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DORIAN

D orian had always thought of the attic as the house’s last line of defense. The walls could whisper. The halls could rearrange themselves with a ghost’s breath. But the attic… the attic held her secrets close, like a woman who kept all her pain in a locked box under the bed, daring anyone to pry.

The door groaned when he opened it, hinges rusted like they'd forgotten how to move without complaint.

Dust kicked up in lazy spirals around him, caught in the lone shaft of light slanting through the fractured windowpane.

It smelled like old paper and forgotten lives—sweet with age and the faintest tang of iron.

Warm, too. Oppressively so. Not just because of the insulation.

It was the kind of heat that came from memories too loud to die quietly.

He stepped inside slowly, like the air might snap shut behind him.

He didn’t know what he was looking for.

Only that something inside him had cracked since Autumn described that ghost’s face—the man she’d seen in her vision. The grief in her voice. The recognition she hadn’t wanted to admit.

And gods, that look she’d given him. Like he wasn’t a stranger. Like she already knew what lived in the shadows of this house and was just waiting for him to face it.

So here he was. Chasing ghosts of his own.

He moved past a stack of covered furniture and toward the back corner where his uncle’s things were piled in an unceremonious heap.

A row of leather-bound trunks, brass corners dulled with age.

Some crates splintered at the seams. The scent of candle wax and dried lavender drifted from a rotted satchel.

One crate held only a bundle of dried herbs and a petrified animal skull.

And there—a shelf of journals. Haphazardly stacked, mismatched sizes. Some thin and crumbling, others thick and bound with care. Dorian’s heart kicked harder against his ribs.

Alaric hadn’t kept pictures. Not many, anyway. But he’d left behind something even more dangerous.

Words.

He pulled a journal from the top of the stack. The leather was soft with age, dyed a deep wine red, its spine stitched together with red thread like a wound someone had tried to sew closed. The weight of it felt wrong in his hand. Heavy in a way that had nothing to do with paper.

He opened it.

The handwriting was elegant. Looped. Precise in a way that felt obsessive. But it wasn’t ink—not exactly. The words shimmered faintly, like oil-slick rainbows on wet pavement. Enchanted.

His bear stirred immediately, uneasy. Dorian squinted at the writing, trying to catch a rhythm. There were notes about ritual geometry, circle casting, emotional tethering. Someone had been documenting magical theory… and memory.

Then a name leapt off the page: Hollis.

Dorian froze.

He’d only heard that name once. Whispers at the Everglen Market. Hazel had said it absently, flicking petals off her sleeve like prophecy was casual. “Some griefs echo. Even Hollis didn’t linger this long.”

And now here it was. In his uncle’s journal.

He turned the page.

Pain exploded in his palm.

Like fire, but worse. Like cold lightning and betrayal at the same time. He gasped, the sound torn from his throat, and dropped the journal. It hit the attic floor with a thud that echoed like a gunshot, pages fanning out.

The entire room pulsed—floorboards flexing, air thickening, shadows flaring just at the edge of vision.

“Dammit,” he hissed as he dropped the journal, clutching his hand to his chest. His vision blurred, breath coming fast.

The house shifted. Heard him. Reacted. He heard footsteps racing up to him. Thudding up the stairs like thunder, like fury wrapped in wool and knit sweaters.

“Dorian!”

Autumn’s voice. Sharp, cracked with panic. No hesitation. Just his name, flung through the air like a rope to catch him.

She burst through the door, boots skidding slightly on the old boards, her eyes wide and already locked on him.

She bolted toward him, skidding on the wooden planks. “What happened?”

He tried to speak, but the pain crawled up his wrist now, tendrils of heat curling beneath the skin like branded roots.

“Let me see,” she said, kneeling beside him.

He opened his palm slowly.

The flesh across his hand was red and angry, already swelling. A burn. Not deep, but fierce—magical. Angry. Personal .

Autumn didn’t hesitate. She reached into the satchel slung over her shoulder—she always had it, always ready—and pulled out a small vial and a polished stone.

“This’ll sting,” she murmured.

“Already stings,” he rasped, voice hoarse.

She poured a few drops of oil onto her fingers and pressed them gently into his skin. Her touch was cool, sure. The pain dulled immediately—not gone, but quieted like a reprimanded child.

Her hands lingered a little too long.

Dorian breathed easier. “Thanks.”

“You touched something you shouldn’t have,” she said, still focused on his hand.

He watched her. “Story of my life lately.”

She didn’t smile. Instead, she reached for the journal, her fingertips barely brushing the edge.

“Don’t,” he warned.

She nodded. “Not without preparation.”

Her lips parted, breath catching. “That’s not just magic. That’s bound memory. Someone didn’t want this read.”

“Someone like Alaric?”

“Someone like Hollis,” she whispered. Her voice was suddenly distant, haunted.

He swallowed hard. “You knew.”

“I heard you yell,” she said, but her eyes told another story. “The house… it pulled me.”

Dorian studied her.

Her hair was still mussed from earlier, her cheeks flushed from running up the stairs, but her focus never wavered. She was already halfway inside the mystery, even while she stood grounded in the present.

They sat in silence for a long beat, the attic swallowing sound like a secret.

Then Dorian said, “He was hiding something. My uncle.”

“I think they all were,” she whispered. “Evelyn, Alaric… maybe even the Hollow Man.”

He turned his hand slowly, testing the movement. The skin was tight, but healing already. His shifter body always recovered fast—but this? This had scar written all over it.

“He knew about the ritual,” Dorian said. “Knew how dangerous it was.”

“And he did it anyway.”

“For love?” Dorian’s voice twisted. “Or power?”

Autumn finally looked up at him.

Her eyes weren’t frightened. Not anymore. Just sharp. Knowing.

“I don’t think they’re separate, for some people,” she said. “And that’s what makes it dangerous.”

He swallowed.

The journal sat open between them, unreadable but humming with leftover magic.

“I’m tied to this, Autumn,” he said quietly. “My blood, my name. I can feel it in my chest.”

She nodded. “I know.”

When she glanced up and caught him staring, she frowned. “You’re not gonna pass out, are you?”

“No. Just…” He let the rest hang in the air.

Just falling a little more every minute.