The piano was ancient.

A beast of blackwood and ivory, covered in dust and sorrow, tucked against a crumbling stone wall in a room that should not have existed.

Briar stood frozen, the air sharp against her skin. Her fingers still hovered near the candleflame, trembling from what she had just heard—what he had said.

She wasn’t afraid of shadows.

But she was afraid of recognition.

I. Who is Thorne Graves?

He stepped fully into view.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. But deliberately—a man born of the manor’s marrow. His presence was carved, not built: lean but powerful, clad in black sleeves pushed to the elbows. Skin pale like stone worn smooth, hair tousled as though sleep and storm had fought for it. His eyes—obsidian cut with ice—locked onto her with a quiet intensity that left no space for lies.

“You don’t remember me,” he said, voice low, textured like smoke.
“I do.”
“Every version of you. Every night. Every name you almost became before you grew teeth.”

Briar’s lips parted, but no sound came.

Because now… she did remember.

A boy in the walls. A lullaby in reverse. A whisper beneath the bed. She had dismissed them as nightmares. Childhood trauma. The mind’s defense against unspeakable things.

But Thorne Graves wasn’t just a memory.

He had stayed.

II. The Secret Ward:

Over the next hour—though it felt like a hundred quietly burning minutes—he explained. And Briar listened. Not with her ears.

With the part of her that had always known she was being watched. Protected. Haunted.

The Castellans had once owned Blackthistle—centuries ago. Thorne was the last born under the old blood rite. Not quite a servant, not quite kin. A witness child, they called him. Meant to remember what the family wanted to forget.

Her mother had tried to save him. Her aunt had tried to erase him.

They failed in opposite directions.

So he remained.

When he spoke of the house, he didn’t describe it like property. He spoke of it like a lover mourning itself.

“It remembers more than walls should. It keeps the fingerprints of everyone who ever bled in its name.”

He said he could feel Briar’s presence the moment she stepped through the gate.

She wasn’t the heir.

She was the trigger.

III. Why the House Needed Her?

Briar traced the room’s perimeter while he spoke. Symbols had been carved into the stones—wards, old runes, sigils soaked in iron and grief. The room had been both a shelter and a cage.

“What did they do to you?” she asked softly.

He smiled at that.

A slow, cruel thing. Not directed at her—but at the memory that had stitched itself into his flesh.

“They taught me how to sit quietly while something inside me screamed.”

Thorne hadn’t just been hidden away.

He had been bound to the manor—to absorb what it couldn’t contain. The memories. The sins. The rituals too dirty to burn and too sacred to forget. He became a vessel.

And now, with her return, the tether had fractured.

She wasn’t here to save him.

“You were always going to come back,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because the house doesn't let you go.
And I am the part of it never let you unlove.”

IV. The First Touch.

She should have left.

She should have screamed.

Instead, Briar moved toward the piano. Toward him.

Her hand grazed the edge of the instrument, fingertips ghosting over the keys. Vyre stood inches behind her. She could feel the heat of him—not just body, but rage. Loneliness aged like wine into hunger.

“Are you real?” she whispered.

He leaned down, mouth grazing her ear.

“Press a key, Briar. If the house sings, I’m real.”

She pressed one.

The note echoed—not just in the room.

But inside her chest.

V. Unravelling.

That night, she couldn’t sleep.

The walls exhaled in slow breath. Her veins pulsed with a craving she didn’t understand. Part fear. Part ache. Part… calling.

She dreamt of stone hands pulling her into red water. Of violins strung with her hair. Of lips that tasted like war and whispered confessions in a voice that wasn’t his—but belonged to all the men she never dared want.

When she woke, a single message was carved into the condensation on the mirror:

“You opened the door.
Now it’s my turn.”

~TO BE CONTINUED....🥀🕯️🖤