Sarah didn't sleep that night.
Even after the basement door was locked, even after Ace drew protective sigils at every threshold and window, she couldn't close her eyes. The symbol had embedded itself in her mind, each line burning behind her eyelids.
A gateway.
To what?
She sat curled in the old leather armchair in the study, a blanket draped around her shoulders, fingers tracing through pages of Hal's forbidden books. She hadn't opened these in over a year. Most were bound in leather so worn it flaked like skin. No titles. No authors. Just glyphs stamped onto the covers—symbols not meant for understanding.
But now… she was done pretending not to see.
Ace sat across from her, half-awake, sipping coffee that had long gone cold.
"You sure you want to do this?" he asked quietly.
Sarah looked up.
"I need to know if we're living on top of something that breathes."
Ace gave a faint nod and returned to his own book—one of maps, deeds, and local town records he'd scavenged from the old county archive weeks ago. Back then, they were looking for roots.
Now… they were looking for bones.
Two hours in, Sarah found it.
A brittle page folded between translations of ancient dialects. A sketch in charcoal: the spiral—three interlocking circles, drawn on stone.
Her breath caught.
Below the sketch was a translation.
"The Gate of Hollow Voices. Buried beneath seven steps. Sealed by the drowned and watched by none."
She read it aloud, slowly, letting the words settle like dust.
Ace looked up. "Drowned?"
Sarah flipped the page. There was more—notes scrawled in the margin, different handwriting.
They built over it. Said it would silence the voices. But the ground remembers. It always remembers.
Ace stood, rubbing the back of his neck.
"I pulled a record," he said. "The land this house was built on used to be part of a larger estate in the 1800s. Owned by a family called the Enders. Ever heard of them?"
Sarah shook her head.
"They disappeared," he continued. "All of them. The house burned down. No bodies found."
"Where exactly was their estate?"
Ace handed her the faded township map. He'd circled their property.
Sarah traced the lines.
It was exactly where their current house stood.
Right on top of the old foundation.
By noon, the rain had started again—softer now, but steady, as if the land itself was trying to say something.
Ace found the blueprints of their current home in a filing drawer. They hadn't looked closely before. But now, Sarah could see it.
The basement floor had a sealed section—a part they'd assumed was just solid concrete, a strange thickening in the foundation.
But the original builders had drawn something else beneath it.
Steps.
Seven of them.
Leading down into earth that no longer officially existed.
Sarah stood so fast the chair tipped.
"Get the crowbar," she said.
They returned to the basement an hour later.
Moved boxes. Peeled away layers of paint. Broke through the old drywall concealing the trapdoor they now knew had been there all along.
When Ace forced it open, a gust of air surged upward—dry, cold, ancient.
Sarah gagged. The smell wasn't rot.
It was dust. Time. Forgotten places.
They descended together.
Each step was carved of stone, not wood. Unmarked. Worn smooth from age.
Sarah counted under her breath.
"One… two… three…"
At the seventh, her flashlight flickered.
She stopped.
The room ahead wasn't a room.
It was a chamber.
Circular. Walls carved with hundreds of symbols, none of which matched the ones in Hal's books. These were older. Primitive. Pulsing softly in the flashlight's beam.
In the center, half-buried in the earth, was a stone door.
Flat.
Horizontal.
Like the lid of a coffin.
Sarah knelt beside it.
Faint whispers tickled her ears.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just… curious.
Ace crouched beside her. "What do you hear?"
Sarah blinked. "Not words."
"Then what?"
She looked up.
"Names."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Yours?"
She shook her head.
"No."
She placed her palm flat against the stone.
"They're not calling me."
Her eyes lifted, wide, sharp, full of some recognition that hadn't been there seconds ago.
"They're calling you."
Above them, the mirror upstairs split clean down the center—this time without sound.
And in the attic, where Sarah once banished her reflection…
A door creaked open, though no one had touched it in months.