The air in the house changed.
It wasn’t something they could name at first — a shift, a chill, the way doors breathed when no one touched them. Orla felt it most in the morning, when she stood by the window with her coffee and realized she was waiting for something. A sign. A crack in the calm.
Stanley noticed too.
“You’ve stopped sleeping.”
“I think something’s coming,” Orla whispered.
He didn’t tell her he’d had the same dream three nights in a row — Clara standing in the ruins of the garden, whispering a name he didn’t recognize.
Jakob found the first clue.
It was a letter tucked into an old book, pages brittle with age. The ink had run, but the name at the bottom was still clear:
Caelum.
“Do you know who that is?” Elias asked.
Aster stared at the name like it burned her.
“Cl
