The House of Hollow Echoes

Sara didn't know how long the journey lasted. Time bled into itself like ink in water—dark, expanding, formless.

The car stopped.

The silence that followed felt like a noose.

Her heart beat so loudly in her chest it nearly drowned out her fear. They dragged her out—barefoot, bound, her mouth sealed with silver tape. Cold wind bit at her skin like a thousand invisible insects. She lifted her head, just enough to glimpse her new prison.

It was not a facility. It was not a cell.

It was a manor.

A forgotten mansion in the middle of nowhere, cloaked in rotting ivy and crawling shadows. The structure stood like a corpse that had learned to breathe again—its windows were hollow eyes, the doors gaping jaws. Moss devoured the stonework. Shards of stained glass hung in the frames like the remnants of shattered memories.

The place didn't speak.

It listened.

Two men in black coats pulled her forward, each footstep echoing like distant thunder against the cracked, tiled floors. The scent of mildew and iron filled her nose. Somewhere beneath the decaying perfume of time, she smelled blood. Old blood. Memory-blood.

The manor was alive with silence.

Not peaceful silence—but the kind that watches. The kind that remembers. The kind that waits to devour.

Sara's tears blurred the world as they dragged her down a hallway lined with broken portraits. The eyes of painted women followed her. Some were burned away. Others scratched out. All of them broken.

At the end of the hall, a spiral staircase descended into the earth like a throat swallowing light.

They took her there.

Each step down was like being unstitched.

Deeper. Darker.

Colder.

They brought her into a narrow corridor made of black brick. Chains dangled from the ceiling like pendulums. Whispers stirred in the air—but not from mouths. The walls whispered. The very stones murmured names long forgotten.

And then… they reached the chamber.

It was a room without time. Without light.

Only the flickering breath of a single lantern illuminated what stood within: a steel bed chained to the floor. A basin of water too dark to reflect. A cage in the corner. A mirror cracked down the middle.

They unbound her.

Sara collapsed to her knees, her legs too weak to stand. Her lips trembled as the tape was torn away. She didn't speak. The silence had found a home in her throat.

A figure emerged from the shadows. Not the man from the car—but someone worse.

A woman.

Tall, skeletal, dressed in mourning black. Her eyes were a storm of empty galaxies. Her lips were stitched with cold amusement.

—"Welcome back, Sara," she whispered. "Our imperfect flower."

Sara looked up slowly, trembling. Her soul had already begun to shatter.

—"Why…?" she managed to whisper.

The woman knelt beside her and brushed a strand of hair from her face like a mother would a child.

—"Because you dared to bloom without permission."

She stood.

—"You will learn, once more, the sacred trinity: silence, submission, service. And when you are worthy again… perhaps you'll forget that you ever thought yourself free."

Chains sang in the background, metal on metal—a lullaby of imprisonment.

Sara felt her breath catch. Every part of her screamed inside, but no sound escaped.

She had given herself to save Nick. To save Ana and Anthony.

And now, she was alone in the womb of the abyss.

The door shut behind her with a sound like the ending of a prayer.

And the house of hollow echoes swallowed her whole.