And the manor was never quiet, not really. In the quietest times, after the wind’s unearthly howl had fallen silent and the old wood barely whispered any more, when it seemed as if there was nothing to hear at all but ghosts welcomed in the night... something else echoed — footprints on a void so very dark. At this moment, when Eleanor Hayes was standing beside the muddy window of the house’s long neglected east wing, cracked and smudged by so many winters that she could almost feel them walking about their maze through the perpetually shadowy nothingness.

Clouds on the horizon churned like thick charcoal in a bowl, rain we knew was imminent and as yet did not exist. Inside, the air was sodden and thick with the smell of mouldy- there was something else too, but she couldn’t quite place it – ancient grief maybe or memories cemented to these walls, unable to leave.

Eleanor's heart raced in her chest as the faint thud-thudding of feet sounded down the long-desolate corridor beyond. It wasn’t the ordinary house noises — the slow, lopsided dance of the settling manor — but definite, intentional footsteps pacing slowly, measured in his direction.

She spun quickly and a gasp opened in her throat. The room was empty. Not so-cynical Marcus Flynn, and he made himself comfortable next to the fire, staring directly into the heat as if willing it to calm his soul. Lily Chambers peered at nothing in particular, her hand resting on the frame of an old, dusty bookshelf, eyes wide and searching.

“Did you hear that?” “What do you want me to do about it?” Eleanor whispered.

“Poppycock!” retorted Marcus, his face pale despite the air of scorn with which he uttered the word. “Old houses make noises, Hayes. You are allowing the place to go to your head.”

But Eleanor wasn’t so sure. Not tonight.

“Thomas,” she whispered softly, backing into the darkened hallway. The creepy janitor was weirdly missing tonight. “Thomas, are you there?”

No answer came. She could hear her bootsteps reverberate as she proceeded, swallowed immediately by the darkness. The manor’s usual creaks seemed different now, more like a warning. A cold breeze gusted by her. The air cooled, and Eleanor's skin prickled.

At the end of the corridor, a faint light flickered — a slight flake of candle. Eleanor’s gaze sharpened. Had it been the groundsman, or… something else?

As she turned the corner, she saw a figure standing in unmoving darkness: Thomas Grayson’s outline concealed by blackness.

"Thomas," she whispered, and relief rushed briefly through her veins.

Slowly, he turned and his eyes were dark unreadable pools. “You shouldn’t be here alone,” he said, voice deep and raspy. “The house doesn’t like it when the darkness eats up the light.”

Eleanor forced herself to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Sarah is missing. We have to find her. Whatever’s here —”

Thomas shook his head. “It doesn’t just articulate what’s here but also what never goes away.”

A third faint footstep sounded directly behind them and placed itself on the floor. Eleanor whirled, her heart pounding again. Lily crept out of her hiding hole and stared into the blackness past the old caretaker.

“There,” she whispered, pointing.

Eleanor squinted, but there was nothing. The manor’s shadows writhed beneath the glaive-forged light, but there was no sign of motion save their own uneasy ballet. But the feeling of an unseen other became more intense still, as if someone — or something — was there, watching from just beyond your range.

I hath been waiting for ye, so come towards me and lend me thy Strength!" The voice was cold ice, a whisper that could have been no more than breath but yet laced the air with a cold chill as it wound its way through dead silence.

“Eleanor.”

Her name, spoken unmistakably trembled about her like a shiver in the night. She froze, eyes wide. “Who’s there?” she snapped, although her voice shook.

Thomas’s expression tightened. “Evie,” he breathed under his breath. “The lost one. Stuck between realms, caught in the voids, they whisper names that draw others into the darkness.

Eleanor shivered. The very suggestion of there being a ghost upset her. Evie Sinclair — a girl long missing before Sarah’s disappearance — was not merely a ghost. She was something else entirely: a tragic echo, an unfrozen moment of despairing pain, the most desperate mind trying to break free.

For a moment, it was as if the manor itself took an intake of lung full air — its walls swelled like artifacts from some ancient pulse. The footsteps came back, slow now, methodical, circling the room like a predator. Eleanor searched her eyes to locate its source, but the darkness consumed all form, all figure.

“Father Callum said, straightening Father Miller,” Then he saw the second Communion plate and set it on a nearby table… * Suddenly Father Callum Reid was at the far end of the hall, his presence earthy but crushed down. His face was drawn and etched, like the shadows had already begun to take their toll. “The shadows come for all of us, Eleanor,” he whispered. “They prey on doubt, on fear. You need to have faith — whatever that means to you.”

Eleanor nodded, holding on to the edge of the wallpaper as though she might fall. She thought of Sarah, the lost times that had broken up her childhood and blighted her present. “They won’t take her,” she vowed.

From the floor below, Agnes Blackwood’s voice came floating up the stairs--a feeble yet insistent warning in time-worn rhythm. “The curse is old. It gorges on names being whispered, in the darkness. Don’t respond or you’ll both be doomed.”

And suddenly, out of nowhere, the room went pitch black.

And the feet in the void stopped.

But still the whispers, those ghostly voices that seemed to echo out from everywhere and nowhere all at once, grew louder.

“Eleanor…”

Frozen, she stood, breath shallow. A hand brushed past her shoulder somewhere nearby: only instinct (not sight) informed her that it belonged to Marcus, at last unsettled by the inexplicable.

“Who’s there?” Marcus demanded, voice cracking.

No reply but the sound of her own racing heart.

A trembling hand took her own — Lily’s. Hand in hand, with precious little else to hold onto save a measure of faith or reason at best, they waited in the oppressive blackness as The Shadow edged nearer and nearer — its purpose more obscure than the nothingness around them.

Outside, thunder growled, the first announcement of a storm that might erase the line between living and lost.

There was a second summons of Eleanor’s name this time, more guttural and insistent.

This time, she nearly answered.

But she knew she must not.

For in the darkness, each whispered word would beckon it nearer—and once uttered, certain doors could never be closed.