Chapter 2 – Cracks in the Floorboards
Part I: The Uneven Step
The morning light crawled into Blackwood Hall like it was trespassing.
It slipped through the dirty panes, weak and yellow, casting long, fractured beams that touched little and warmed less. The house, for its part, did not welcome the sun. It groaned as it always had, muttering old secrets into the bones of the floor, retreating into its corners like a sick animal.
Morrigan stood at the threshold of the parlor, hands tight around the curve of her cane. She hadn't slept. Not really. She had drifted in and out of something that felt like sleep but tasted like waiting.
The doll had remained still since dawn. It still sat on her desk upstairs, facing the corner, though more than once she'd glanced up from her tea and thought it had turned slightly again. She wasn't sure anymore. Her certainty had frayed sometime in the night, and now every shadow seemed to lean in, curious.
Her body ached. Not in the usual, dull echo of her condition, but with something deeper—like the house's heaviness had seeped into her bones while she wasn't looking.
She stepped into the parlor. Her cane tapped against the worn floorboards. Tap, step. Tap, step. The rhythm was second nature, like breathing, or remembering. Dust rose in gentle clouds with every footfall.
The rug she'd rolled back the day before was still bunched near the hearth, the boards beneath stained and splintered. She eyed the spot where she'd found the doll, now hidden beneath another layer of silence. But she wasn't looking for the doll now.
Something else had been there. She could feel it.
She took a step toward the center of the room—and her cane dipped suddenly.
The tip sank into a narrow gap between boards that hadn't been there yesterday. She froze.
Then carefully, she pressed her heel down on the same spot. The board gave way with a subtle bend and a hollow creak.
Her pulse quickened.
She moved slowly, kneeling with practiced caution. Her joints screamed in protest, but she ignored them. Her hand brushed over the warped wood, fingers tracing the faint line between one board and the next.
There it was.
A seam.
Not fresh. Not clean. This one was older than the one that had concealed the doll. Cruder. Deeper. It had been built to stay shut.
Morrigan ran her fingers along the groove, feeling for any catches. There was a notch—barely visible—near the far edge. She fetched a small chisel from the shelf where her mother's tools still sat, untouched, and wedged it into the crack.
The board resisted.
Then gave way with a sound like a sigh.
Dust rushed upward, dry and bitter. She waved it away, coughing, eyes stinging. Beneath the loose board lay a cavity deeper than she expected—at least two feet down. The inside was lined with felt, now eaten away by moths and time, and at its center lay something wrapped in deep violet velvet.
Morrigan's breath caught.
She reached in with both hands and pulled it free.
It was heavy. Thicker than a book. Multiple spines pressed together and bound with a cord of silver thread, tarnished now to a storm-cloud grey. She carried the bundle carefully to the hearth and sat on the floor, the journals cradled in her lap.
The thread unwound like it remembered how.
She unfolded the velvet, revealing three worn volumes. Their covers were black, the leather cracked with age, and the edges of each page were stained as though with dried tears—or dried ink.
The first volume bore no title.
But inside the cover, written in faded silver ink, were the words:
"To the daughter I will never meet,
but who will inherit all that I could not forget—
—Ilverion Blackwood."
Morrigan's throat closed.
She looked again at the name, touching it gently, like the shape of it might vanish if she applied too much pressure. Her father. The ghost of her life. She'd grown up hearing only fragments—whispers of an elven man her mother had loved, who had vanished before Morrigan could remember. No letters. No visits. Just a name spoken once, then buried beneath sorrow.
And now, here he was.
Ink. Pages. And the weight of everything left unsaid.
She opened to the first page.