The house had grown still.
Even the wind seemed to hesitate as it passed Greymoor's weathered windows — as if it, too, feared disturbing something that should have remained sleeping.
But Eveline did not sleep.
She sat in the parlor, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she hadn't touched. Rowan stood near the hearth, where the fire crackled low, casting gold into the quiet.
Neither of them spoke.
Because even in reunion, silence could stretch like a thread between two hearts — tight and scared.
"You were always like this," Rowan said finally. "Afraid of the answer , but still opening every door."
She looked up. "And you? You were always waiting?"
"Even when I didn't remember why."
He took a seat across from her, arms resting on the arms of the velvet chair. He wasn't a ghost or dream—not anymore. He was real. And real things brought with them weight. History. Ache.
"Do you remember it?" she asked. "The life before?"
He nodded. Slowly.
"Some of it. Not clearly—more like a song I heard in another room. You, mostly. Your laughter. The way you used to scold the sky for raining too often."
Eveline smiled faintly. "You said I used to laugh with my whole face."
"You did. And when you cried, the whole house mourned."
She reached into the pocket of her coat, pulling out another letter. One she had never written— yet had been found in her own handwriting beneath her pillow the night before.
"To the boy with quiet eyes," it began, "I never stopped listening for your name."
"Was this me?" she whispered.
Rowan took the letter and read it gently, as though afraid to bruise the ink.
"It was the version of you who remembered first."
"Then who am I now?"
He looked at her — and for the first time, something flickered behind his eyes. Fear. Love. Recognition, too big for words.
"You are the version I've been waiting for."
A sound broke the moment—low, dragging, like wood being scraped by nails.
It came from beneath the floorboards.
They both turned to look.
"What was that?" Eveline asked.
Rowan stood, tense. "Not everything in this house remembers kindly."
The sound came again—followed by a soft knock from beneath the rug.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Three times.
Rowan crossed the room and pulled the rug away. Beneath it, the wooden floor bore a seam— a hidden hatch, nailed shut long ago.
Eveline stepped beside him.
"Should we open it?"
"No," he said instantly. "Not yet. Not until we know what still sleeps down there."
That night, the dreams came stronger.
This time, Eveline was in the ballroom again—but it was empty. Cold. The chandeliers had all burned out.
She heard music—but it was coming in reverse. A melody playing backward, like time itself unraveling.
And in the center of the room stood herself.
Another version of her turned , eyes hollow with knowing.
"You left me there," she whispered. "When the hour turned red."
"What does that mean?" Eveline asked.
But the floor split open, and the other version fell—swallowed by the house itself.
She woke up gasping.
In the morning, she found a new crack in the mirror room's glass.
Hairline. Almost invisible. But it hadn't been there before.
Rowan stood behind her.
"It's starting," he murmured.
"What is?"
He looked at her, jaw set.
"The hour doesn't just give. It asks. And now it wants something in return."
"What does it want?" Eveline asked softly.
"You. Or me. Or the truth we buried."
They returned to the hatch that afternoon along the seam. "There's something beneath this house. Not just secrets—a piece of time that was broken."
"Did we break it?"
"I think… we chose to forget something. Something terrible. And the house—it remembered for us."
Eveline crouched beside him.
"Then maybe it's time we remember too."
"Once we open this," Rowan warned, "that's no un-knowing. No going back to the hour before."
She looked at him—and then at her own reflection in the mirror across the room.
This was no longer a story about finding someone lost.
It was about remembering why they had to lose each other at all.
"Then let's begin," Eveline said.
"Let the hour open."
And together, they pulled up the floor.