There is a kind of house that does not sleep.
It breathes in silence.
Sweat rots through wallpaper.
Cracks its bones beneath your feet.
It doesn't want to be sold.
It doesn't want to be seen.
It wants to be remembered.
And when the wrong soul enters it… it wakes.
Ayla stood before it on a windless night.
The Greybourne Estate.
Old money. Older secrets.
Three stories tall, sunken into the earth like a wound. Bricked-shut windows. A gate that opened only for blood. The last known owners had all vanished, one by one, over thirty years. Some whispered it was cursed. Others simply said, It feeds.
Damian had asked her to skip this one.
Said it was too dangerous. That his men wouldn't even go near it. That the documents refused to be signed unless bled on.
But Ayla said yes.
Because something had been calling her in dreams.
A voice like her mother's.
A face like her own.
A scream, cut short.
The house groaned as she stepped in.
Not the sound of wood settling.
The sound of bones.
She moved slowly. Spiral chalked in her pocket. A rusted silver nail tied around her neck. One of the few things that still carried her great-grandfather's scent — the guardian spirit who had once saved her mother from the evil Ayla now felt lurking in the walls.
She spoke aloud.
"I don't want to fight you."
A light flickered upstairs.
Footsteps.
Not human.
She reached the second floor and found a ballroom soaked in shadows. The chandelier swayed, though there was no wind. The mirrors around the room showed no reflection. Not even hers.
And then, the room shifted.
The floor stretched. The doors sealed. The air bent sideways.
And the ghosts came.
They didn't walk. They crawled.
Twisted bodies of the family that once owned the house. Their mouths are sewn shut. Their hands blackened. Their eyes burned from within, lit by something that wasn't them anymore.
Ayla backed against the wall.
"No," she said. "You don't belong here. Not like this."
The silence screamed.
Then the house itself lunged.
She doesn't remember all of it.
Only fire. Cold fire.
A pressure behind her eyes that felt like someone was watching through her. A weight on her chest that tasted like death.
And then—she heard him.
Not a ghost. Not a man.
A presence.
Deep. Calm. Dangerous.
"You have power," it whispered. "But you do not own it."
Ayla staggered. "Who are you?"
A pause.
Then:
"I am what you could become if you stop pretending to be small."
And for a moment, Ayla saw herself.
Older. Sharper. Clad in black and gold. A crown of shadows. Surrounded by both the living and the dead.
She blinked—
And woke up outside the house, bleeding from the nose, arms scraped, a spiral burned into the ground around her.
The house was silent.
Empty.
Dead.
She had survived.
But not alone.
That night, as Damian found her slumped against a wall outside the estate, barely conscious, he saw it too:
A mark was burned onto her palm.
A spiral within a circle, ringed by ancient runes.
The same symbol is carved into the old spirit tablets of the underworld clans. The same one her great-grandfather had worn when he'd vanished into fire to save her mother.
Not just a ward.
A claim.
Something had marked her.
Something old. Something powerful.
Something is waiting.
Weeks passed.
But Ayla didn't rest.
She trained harder. Learned old blood rites. Met with silent monks who read fate in cracked mirrors. Searched ruins for answers. Built a secret room beneath one of her towers — a chamber of iron and salt, hidden even from Damian.
The world had opened a door.
She didn't plan to close it.
Not yet.
And far away, across the city skyline, another tower stood — clean, cold, pristine.
Inside, a man watched her from behind tinted glass.
He wore tailored black. A cufflink shaped like a wolf. A reputation built on real estate conquest and legal wars.
He knew of her.
He'd heard stories.
And every time their paths almost crossed, he watched her walk away.
With curiosity.
With admiration.
And something deeper.
He smiled once, just faintly.
And said aloud to no one:
"Interesting."
End of Chapter 4