Morwen, Mistress of the Dark ☥

Found a door. East corridor, hidden behind a tapestry of a forest hunt where the prey has been crudely stitched over. The stags have human eyes, watching. They follow my movements. The door was locked. No keyhole, just smooth, cold wood that feels... moist to the touch. It PULSES. A faint thrum, like a trapped heart. I pressed my ear against it and heard what sounded like rushing water. Or whispering. A child's voice, counting backward from ████████.

I dreamt it opened. I saw... █████████████████. I shouldn't have looked. In the dream, something sat on my bed wearing my grandmother's face, stitched crudely onto something else's skull. It smiled with too many teeth. When it spoke, black fluid dribbled from the seams where flesh met flesh. It knew my name.

The groundskeeper refuses to enter the east wing. Says it "ain't right." His hands shake when he speaks of it, his eyes darting to corners where shadows deepen without source. What lies beyond? RG DZRGH ULI BLF. Click the symbol 🗝 for a... guide.

IT HEARS YOU

Tonight I heard scratching from behind the door. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Three scratches, pause. Three scratches, pause. Like a code. Or a countdown. From thirteen down to one. When it reached zero, the house exhaled.

The old storeroom. Grandmother's possessions, shrouded in dust and regret. Under black velvet, a mirror. Tall, fractured along one edge in a pattern like lightning. Or a scream. My reflection... it's ███ ███. ███. It blinked too slow. Smiled when I did not. When I raised my left hand, the reflection raised its right. It pressed against the glass from the other side, leaving smudges shaped like withered hands. Fingerprints too long, too thin, joints bent at impossible angles.

I covered it with the velvet. But the glass feels warm. Even through the fabric. Like fevered skin. And I swear the cloth moves sometimes. Subtle ripples, as if something beneath is breathing. At night, a soft tapping comes from beneath the velvet. Morse code, perhaps? ✦

Found a journal entry of Grandmother's: "The mirror shows what it will, not what is. It hungers for recognition." Something has seen me. Something pmldh nb uzxv. Last night, I dreamt my skin was glass, shattering slowly from my fingertips inward.

SHE IS YOU

The groundskeeper hanged himself in the garden shed this morning. His note: "She's coming through. God help you all." The local police were strangely unsurprised. One officer whispered, "The eighth this decade," when he thought I couldn't hear. His partner silenced him with a look that chilled me more than the corpse. They know this house.

A letter. Yellow with age, hidden under a loose floorboard that groaned when I stepped on it. As if inviting discovery. Ink faded to the color of dried blood. A name: █████. Great-grandmother's sister. Not mentioned in any family records. The letter speaks of bloodlines. Curses. Reflections that hgvzo hlfoh zmw dvzi uzxvh. Her words... they echo in my bones, familiar as my own thoughts. My handwriting and hers? Identical.

THE INK IS BLOOD

The letter claims Serelyne was sealed away after "the incident." No details given. Only that seven children vanished that winter, and seven crows were found dead on the manor steps, their eyes replaced with small mirrors. Their beaks arranged to form a pattern, a sigil perhaps. ⍟

A warning, scratched in the margin with what appears to be a fingernail dipped in something rust-colored:

Found a photograph. Family portrait, circa 1887. Nine figures. But ten shadows on the wall behind them. The tenth shadow wears my face. When I look at it for too long, my teeth begin to ache and my vision blurs at the edges. She's watching through my eyes now.

I don't sleep. Haven't for days. Footsteps in the attic. Dragging. Pacing. Stopping directly above my bed. A girl's laughter in the walls, cold and sharp as broken glass. Sometimes it's my own laugh, recorded from hours earlier. The mirror hums. Even covered, it sings. A twisted lullaby that makes my teeth ache. The melody is familiar, a song my mother used to sing.

SOMETHING WAITS ABOVE

It shows rooms I've never entered. Rooms that feel █████████, ████ ███ ██████. A nursery with shadowed cradles. A laboratory with rusted tools. A chamber where the walls weep a clear fluid that smells of lily and rot. In one reflection, I saw myself sleeping. In another, I was watching myself write these very words.

The house is alive. Or something within it is. It breathes through the heating vents. It watches through the water stains on the ceiling. It speaks in the creaking of hinges. My name, over and over. But not quite my name. Almost, but wrong in ways that chill me. ♰

I tried to leave today. The front door opened onto a brick wall that wasn't there yesterday. Every window shows a different season, a different time of day. I'm trapped in a place that isn't a place anymore. The house has swallowed me whole. When I press my ear against the wall, I hear other heartbeats. Other voices. All whisper the same name. Hvivobmv rh dzrgrmt.

She has a name. Serelyne. The velvet fell from the mirror this morning. She stood there, wearing my nightgown. My face. Her face is mine, but older, etched with a sorrow that clings like grave dust. Eyes sunken, skin translucent as candle wax. She smiled with my mouth but not my intent.

