The house didn't burn.
It should have by all logic, by all fuel, by all fire Iris had struck every match left in the box, tossed them in arcs like a blessing and a curse.
She'd watched the kitchen curtains go up, the old newspapers on the floor curl into black lace. And still—
The house didn't burn.
Only the matches did.
The fire had stopped at the threshold of the hallway, guttering out as if some unseen mouth had sucked the air from the flames.
Now, the charred remains of the matchbox lay in the shape of a twisted emblem on the floor, and the walls breathed slowly like lungs not quite dead.
Iris stood in the center of it, black soot clinging to her skin like blood and her hands were raw.
Her nails were cracked, her breath fogged in the cold that should not have been there.
She wasn't alone.
The sense of it was thick, almost oily not just being watched, being weighed and judged.
Each tick of the ancient grandfather clock echoed like a verdict.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
A shape stood in the far corner of the living room, just beyond the reach of the scorched lamp light, tall, slender and motionless.
Not there when she blinked, very much there when she didn't.
"What do you want?" she whispered, not to the figure, but to the house, her voice shook, but it didn't echo.
The air grew heavier, not colder, but denser like gravity had thickened, like she was breathing syrup.
Her legs refused to move, and her vision wavered at the edges.
She blinked again.
Her mother's journal lay open on the coffee table, she hadn't left it there.
The pages fluttered despite the stillness.
Page 47.
To light a match is to invite them, to burn one wrong is to bind yourself, to burn them all... is to open the door.
The journal began to bleed.
Not ink.
Not blood, either something darker and thicker.
A shadow that crawled across the pages, forming letters not written by any human hand Iris staggered forward, compelled despite herself.
The matchmaker was never human.
The words pulsed and the shape in the corner moved.
Not a step, not a shift, it simply appeared closer and closer than before.
She could see the outline of its head now. Antlers? Branches? Hair? It didn't matter. Her body turned cold from the inside out.
The mirror on the far wall cracked.
Her reflection stood still.
But she did not.
Iris turned away from the mirror only to find herself staring at her reflection in the hallway again.
No mirror, just herself, waiting.
Then, it spoke.
"You invited them."Iris's voice.
"They accepted."
The lights failed all at once and the house plunged into darkness.
Not black, but a red kind of dark like the glow behind closed eyes, like the inside of a furnace.
From within it came the sound of a hundred matches striking all at once.
And laughter.
Her mother's laughter.
But distorted, as if played backward.
"Iris, darling," the voice sang, "You were always the brightest flame."
She opened her mouth to scream and swallowed smoke.
A door opened behind her, the attic.
It hadn't been there before.
She turned slowly, one match, just one.
Still untouched, still clean, sitting on the bottom step like a gift.
Her fingers moved on their own, she picked it up and held it.
A whisper in her ear: Light it and see.
She struck it.
The world inverted.
Walls turned inside out, the floors became ceilings.
Her skin glowed like coal, and in the attic sat a cradle, empty and still rocking.
Then the thing from the corner stepped forward at last and Iris understood:
She had never been alone, not since birth, not in life and definitely not in death.
She had been matched.
And now the house was hers.
Forever.