The village of Ashford was a study in shadows and damp. Before anything could be seen, it was heard: the relentless, steady drip of water and the hollow tap of a lone branch against glass. As the twilight took hold, the world resolved into the grain of wet, black wood and rain streaking diagonally across the view.
Elara leaned against the side of a building, the collar of her leather jacket turned up against the damp as she caught her breath. At twenty-two, her face was pale, her piercing blue eyes heavy with exhaustion. Her fingers, trembling slightly from the cold, fumbled in her inside pocket.
She pulled out a single sheet of paper, folded and refolded so many times the creases had become as soft as cloth. It was weathered and stained at the edges with the remnants of old coffee. Shielding it from the drizzle with her body, she unfolded it carefully. The handwriting inside was frantic, scrawled in smudged ink.
In her mind, she could still hear her brother's voice, whispering and strained: "Elara. If you're reading this, I've gone to Ashford. Don't follow the stories they tell about that place. Follow the silence. There's a manor… Blackwood. The answers are here. I know it now. The shadows… they aren't empty."
A sharp, sudden gust of wind snatched at the paper. Elara's knuckles turned white as her grip tightened. She looked up, her eyes scanning the empty, fog-choked lane.
This was Ashford.
Gas-lit lamps cast weak, trembling pools of light onto cobblestones slick with rain and a faint, pulsing phosphorescent moss. The buildings were ancient stone things, hunched together with windows like suspicious eyes. No people walked the streets; the only movement was the slow, heavy crawl of the mist.
Elara shoved the letter back into her pocket with a sharp, final motion. She pushed off the wall, her combat boots making no sound on the wet stones. She was a lone splash of muted color in a world of grey and black.
As she walked, she passed a market stall where the canvas canopy sagged under the weight of the rain. The wares were unsettling: twisted roots resembling gnarled hands, jars of preserved creatures with too many legs, and feathers that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it.
She approached the only source of warm light in the village: a sign creaking on rusty hinges that read THE WEARY TRAVELER INN. Through the leaded glass window, a stout man—Innkeeper Gerald—wiped a tankard with a cloth. He looked up as Elara's shadow fell across the threshold. His friendly, rosy-cheeked face remained unchanged, but his eyes held a flicker of something ancient and wary.
He gave a slow, almost imperceptible shake of his head. It wasn't a greeting; it was a warning.
Elara ignored it. Her hand reached for the iron door handle.
"You'll not find what you're looking for in there, girl," a voice rasped from the deep shadows of an alleyway beside the inn. It sounded as dry as dead leaves.
Elara froze, her hand hovering an inch from the handle. She turned her head slowly.
In the alley, Old Man Harris leaned on a gnarled walking stick, his bushy white beard collecting the gloom. The ancient lantern at his feet didn't cast light so much as push the darkness back a few reluctant inches. The flame guttered, casting frantic shadows across his sunken face.
"And what is it you think I'm looking for?" Elara asked, her voice low and steady.
Harris's lips stretched into a thin, humorless smile. "Answers. Truth. Your brother."
The words hit Elara like a physical blow. A tiny, almost invisible crack appeared in her determined facade—a single, nervous twitch of her right eye.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Just an old man who knows better than to stick his hand in a hornet's nest," Harris replied. "That letter you clutch so tight… it's a key. But some doors, once opened, cannot be closed."
He gestured with his chin past the inn, toward the lane that sloped out of the village and into the oppressive wall of the forest.
"The house on the hill has been waiting. It's always waiting. It doesn't care for your reasons. Only your presence." He picked up his lantern. The flame inside shrank and dimmed, as if frightened. "Turn back. While you still can."
Without another word, he turned and limped back into the swallowing darkness of the alley. The sound of his uneven footsteps and the creak of his stick faded into the patter of the rain.
Elara was left alone in the silence, save for the drip, drip, drip from the eaves. She looked at the inn door, then turned her gaze toward the path Harris had indicated. Down the lane, through the skeletal trees and perched on a distant hill, the jagged, black silhouette of Blackwood Manor cut into the bruised purple sky.
A single, determined breath fogged in the cold air.
She made her choice. Turning her back on the warm light of the inn, she started walking. Away from the village. Toward the forest path. Toward the house on the hill.
Her small, resolute figure grew smaller and smaller until the fog and the gathering dark finally claimed her.