Prologue
DORIAN
We were not like any other family.
We grew up inside Gloomsbury Manor.
It watched us. It breathed with us. We were different. None of us was crazy; not my brother, not my mother, not my father. It was the manor. The voices. The things that moved when no one was looking. The ghosts. But I was never afraid of the ghosts. They hid in the corners, feeding on what was already broken. What I feared was the cracks inside me, the thought that one day, I might lose myself entirely, and become the one who hurt the people I loved.
And yet, it was those very people, the ones I loved, who locked me away, miles from home, behind the gates of Santa Victoria Asylum for the Criminally Insane. They said I was dangerous. They said I was responsible for Ian’s death.
Hurt people hurt people. I was hurting, but I never hurt anyone.
Something inside me fractured the day Ian died. The pain never left. It settled inside me like something alive. I began tosee things. Hear things. Voices whispering just beyond reach, threading through my thoughts, haunting my psyche.
I know something is wrong with me. But something had always been wrong, long before Ian. Long before the screams. Gloomsbury Manor has passed through countless hands since 1897, but it never truly lets go.
And when I received the letter from my mother, telling me she was marrying one of them, another owner, another sacrifice, I knew. The house was calling.
It always calls us back.
No matter how far you run, Gloomsbury finds you. It creeps into your dreams, into the spaces between your breaths. It waits. It watches. And when it finds you, there is no choice.
You return.
12 YEARS OLD
The dark came too fast today. Like someone pulled the sun down by its throat.
It was summer, but the house already felt cold. Mom was gone again. It was just me and Ian, my brother. He was always my safe place. Sixteen now, taller than Dad, stronger too. He forgot me sometimes, mostly when his friends called, when some of the girls smiled, he liked, but when it counted, Ian always remembered. He hid me from the shouting, from the hands.From the emptiness that filled every room after the bottles were emptied.
Tonight, he whispered,“Go hide.” So I did.
I crawled under the bed and tucked myself into the dark. My fingers found the stars we scratched into the wooden boards under the bed months ago. Tiny scars like a sky we made just for us.
Ian and Dorian. Brothers forever.
The heat made my head heavy. Hunger made my belly loud, but I learned sleep was safer than being awake. When I slept, I didn’t need. I didn’t exist. I closed my eyes and tried to disappear.
Then—BANG.
The whole house shook. My head slammed into the wood above me. Silence came soon after, the kind that feels alive.
Breathing. Watching.
I waited, but the air got too heavy. My legs moved before my mind, and I slid out from under the bed.
Mom wasn’t home. Dad’s snores rattled down the hallway, and he passed out from his whiskey again. Same as every night. But tonight something was different.
The front door was wide open, and Ian was gone.
Cold air from outside touched my skin, and something pulled me forward—something like a breeze, like fingers on my spine.
The clock on the wall ticked3:18 AM.
And as I stepped outside, the barn door swung open.
I should’ve run. I should’ve screamed. I should’ve gone back to the bed, to the stars we made, and closed my eyes again. But my feet kept moving.
