped at his feet, and something stirred beneath the surface—too fast to see, too large to ignore.
I woke with a start.
And from somewhere deep behind the walls, beneath the floorboards, in the bones of the house itself—I thought I heard a whisper:
“Paint.”
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