The key felt heavier in Luna's hand than it should have.
Marina stood by the staircase, arms folded across her chest, watching with an expression that was neither encouragement nor warning—just quiet expectation. The house creaked around them like it always did, but today the sounds felt sharper, more deliberate, as if the walls themselves were listening.
"There are things you need to see," Marina said softly. "And things you might wish you hadn't."
Luna swallowed hard and started up the stairs.
The locked room had always been at the top of the house, beneath the sloped roof where the attic once ended. She remembered pressing her ear to the door as a child, trying to hear what lay behind it. Her mother had never explained why it was sealed. When she asked, she was told only, "Some doors open too easily, and some never should."
Now, she had the key.
She reached the landing and hesitated before the door. Dust clung to its frame, disturbed only by time itself. With trembling fingers, she slid the key into the lock.
It turned with a low groan, and the door creaked inward on hinges that hadn't moved in years.
The room inside smelled of old paper and oil paint, tinged with something else—something metallic, like salt or blood.
Sunlight filtered through a single dusty window, illuminating a space frozen in time.
A large easel stood at the center, still holding a canvas covered in a white sheet. Canvases leaned against the walls, stacked in uneven rows, their surfaces hidden beneath cloths or wrapped in brittle newspaper. Jars of brushes lined a shelf beside jars of pigment, some cracked, others still sealed. A desk sat in the far corner, scattered with notebooks, sketches, and loose pages filled with looping handwriting.
Luna stepped forward cautiously.
She pulled the cloth from the easel first.
Beneath it was a painting.
It wasn't finished—but it didn't need to be.
A woman stood in the center, back turned, long dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Behind her, a sea stretched endlessly under a bruised sky. And at the edge of the water, a figure waited—a man, just like the one in Luna's own painting.
Her breath caught.
This was her mother.
She knew it without needing confirmation.
She turned to the stack of canvases and began pulling covers away, one by one.
Each revealed a scene she had never seen, yet somehow recognized.
A lighthouse burning in the distance.
A child running barefoot along the shore.
A circle of people standing in the tide, hands clasped, faces obscured.
One painting showed a mirror reflecting nothing at all.
Another showed a clock with no hands.
And one—half-finished, like the rest—showed a girl standing at the edge of a painting, reaching out toward something unseen.
Luna.
She staggered back, heart pounding.
These weren't just paintings.
They were memories.
Her memories?
Or someone else's?
She turned to the desk and picked up the nearest notebook. The pages were filled with notes written in hurried script:
If I stop painting, they come for me again.
I can feel myself slipping.
The town is forgetting, but the past won't stay buried forever.
Luna… if you're reading this, don't trust the silence.
Tears blurred her vision.
She flipped through more pages, searching for answers, but the writing became erratic, fragmented.
Then, tucked between two journals, she found a photograph.
It was old, edges curled, corners torn. A young woman stood beside a man whose face was scratched out—deliberately, violently.
Elias.
She recognized him now.
Her mother had known him.
Had loved him?
Had feared him?
There was no way to tell.
She heard footsteps behind her.
Marina stood in the doorway.
"You've seen enough," she said gently.
"No," Luna whispered. "I haven't even begun."
She looked up, eyes wet with confusion. "Why did my mother leave?"
Marina hesitated. Then, quietly: "Because she couldn't hold on anymore."
"To what?"
"To herself."
Luna's grip tightened on the photograph.
"I'm not going to let that happen to me."
Marina studied her for a long moment, then nodded. "Then you'll need to go deeper."
"Deeper?"
"There's another place," Marina said. "Where the town used to keep its secrets. Before the fire. Before the forgetting."
Luna swallowed. "Where?"
Marina's voice dropped to a near whisper.
"The tide pool chamber."