A Violet Requiem

The sea moaned low beneath the cliffs of Draevemoor, dragging the mist like a burial shroud over the path to Thorne House. Seraphine Vale stood still at the iron gate, gloved fingers wrapped tight around rusted metal. The house had not changed. Ivy strangled its stone bones, and the windows still watched like the eyes of something once alive. She didn’t remember growing up here — only the scent of salt and violets, and the violin her sister once played by the fire. But memory was a strange thing in this place. It came not in images, but in sensations: cold, bitter wind under the ribs; a whisper against the nape of her neck; the ache of someone not quite gone. The door creaked open by itself. Inside, the silence was cathedral-deep. Dust hung in the air like ash from a burned prayer. The portraits on the walls stared, some blurred by time, some eerily crisp — as if painted only yesterday. She set her suitcase down and lit a single candle from the hearth. That’s when she heard it. A note. One soft, hollow note. A violin string, shivering through the floorboards. She froze. The violin had been buried with Alaria. "Not again," Seraphine whispered. But the house had already begun to breathe.