The room around Anna was alive in a way she couldn't explain. The stone walls groaned, the air thick with a buzzing energy that made her skin crawl. She turned her gaze from the bound skeleton, trying to steady her breath, but the whispers were back now, swirling in her ears like a thousand voices speaking at once.
"Youshouldn'thavecomehere."
The voice was softer this time, but still just as unsettling. It was coming from the figure-the corpse, or what was left of it. Its eyes were empty sockets, but Anna felt as if it were looking straight at her.
Her feet felt frozen to the stone floor, like the weight of the house itself was pressing down on her. The corpse's hands, still bound to the wall, twitched slightly, a small movement in the stillness of the room. She couldn't look away.
Whathappenedhere? The question burned in her mind, but the air was thick, suffocating, and she didn't know if it was the house or her own fear closing in on her.
She took a step forward, then another, drawn to the figure in the corner. Every step was heavier than the last, as if something unseen was pulling at her, urging her to come closer.
When she reached the figure, she felt the overwhelming need to touch it-though her gut screamed to run. Her hand hovered just above the ragged fabric that clung to the bones. She wanted to understand. She had to understand.
That was when the second whisper came.
"Themarkisonyounow."
Her pulse spiked, her heart racing as if it had just learned what fear truly was. She had no time to react. A sharp pain exploded in her chest, sudden and searing, and she gasped, clutching at her heart.
In the next moment, she was pulled backward, stumbling, and the world around her seemed to fall away. The walls distorted, twisted into unnatural angles, the shadows deepened, swallowing the room. The corpse-the thing-grew larger, its hollow eyes staring down at her with a deep, cold knowing.
Her breath came in shallow gasps, and her vision blurred. The whispers were louder now, too many voices at once, echoing, calling her.
"We'vebeenwaitingforyou."
Before she could react, a sudden pressure gripped her chest, and she fell to her knees.
The house seemed to be breathing-shifting, pulsing around her.
And then, the third whisper. The one she had been dreading.
It was the same voice that had spoken through the figure in the corner.
"Nowyoubelong."
In a flash, Anna saw it. The figure-no longer bound, now moving. Its face was a blur, but the presence was solid. It stepped toward her, skeletal hands outstretched, the air around it thick with a strange, suffocating weight.
Anna tried to scream, but no sound came. She felt herself falling, falling deeper into the house's grip. Her fingers touched the floor, but the ground felt wrong. Wet. Like she was sinking.
Sinking into something alive.
Her head swam, and the whispers reached a crescendo, growing louder, too loud to bear.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block them out, trying to think, to escape. But the house wasn't going to let her go. Not now.
She felt a hand-cold, bone-chilling-curl around her wrist. The fingers dug into her skin.
Then the world went black.
The one who fed it First, Anna awoke in a room that did not exist on any floorplan.
The walls were made of dark, root-covered stone, slick with moisture, pulsing faintly like veins. No windows. No door. Just the sound of slow dripping and the distant rhythm of something breathing. Or moving.
The whispers had stopped.
But something was watching.
And then—out of the stillness—a voice spoke, soft and dry as dust:
"Shewasthefirst. Sheinviteditin."
A dim light pulsed above Anna—an oil lamp flickering to life on the wall. In front of her, carved into the stone, was a mural. Crude, ancient, but unmistakably intentional. A woman stood in the center—tall, hooded, with her hand outstretched. Something monstrous—formless and massive—loomed over her, its limbs unfurling like smoke. Her face was carved with reverence, not fear.
Above the image, words etched in Latin:
"Egosumostium. Egosummensa. Dormavenitperme."
I amthedoor. I am the table. Dorma comes through me.
Anna felt the words in her bones.
The woman's name was Evelyn Morwen—the true origin of the bloodline, long before Elias. A heretic midwife, exiled in the 1600s. It was she who summoned Dorma first—not to feed it, but to bargain.
The townspeople wrote her off as mad.
But they never knew how deep her house's foundations went.
Over time, it grew—flesh and stone, timber and shadow. The house above was just a shell. Beneath it: Dorma'scathedral, built with rituals and sacrifice.
Evelyn didn't just feed it.
She wed it.
Bound it to her bloodline.
Every woman in the family carried a sliver of that pact. Anna included.
She was never here by accident. The house didn't call her back. It broughtherhome.
The mural shifted. Not with animation—something deeper. The longer Anna stared, the more she saw. Another figure etched into the background, smaller. Watching from the shadows.
The next in line.
The mural was stillgrowing .
Anna found it sealed inside a hollowed-out rafter behind the stone mural. Wrapped in leather so old it cracked like dried skin. The clasp was bone. Not animal.
Human.
She didn't want to open it.
But she already had.
The pages weren't paper—they were vellum, waxed and yellowed. Handwritten in a language older than English. Older than Latin. But she could read it.
She shouldn't have been able to.
The first page bore a title, scrawled in rust-red ink:
The Covenant of Hollow Roots
By my blood, and by the Silence That Listens
The entries began like a confession, or a love letter. But they grew darker—deliberate. Calculated.
Continue with Evelyn's Journal – The Binding of Dorma. Entry:October13, YearoftheBlackComet.
I stood beneath the earth and called its name not with words, but with absence. Dorma heard. Dorma came.
I did not flinch, as the others did. I was not afraid. Where they saw a maw, I saw a mirror.
I was the first to feed it. Not with meat. Not with blood. But with story.
It feeds on memory. On the weight of meaning. On the things we bury and pretend we've forgotten.
I gave it the memory of my child, stillborn under a harvest moon.
It grew stronger with each detail: her eyes, never opened. Her name, never spoken. Her tiny heart, that never knew fear.
And in return, Dorma gave me this house.
Anna turned the page, hands trembling.
What followed were diagrams—runes drawn in circles, floorplans layered like a labyrinth. Not architectural. Anatomical. The house wasn't built—it was grown, piece by piece, fed by grief and sacrifice.
And at the heart of it: the WombRoom. A space buried so deep that no stairs could reach it. A place where Dorma rested between feedings.
The next entry was written in a different hand—shakier. As if Evelyn had aged a century overnight.
Entry: Final
I fear now what I have made.
It has begun to whisper through the wood. Through the cradle. Through the teeth in the walls.
It knows I plan to seal it. To bury it in sleep, with the root circle and the salt blood.
It says: You are not the door. You are the wood.
If my line survives, tell them: Dorma cannot be stopped. Only sated. Only lulled.
And never more than three times must it speak your name.
If it says your name three times—
You are already inside it.
Anna dropped the journal.
Behind her, the walls gave a low groan.
And somewhere—beyond wood, beyond stone—Dorma whispered her name for the secondtime.