The First Mark

Anna didn't remember climbing the stairs.

One moment she was in the basement, clutching Elias's journal and the carved idol to her chest, heart hammering like a fist on a locked door. The next, she was standing in the parlor again—bare feet on warped wood, sweat cooling on her skin.

The trapdoor was still open behind her, gaping like a wound.

The house was silent.

Too silent.

She moved slowly, every creak beneath her foot a gunshot in the stillness. The drawing was still folded in her hoodie pocket. The idol—she'd wrapped it back in the red cloth, stuffed it in the kitchen drawer like that would keep it from feeling. From knowing where she was.

But it did.

She could sense it watching her.

No eyes. No face. Just knowing .

That night, Anna didn't sleep.

She tried. God, she tried. Laid in bed, buried beneath quilts, ears ringing with remembered whispers. At one point, she thought she heard humming—low and tuneless, like a lullaby being sung through broken teeth. She buried her head under the pillow.

Then came the knock.

One knock.

Soft. From under the bed.

She didn't move. Barely breathed.

Then came the second.

Louder. From inside the wall this time.

And then, at exactly 3:17—when the broken grandfather clock let out a dry, mechanical cough—Anna felt something press against the floor beneath her bed.

Not a knock.

Not a whisper.

A hand.

She jumped out of bed and turned on every light in the house.

And that's when she saw the mark.

Burned into the floorboards beside her bed: a perfect circle. Inside it, the same rune from the box. Still glowing faintly—like embers. Like something had just branded the house from the inside.

Anna backed away.

And that's when she noticed something else.

The photos on the mantel—old family photos she didn't remember ever putting there—were different now.

In each one, her eyes were scratched out.

The Boundary. By morning, Anna had made up her mind.

Screw the inheritance. Screw the box, the rune, the whispering—she wasn't going to die in some forgotten family crypt disguised as a farmhouse. She threw her bags together, hands still shaking from the night before.

The front door opened easier than expected. Sunlight spilled onto the porch like nothing was wrong. The gravel driveway was just as she'd left it. Her car waited like a promise.

She took two steps outside.

And the sky went silent.

Not quiet. Silent.

No birdsong. No wind. The sound of leaves ceased mid-rustle. Even the trees looked… stiller than they had any right to. Their branches frozen, unmoving. Like a photograph printed wrong.

Anna hesitated. Turned to look back at the house.

It seemed farther away.

She was sure—absolutely sure—she had only taken a few steps, but now the house looked… small. Distant. Like it had shrunk backward. The porch was just a speck. The windows black holes.

She took another step forward.

And blinked.

She was back on the porch.

Right where she started.

The gravel crunched beneath her again—same stones, same weight. Her car was still there. Still waiting.

She tried again.

One step.

Two.

Three.

Blink.

Porch.

This time, her stomach turned, and she dropped to one knee.

The house had moved her back. Or the land had turned inward. Or time had buckled just enough to make it feel like escape—but not allow it.

The rules had changed.

Or maybe they always were this way.

She tried the back door. Same result.

She smashed a window and climbed through. Landed in the front hallway.

Every path led inward.

The house, she realized, was no longer just a house. It was awake. And it was closing in around her.

Not to trap her.

To prepare her.

She wasn't just an occupant.

She was being made into something else.

Something Dorma could use.

Anna finds lurking within the walls, beneath the floorboards. The Forgotten Basement.

The air in the basement was dense, almost thick, as if the house had been holding its breath for too long. Anna stood at the top of the stairs, her hand gripping the railing so tightly her knuckles turned white. The flashlight in her other hand cast long, wavering shadows against the stone walls as she hesitated.

The basement had always felt off, but she hadn't dared venture down there since her first night. Miriam had kept it sealed off, boards nailed over the door, a rusty lock in place. Anna had thought it was just an old woman's fear of the dark. Now, she wasn't so sure.

The house, though silent, seemed to hum with a hidden energy. A pulse, a vibration too low to hear, but one she could feel beneath her skin. It came from below—beneath the floorboards, beneath the earth.

With a quick breath, Anna descended into the basement. Her feet landed on the uneven steps, the wood creaking loudly under her weight. The smell was musty, damp, tinged with something metallic.

Her flashlight swept across the floor, casting light on piles of old furniture covered in dusty sheets, crates of forgotten belongings. But something caught her attention in the farthest corner—behind a stack of broken chairs and old shelves. A low, blackened shape.

A door.

Not the trapdoor she'd already uncovered, but a second one, smaller, hidden from view. Its frame was warped, cracked with age, and the wood was stained dark, almost like something had bled through it over the years.

As she moved closer, the air grew colder. It felt wrong. There was something alive in the corner. Something waiting.

Anna crouched down, her heart thudding loudly in her ears. She reached for the door's handle. The metal was cool, slick under her fingers, and when she twisted it, the door creaked open with a sound like grinding bone.

Inside was another room—no, a space—beneath the basement, an older level of stone. The walls were lined with shelves filled with jars, glass bottles, and strange, half-decayed remnants of things Anna couldn't recognize. She felt the overwhelming urge to turn back, but something in the farthest corner of the room caught her eye.

A figure.

A woman.

Her face was pale, gaunt, and covered in something wet. Anna's breath caught in her throat as she realized it was not a woman.

It was a corpse.

Or at least, it had been. The figure was a skeleton, now draped in blackened rags, but something had been stitched into the bones. Strange markings, too intricate to be natural, winding across the ribcage, twisting down the spine, and extending to the skull—where the eyes should have been were two hollow, black voids.

The thing was tied to the wall with thick ropes, its skeletal hands curled into fists, as if it had been struggling against its bonds for centuries.

Anna reached forward, compelled by a force she couldn't name, and her fingers brushed the glass of one of the jars.

It rattled.

And suddenly, the room shifted.

The walls seemed to close in, and the air became thick, suffocating. The whispering started again, low and guttural, rising from the shadows. A sound like the rustle of wings. And from the corner, from where the corpse hung, a voice echoed through the stone.

"You shouldn't have come here."