She forced herself to hold her ground.
“Who else?” she pressed.
The stranger’s gaze flickered to the journal still clutched in her hands.
“You already have your answers,” he murmured.
“You just don’t know how to read them yet.”
The pages in her grip fluttered open, but not to blank parchment. Not to Evelyn’s last words.
To the entries written in her hand.
But Janelle had never written them.
“Had she?” Janelle wondered in the back region of her mind. Janelle’s fingers tightened around the journal, its pages trembling.
“I don’t play games,” she said, stepping closer.
“You’re going to tell me exactly what’s happening here.”
The stranger’s eyes flickered, almost as if amused.
“You don’t play games?” His voice was measured and careful.
“Then why are you here?”
The mansion groaned, the walls stretching as if breathing. Janelle held her ground, even as the corridor behind her shifted again. The air smelled different now, like old ink, damp wood, and something burnt.
“You think you came here by choice?” the stranger continued.
“You’ve been walking toward this place long before you stepped through that front door.”
Janelle swallowed hard.
“What do you mean?”
She hated how her voice almost faltered.
The stranger reached out, not toward her, but toward the journal. His fingers brushed the edge, and Janelle’s handwriting darkened on the page. New words appeared, scrawled in ink she had never written, words in sentences, she had never strung together:
“I was always meant to find this place. To return. To remember.”
The whisper in the room grew sharper now. More voices. Not just one, but many, layered, echoing.
The stranger smiled, sad, knowing, then said, “You’re starting to see,”