Long before Jason entered the forest, before the house chose him, there were secrets passed down through generations—hidden in journals, old letters, and memories whispered between dusk and dreams. This is the first of those lost pages: the beginning of Evelyn Miller's forgotten story.
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Ashroot Village, Year 1942
Evelyn was only thirteen when she first saw the house in the woods. It appeared to her during a thunderstorm, rising from the fog like a ghost. No one in Ashroot spoke of it, but children dared one another to find it. They called it "The House Between Trees."
Her grandmother, Agnes Miller, had once warned her: "There are places where time folds. Stay on the path, child, or the forest will fold you with it."
But Evelyn had never liked rules.
That night, chasing a flickering light she thought was a firefly, Evelyn wandered off the path.
The light danced deeper into the trees. Raindrops slid down her coat as branches snapped behind her. When she tried to turn back, the way was gone.
Then she saw it.
A house of crooked windows and stone walls. The chimney breathed faint smoke. The front door creaked open on its own.
She should have run. Instead, she stepped inside.
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Inside, the air was still and heavy. There was no dust, as though the house had been waiting.
A music box sat on a table in the entry hall.
When Evelyn touched it, her vision flashed white.
She was no longer in the house. She stood on the edge of a great black lake under a blood-red moon. Across the lake, someone called her name. A boy. A voice she did not recognize but felt like home.
She blinked and returned to the room, the music box silent.
That night, Evelyn did not sleep. She wrote her experience in a secret journal, one she kept hidden in the back of her closet, behind loose floorboards. Each visit to the house brought more questions, more flashes of other times, other lives.
Over the years, she returned to the house, never telling her parents. She met the Housekeeper Spirit once, who told her:
"You carry the seal, Evelyn. Your blood is marked. And one day, you must guide the Seeker."
She never forgot those words.
Decades later, as an old woman, she watched her grandson Jason stare into the same woods. She gave him her journal and whispered the warning once more:
"Stay on the path."
But some paths are meant to be lost.