The envelope hadn't moved.
Still there on her desk, sealed with no address.
No return stamp. No handwriting. Just a black wax seal shaped like a crescent turned backward — a symbol she didn't recognize.
Ayla stared at it for five minutes that morning.
Then she picked it up and burned it.
But before the flames consumed the thick parchment, three words flashed in silver:
"Wren's Hollow. Midnight."
No one knew who owned the tower at the edge of Wren's Hollow.
Not the city. Not the banks. Not the real estate developers who'd once circled it like vultures.
The deeds were blank. The records gone.
And the last three men who tried to claim it either went mad… or vanished.
Which is exactly why Ayla wanted it.
The air near the building didn't move.
Wind hit its sides and went still. Birds never perched on the ledges. Even the city's thick, humming chaos seemed to hold its breath around the lot.
Ayla stood across the street with her usual weapons:
Silence. A cup of black coffee. And a spirit who once died inside a well.
"This one's… different," whispered Corren, the ghost beside her, flickering faintly in the morning light.
"Different how?" she asked.
"It remembers."
The tower was thirty stories tall, wrapped in blackened glass, its once-glorious sign shattered and covered in ivy.
But as Ayla stepped inside, the air shifted. It didn't get colder.
It got heavier. Like the weight of a thousand stories pressed down at once.
Every step echoed longer than it should have.
Every window was dark — even those facing the sun.
And she could feel it. Something alive in the stillness. Watching.
The ghosts here didn't scream.
They whispered.
They didn't beg for help.
They judged her.
Some hissed names she didn't recognize.
Others called her "usurper."
"Thief."
"Child of the gate."
Corren, floating behind her, started to pull back.
"Ayla… there's something older here. Not like me. Not bound by death. It's…"
He didn't finish.
He vanished.
At the heart of the lobby stood a metal pedestal.
And sitting on it — untouched by dust — was another letter.
Same wax seal. Same crescent.
Inside, no name. Just another message:
"The 13th floor awaits."
She looked up at the elevator.
There were only 12 buttons.
Still, she walked forward.
Pressed the center of the panel.
It lit.
Level 13. Arrival Approved.
The elevator moved like it had a soul.
She didn't feel the floor rising — she felt herself sinking, like into cold water.
Music floated through the walls.
A slow waltz, broken and old.
When the doors opened, there was no hallway.
Only mirrors.
And in the largest pane, she saw him again.
Not his face — just the outline.
The same posture from her dream.
The same dark ring on his hand.
Then gone.
She stepped through.
Lights flickered.
The air shimmered.
And behind her, the mirrors showed words — etched not in glass, but inside it:
"Not yet. But soon, Ayla Serin."
She didn't flinch.
She smiled.
Then turned and said aloud:
"You know my name. But I'll know yours next."
Outside, night fell.
And far above, in another tower, a man traced a symbol into a glass of whiskey —
a crescent turned backward.
End of Chapter 6