Page 5 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

What If I Go

The envelope sits on my counter like it’s waiting to see who will break first. The wax seal catches the dim kitchen light in a dull, bloody sheen, the edges of the paper soft and unbroken.

I tell myself it’s just paper. Ink. A scrap of nothing.

And yet every time I walk past it, I swear the air feels different, like it carries the faint pull of a low, magnetic hum I can’t hear but can somehow feel in my teeth.

I pour a glass of wine and take it to the couch, curling one leg beneath me while the other taps restlessly against the rug.

The laptop sits on the coffee table, black screen reflecting the uneven light from the lamp beside me.

I sip. I stare at the envelope. I set the wine down and reach for the laptop, the faint click of the lid opening too loud in the quiet.

The address is written in precise, almost mechanical script. Clean. Sharp. No name attached. Just a place. My fingers hover over the keys, the irrational part of me half-expecting something to flicker across the screen before I can type. Still, I start the search.

The first hit is a map, the location a half-hour from here, on the edge of the city where the streetlights start to thin and the houses get older.

I zoom in. The satellite view blurs, as if the resolution breaks down the closer I try to look, until I’m left with a dark smudge where the roofline should be.

I try Street View. Nothing but a warped stretch of road under a gray sky, flanked by trees leaning inward like they’re conspiring.

I dig deeper. Old real estate listings. Newspaper archives.

The property’s name surfaces once, almost an afterthought, in an article dated nearly forty years ago.

The Vescari Estate. The piece is about zoning disputes and historical preservation, but between the lines, there are mentions of ‘unresolved matters” and “private holdings,” words that taste like smoke when I read them.

More searching brings up less. Fragments.

Online forums speculating about hauntings.

One claims it used to be a hospital during the war.

Another says it’s been in the same family for centuries, though no one can agree on which one.

There’s even a thread on a local conspiracy board, complete with blurry night photos of iron gates and something… someone…standing just inside.

I sit back, fingers idle on the keyboard. My pulse is in my throat, heavy enough to feel. This should be the part where I tell myself it’s a bad idea. Where I close the laptop, rip the envelope in half, and pretend none of this ever touched me.

I can’t stop thinking about his eyes. Cold and impossible, the kind that don’t just see…

they mark. That one look burned itself into my skin and has been there ever since, buried just under the surface.

I hate that I want answers almost as much as I hate that the thought of seeing him again makes my stomach twist in something that isn’t quite fear.

The glass is empty before I realize it, the last trace of wine warm in my mouth.

I stand up from the couch and start pacing, running both hands through my hair until it falls back into my eyes.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” I mutter, half to the empty room, half to the version of myself already reaching for her keys .

I should wait. I should think. Waiting feels like giving up ground I didn’t agree to surrender. That place exists, and now I know where it is. That’s enough to make me move. I grab my jacket, shove the envelope into the pocket without opening it, and lock the door behind me.

The drive starts ordinarily. Streetlights bleed pale yellow into the asphalt.

The hum of the tires on the road is steady, almost calming.

The farther I go, the quieter it gets. Houses give way to open lots, then to stretches of black trees whose branches meet overhead, cutting the moon into slivers.

The GPS directs me down a narrow lane, its voice tinny and foreign in the enclosed space of the car.

Gravel replaces pavement. Fog licks low along the ground, catching in my headlights and curling away like it doesn’t want to be touched.

The deeper I go, the more it feels like distance isn’t measured in miles anymore; it's like I’ve slipped sideways into someplace else entirely.

Then the gates rise out of the dark. Iron. Black. Tall enough to keep the world out. The metal twists into shapes that almost make sense before my eyes slide away from them — symbols older than whatever language I know.

They stand open just wide enough for me to pass through.

I hover at the entrance, foot on the brake, heart pounding hard enough to ache. I could turn back now. Pretend the road was blocked. Pretend I never came this far.

Instead, I ease forward. The crunch of tires on gravel fills the silence, each rotation pulling me deeper into whatever waits at the end of this path.

The gravel road winds through the trees in a slow, deliberate curve, the branches above knitting tighter until they blot out what little moonlight there is.

My headlights cut narrow tunnels through the dark, catching on the edges of stone walls half-swallowed by ivy, on glimpses of statues set too far back to make out their faces.

The deeper I go, the more the air changes, it’s heavier, colder, like it’s being drawn from someplace deeper underground. The fog thickens in pockets, low and shifting, sometimes parting just enough for me to glimpse shapes I can’t hold onto long enough to name .

Then the tree breaks.

The mansion rises from the darkness like it’s been carved straight out of it.

It’s massive, gothic, and impossibly still.

Black stone climbs toward the sky in jagged lines, every edge catching the faint light in a way that makes it look wet.

Rows of windows reflect nothing back at me.

The roofline is crowned with spires and sharp angles that bite into the clouds overhead.

It feels like the kind of place that has been waiting for a very long time.

I kill the engine, and the silence that rushes in is so complete it presses at my eardrums. I sit tehre for a long moment, gripping the steering wheel until the leather warms under my palms. My heartbeat doesn’t slow.

When I finally open the door, the air outside hits colder than it should for the season. The crunch of my boots on the gravel is too loud in the stillness. There’s no wind, but something about the way the shadows cling to the building makes it feel like it’s breathing.

I make it halfway up the path before the front doors move .

They swing inward without a sound at first, then the hinges groan, long and metallic, grinding like they haven’t been asked to do this in years.

The wood is black, scarred with deep gouges smoothed over by time.

The opening is wide enough to see only darkness beyond, an absence of light so complete it swallows the faint glow from outside.

Every instinct tells me to stop. To turn around.

I step forward anyway.

The threshold is cold under my boots, the air inside denser, heavier. Silence settles over me like a weight, thick and unyielding, as if sound itself has been stripped from the air. The doors drift closed behind me in a slow, deliberate arc, sealing me in with the low, echoing click of finality.

And for the first time since I left my apartment, I know - without understanding how - that I’ve just walked into something that doesn’t plan on letting me leave.