A sudden gust of wind sweeps around me, stirring dead leaves across the stone steps. Somewhere beyond the house, a branch snaps underfoot, its sharp crack echoing through the fog like a warning.
The mansion does not stir. It waits. Watches. Patient and eternal in the way only stone that has outlasted generations can.
And here I am, standing before it—a woman wrenched from Barcelona’s sun-drenched perfection, stranded in this fog-heavy, haunted expanse. I chose this place deliberately; it mirrors the state I carry within me. A world where shadows cling and the night never fully releases its grip.
Fog coils thickly around the mansion like a moat made of ghosts. Old yew trees twist upward like blackened hands, clawing at the sky. Their roots lift the earth in gnarled veins, and the wind sighs through their trunks with a low, mournful note.
On the opposite side, a peat bog lies still, glassy under the muted moonlight. Occasional bubbles rise to the surface, tiny disturbances in the silver sheen. Half-fallen fence posts jut out, relics of a forgotten pasture, casting jagged shadows across the water.
Behind the mansion, the ruins of a chapel stand, skeletal and mournful. Only the stone arch remains intact; the rest is rubble,vines climbing over weathered gravestones whose names have long since eroded into dust.
Above it all, the Highlands loom—massive, ancient forms that rise and vanish into the fog. At night, the hills press in unnaturally close, encircling the mansion like watchful sentinels, silent witnesses to everything below.
And through it all, silence stretches. A silence so dense it feels physical, pressing against the skin and lungs. A silence that tastes like loneliness, distilled and turned into weather, draping the world in its weight.
When I step inside, the door closes behind me with a weighty thud that reverberates through the entire mansion, as if the house itself acknowledges my presence.
There are no electric lights here—only flickering lanterns in wrought-iron sconces and candles perched in silver holders, blackened and tarnished with age. Their flames stretch and shiver, painting the walls with elongated shadows that crawl and twist.
I move into the main hall, a shiver running down my spine despite the warmth. Stone walls are draped with faded tapestries, their subjects hunting scenes and storm-lashed seas frozen in thread. Some hang crooked, tilting from the weight of age, while the bottoms rot where moisture has crept in silently over the years.
A grand staircase dominates the center of the hall. Its banister is carved with twisting vines and mythical beasts, the wood blackened with time, polished only where countless hands have grazed it over lifetimes.
There’s something unique about this mansion, something that resonates with the hollowness I carry. It mirrors me in a way my old sunlit apartment in Barcelona never could. If someone had asked me years ago whether I’d live in a place like this, I would have laughed in disbelief. Now, it feels almostnecessary—a shelter for the parts of me I refuse to show the world.
Long corridors stretch from the entrance like arteries, their floors layered with threadbare Persian carpets, worn thin in the middle, edges curling like old scars. These are my favorites. When I first bought the mansion, it was full of things—curiously functional—but I replaced most of them with my own hands.
I climb the staircase, muscles protesting with every step. I always plan to take a short walk after dinner, but the thoughts push me to wander for hours. Every day, I hope the movement will dull them, make life easier, and give me a moment of peace.
It never does. Ignorance is bliss until I return to an empty house and lie awake, staring at the ceiling, the silence amplifying the chaos in my head.
James, my new handler, comes occasionally, dropping off a new assignment. But it’s never the same as the work I did for The Order—those jobs were constant, dangerous, meaningful in ways these new tasks cannot touch. Now, James visits only once a month, a fleeting reminder of the life I no longer fully inhabit.
I’m not consumed by bloodlust anymore. Killing does not stir the fire it once did. Nothing does. The world is dull, flattened, and even the things that once gave me purpose are muted. I move through it all, existing, but never feeling the way I used to.
After we took down The Order, I went silent. For a while, I drifted through a dull, airless existence in a Paris apartment, mostly dissolving into the walls.
But pain has a way of growing teeth. It gnawed until I snapped, spiraling into a hundred reckless choices that should have killed me.
Drugs. Alcohol. Parties where the lights blurred and the music pounded like a heartbeat I no longer had. I lost count of how many times Dante pulled me out of the jaws of something ugly.
I knew he was watching me—I wasn’t that far gone. But I didn’t know the bastard would sprint through neon-soaked clubs to find me half-conscious, legs limp, dragging me out before I collapsed entirely.
Every time he carried me back to my apartment, I tore into him.
I slapped him. Screamed. Shoved him away with every ounce of venom I had left.
And he took it. Every single time. And he didn’t say a word.
Every morning, I woke up to a glass of water on my nightstand, a Tylenol beside it, and a bouquet of pink spider lilies. The room was thick with his scent—but he was gone.
And just like that, each time I fell into the pit, he came for me. It didn’t matter how feral I became or what poison I spat at him—he showed up anyway.
Eventually, I slowed down. The damage shrank to a few bottles of wine at home, rather than another night of testing how close I could get to death without tipping in. The drugs had given me a momentary escape, a doorway that always led me to the same cliff’s edge—gasping, vomiting, shaking, staring into a void that wanted nothing from me but surrender.
I cross the upstairs hall, a shadowed reflection of the one below. This one has a grand piano in the corner, its lid closed, keys the color of old ivory. A few sheets of music rest on top, curling at the edges like dried petals.
As I walk past—like always—one sheet shifts, sliding a fraction as if brushed by unseen fingers. I sigh under my breath, muttering for whatever ghost lingers here to go fuck itself before moving on.
