Evelyn didn't sleep.
The sheets smelled like Elias.
The mirror reflected her with Lenore's eyes.
The house murmured all night long—like a thousand mouths just behind the walls.
At sunrise, she made her choice.
She would not become a ghost in someone else's story.
She started in the attic.
The journals had grown more erratic. Some no longer had words—only ink-blots in the shape of mouths, screaming silently from the page. Others bled when she turned them.
But one was different.
It was newer.
Bound in red velvet.
Inside: a single entry. Her own handwriting.
She hadn't written it.
"I dreamed I drowned in rose petals. They filled my mouth, my lungs, my womb. I liked it. He watched. He didn't stop it. That's how I knew it was love."
She tore the page out.
It grew thorns in her hand and cut her fingers.
The paper laughed.
Back downstairs, Elias was waiting in the library, pacing.
"You're changing," he said as she entered. "Your eyes were gray when you got here. They're darker now. Almost black."
She didn't flinch. "Lenore's color."
He nodded. "Yes."
"She's not a memory. She's in me."
"I know."
"And she hates me."
"She doesn't know how to let go. I don't think any of us do."
Evelyn stepped closer. "Tell me how to stop this."
"You can't. But maybe you can survive it."
"Then show me how."
He looked at her—truly looked—like he was seeing something he'd feared and longed for at once.
"There's a room in the west wing," he said. "It was sealed after Lenore died. No one's gone in since."
"What's inside?"
"The truth."
The hallway to the west wing was colder than the rest of the house. Time felt thinner there, like the air was brittle and full of ash.
The door at the end was carved with roses, each one wilted in wood.
Elias gave her the key.
She turned it.
The lock screamed.
Inside was a chapel.
Long-abandoned. Candles melted to stumps. Pews covered in dust and cobwebs.
And at the altar—
A cradle.
Empty.
No. Not empty.
Inside lay a bundle of black lace, wrapped tight like a corpse.
She stepped closer.
And saw the inscription carved into the cradle's base:
"Lenore Annabel Ravenshade, Stillborn."
Evelyn's breath caught.
"She lost a child," she whispered.
Elias stood beside her. "She blamed me."
"Was it your child?"
He nodded. "And the house's."
"What?"
"She'd been changing. Even before the birth. The house was feeding on her grief, shaping her body into something it could use."
Evelyn felt nauseous. "You said you loved her."
"I did. But I didn't recognize her anymore. Not by the end."
He looked at her then, voice low, breaking.
"She screamed during labor—not from pain, but from fear. She said the baby whispered to her from inside. Said it wasn't a child. Said it wanted me."
Evelyn whispered: "What was it?"
"I don't know. I never looked. After it died… she stopped sleeping. She started calling herself a bride of the house. And then one night, I woke to find her standing over me with a knife."
He didn't continue.
He didn't need to.
Evelyn sat in the chapel long after Elias left.
She touched the cradle gently.
Felt the air shift.
And then—
A wail.
Thin. High. Terrible.
It came from the cradle.
From inside the bundle.
The lace moved.
She staggered back, choking on the scent of roses and rot.
The bundle twitched again. Unraveled slowly.
Inside was nothing.
No bones. No doll.
Just a note.
She picked it up.
"If you carry it, it will be yours. If you deny it, it will return. Choose wisely."
That night, Evelyn stood naked in front of the mirror.
She traced her fingers down her own body.
Everything felt the same.
Except her womb.
It burned.
She wasn't pregnant.
She was haunted.
Lenore wasn't just in her mind.
She was trying to be born again.
Through her.
And Elias?
Elias still whispered her name in his sleep.
[End of Chapter 10]