Chapter 5: The Eye Inside the Walls
“I’m not a girl you save. I’m the storm you survive.”
Zara had barely crossed the threshold of the mansion when the chill returned.
Not the weather. The feeling.
That uncanny silence.
The kind that crawled up your back and made your instincts scream even when your mouth stayed shut.
She paused at the doorway, scanning the grand hallway. Nothing seemed different—same stone floors, same flickering sconces, same unnerving stillness. But something was different.
It was in the air.
Heavier. Thicker.
Like the house was… watching.
Damon entered behind her, jaw tight, eyes sharp. He didn’t say a word. Neither did she. After the ruins, the wraith, and everything she’d just uncovered, words felt too small, too late.
Killian stayed behind—his choice, or Damon’s, she didn’t know. Maybe both.
Her boots echoed off the stone as she walked deeper into the mansion. A low fire burned in the hearth at the end of the hall. But it didn’t feel warm.
Not anymore.
“Get some rest,” Damon finally said, voice low. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
“You mean I’ll ask, and you’ll dodge,” she muttered.
He paused. “Zara—”
“Goodnight,” she said, walking past him without looking back.
Her room felt colder than before.
She shut the door behind her, leaning against it for a long second before locking it. Twice.
The necklace still pulsed against her skin.
She stripped off her coat, peeled off her boots, and dropped onto the bed like a stone. But sleep didn’t come.
Not with the memory of the ruins burned into her skull.
Not with the sound of that thing calling her name still echoing through her mind.
Not with the weight of Damon’s eyes following her even in his absence.
She rolled over, pulling the blanket higher.
The fire in the room crackled softly.
Then—snap.
The sound came from behind the fireplace wall.
Zara sat up slowly.
Another sound.
Click. Scratch. Click.
Not a rat. Too deliberate.
She stood, crossed the room, and pressed her ear to the stone beside the fireplace.
Silence.
Then—
Whispering.
She yanked her head back.
The whispering stopped.
Zara stared at the stone, breath shallow. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides.
“Screw this.”
She grabbed the fireplace poker and jammed it between two bricks, prying one loose. A gust of cold air rushed through the gap.
Behind it—darkness.
A tunnel.
A freaking tunnel.
She didn’t even think.
She grabbed a candle from her nightstand, lit it, and crawled through the hole.
The air inside was stale and damp. Dust clung to her skin. The tunnel narrowed and dropped slightly, winding deeper beneath the mansion like a root system no one had touched in years.
Cobwebs brushed her cheeks.
The whispering returned.
This time, closer.
More frantic.
Zara stopped breathing.
The candlelight flickered wildly.
A breeze? Underground?
No.
Something moved ahead.
She pressed forward anyway, crawling faster now, because the silence behind her felt more dangerous than the sound in front of her.
The tunnel opened up into a small chamber—stone walls covered in carvings.
Not human.
Crescent moons. Clawed sigils. Ancient language. And something worse—paintings done in blood. Wolves with black eyes. Fires. Bound figures screaming.
Her candle illuminated a figure in the far corner.
Zara froze.
It wasn’t human.
Not anymore.
Once, maybe. But now?
Its body was skeletal, bent backward unnaturally. Its skin was pale, stretched thin. Its mouth was sewn shut with dark thread. And its eyes—
Its eyes were wide open.
Watching her.
Alive.
Zara stepped back.
The thing didn’t move. But the walls behind it breathed.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
The stone shifted with a slow, wet inhale. A pulse beat beneath the drawings.
She stumbled back into the tunnel, scrambling on hands and knees until she found her way out, nearly tumbling into her room as she burst through the hole behind the fireplace.
She slammed the brick back in place and backed away, shaking.
The candle had gone out.
She was shaking so hard she almost missed the soft knock on the door.
Three gentle taps.
Not Damon.
Not Killian.
Something else.
She grabbed her blade from beneath the bed and crept to the door.
The knock came again.
Quieter.
Zara opened it in one sharp motion.
The hallway was empty.
But something was pinned to her door.
A note.
Burned at the edges. Written in red ink.
Or maybe blood.
“The walls remember, Nullborn. And they want you back.”
Morning came, and with it, another lie.
Damon stood in the courtyard with three of his lieutenants, giving orders like nothing was wrong, like there wasn’t a cursed corpse hidden in his walls whispering her name.
Zara walked straight up to him and shoved the note into his chest.
He read it without a word.
Then looked at her.
“Where did you find this?”
“In my room.”
His jaw flexed. “And the handwriting?”
She folded her arms. “You tell me.”
His lieutenants watched in silence.
“Get everyone inside,” Damon told them without looking away from her. “Now.”
Once they were alone, he stepped closer. “What else happened?”
Zara hesitated.
“I followed the sound through the fireplace,” she said. “There’s a tunnel. A chamber. Symbols. And… something else.”
He said nothing.
Just exhaled.
“Zara—”
“You knew.”
His silence said yes.
She stared at him, breath catching. “That thing down there—it’s alive.”
“It was,” he said quietly. “Now it’s a warning.”
“Of what?”
“That this place remembers,” he said. “Not just you. Not just the war. All of it.”
Her throat tightened. “Then why didn’t you destroy it?”
“Because it’s bound to the house. It is the house.”
Zara took a shaky step back.
“You brought me here knowing this place was alive?”
“I brought you here because it’s the last place the Council would expect you to return.”
“That thing called me Nullborn.”
He nodded once. “Because you are.”
“What does that mean, Damon? That I’m cursed? A target? A ticking bomb?”
He stepped toward her. “It means you’re the only one who can survive what’s coming.”
Zara shook her head. “I’m done being someone’s weapon.”
He grabbed her hand—not harshly, but tight enough she couldn’t pull away.
“You’re not a weapon,” he said. “You’re a key. And they’ve been building a door for centuries.”
She stared at him, breath ragged.
“You either open it… or they’ll rip you apart trying.”