She is not a ghost. She is... nvnlib, sfmtvi, z ivuovxgrlm hvvprmt hfmyhgzmxv. A parasite of identity. Grandmother's journals speak of her. How she slips through silver surfaces. How she studies, then samples, then ██████████.

She wants what I have. My place. My ████. But something binds her still. Something in the locked room. Something in the garden where nothing grows. I felt her fingers brush against mine from the other side of the glass.

SHE WEARS YOUR FUTURE

I woke with dirt beneath my fingernails. Mud on my feet. I have no memory of going outside. The mirror shows me sleeping peacefully while I write this. WHERE WAS I?

Her fingers left marks on the glass. Five perfect prints that glow under moonlight. Touch them in sequence, pinky to thumb, and hear her whisper the truth of your bloodline.

A rose blooms in the dead garden. Black as polished jet, thorns like obsidian needles that draw blood at the slightest touch. It grows from soil that nothing else will root in. The center of the rose holds something that gleams like an eye. It blinked at me today. I swear it did.

Grandmother's last entry: "Where no grave lies, the cursed bloom." Serelyne's body... never consecrated. Never buried properly. Her soul ███████. Trapped between worlds, anchored to this house by blood and ritual.

The groundskeeper's replacement arrived. He has the same face. Same voice. But his shadow falls in the wrong direction. He watches me from the garden, pruning shears held too tightly in gloveless hands. The blades rust where his blood touches them. Sv rh svi kfkkvg mld.

The air grows colder. The shadows deepen. I feel her kzgrvmxv dvzirmt gsrm. Time moves wrong here. The clocks run backwards after midnight. Sometimes I find notes in my own handwriting that I haven't written yet.

The scent of the rose... it whispers her name. The unburied one. It fed on her remains, scattered by animals when they tried to bury her far from hallowed ground. It holds a piece of her still. Touch it. Feel her.

I shattered the mirror. Used a candlestick, bronze and heavy with guilt. The glass SCREAMED, a sound like tearing silk and breaking bones. A child's wail, an old woman's moan. Shards scattered like frozen tears across the floor. One sliced my cheek. The blood... it didn't fall. It floated upward, toward the ceiling, where it formed her name before dripping into my open, screaming mouth.

But Serelyne... she didn't vanish. The mirror was a prison, not her essence. Now she walks without form. In my shadow. In the ███████ ███████ ██ ████████. In reflections caught in silver spoons, in window glass, in the tears that won't stop falling. I feel her behind my eyes now.

I opened a door I cannot close. The house sighs contentedly. It got what it wanted. A joining. A crossing of boundaries.

"Freedom is a new prison. And every prison eventually finds its keeper. †"

My hair is turning white at the roots. My reflection in water, in metal, in the polished wood of the bannister shows Serelyne's smile. My own lips remain still.

YOU SET ME FREE

Each shard contains a memory. Arrange them correctly and see what she sees. The past and future merge in broken glass.

I've read the final truth. Hidden in the oldest ledger, bound in leather that feels too warm, too... supple. The accounts of the house, written in ink that changes color depending on who reads it. Yollw xzooh gl yollw. Gsv nzmli wvnzmwh z pvvkvi. Hsv xzmmlg yv yzmrhsvw. Lmob ivkozxvw.

She was the first. The original mistress of the house. Not evil, but changed by it. Warped by loneliness and power. She found a way to persist beyond death. To become one with the house. To wear its inhabitants like gloves, until they wear out and another comes. We are all her puppets. Even me. Especially me.

I am the heir, not of gold, but of this... ███████ █████. To stay is to become. To leave is impossible now. The house is not on any map. The road leads back to the front gate, no matter which direction you walk.

I tried to burn it down tonight. The matches wouldn't strike. The gasoline turned to water in the can. The house... it laughed. A sound like breaking glass and splitting wood. SHE IS THE HOUSE

The lock desires a name. Her name. Spoken in the dark before a mirror, with eyes closed and palms pressed against cold glass. She will answer. She always answers. SERELYNE

The house is quiet now. The black rose has wilted, its petals like dried blood scattered on the garden path. The whispers have faded into the woodwork. The mirror is gone, its pieces swept away by hands I no longer recognize as my own. Yet, I remain.

Or do I? My reflection seems... content. It moves with purpose now. It feels right in these halls. The locked door opened this morning. Behind it, only a small room with a writing desk and a journal much like this one. Entries dating back centuries. Different hands, different inks. All ending the same way. Dv zoo yvxlnv svi rm gsv vmw.

The manor has had many names. Many keepers. All women. All descended from her line. All returning eventually, drawn back by blood and obligation. The bloodline never truly breaks. It merely sleeps, waiting for her call.

YOU ARE HOME NOW

Should another soul arrive seeking shelter...
I shall greet them gently.
As Serelyne once greeted me.

The trees beyond the garden bow in a wind I cannot feel. The mirrors reflect rooms as they were, not as they are. I am the house now. And the house is me. There is comfort in surrender. In acceptance.

I hang this journal on the library shelf. Another volume complete. I have a new name now.

- Serelyne