Chapter 1: The Invitation
The rain started at 10:47 p.m.
By eleven, it had become a storm.
Heavy drops hammered against the windows of Olivia Hart’s apartment, turning the city beyond the glass into a smear of black roads, yellow streetlights, and trembling reflections.
Every few minutes, thunder rolled somewhere in the distance, low and deep enough to make the floor beneath her bare feet hum.
Olivia sat curled on the couch with a blanket around her legs and a half-empty mug of tea cooling on the coffee table.
The television played across from her, bright and loud, but she had stopped paying attention almost an hour ago. Some couple on a reality show was arguing in a kitchen about something ridiculous.
Olivia couldn’t even remember their names.
Her laptop sat open beside the mug.
The email on the screen was still unfinished.
Hi Mrs. Keller,
I apologize for the late response. I’ll have the updated files sent over by—
That was as far as she had gotten.
She had been staring at the same sentence for twenty minutes.
Finally, with a sigh, Olivia leaned forward and shut the laptop.
Work could wait until morning.
Everything could wait until morning.
She picked up her phone instead.
11:11 p.m.
The time made her pause.
She had never been one of those people who believed in signs, wishes, angel numbers, or the universe trying to whisper secrets through clocks.
Still, whenever she caught 11:11, she noticed it.
A strange little habit.
A harmless one.
Usually.
Her phone lit up before she could lock it again.
Unknown Sender
Olivia frowned.
The notification had no preview.
No number.
No name.
Just Unknown Sender sitting at the top of her screen like a warning.
“Absolutely not,” she muttered.
She almost swiped it away.
Spam calls were bad enough. Mystery messages at eleven at night during a storm were where she drew the line.
Then the notification blinked.
For a second, the screen dimmed.
A second message appeared beneath the first.
Unknown Sender
Same sender.
Same empty preview.
Olivia stared at it.
Her apartment suddenly felt too quiet, even with the television still playing.
She told herself it was probably some scam. A fake delivery notice. A password reset. A creepy marketing trick from a company that thought being mysterious made people more likely to buy something.
Still, her thumb hovered over the notification.
Then she opened it.
The screen went black.
Not dark mode.
Not an app loading.
Black.
Every other icon vanished. The battery symbol disappeared. The time disappeared. Even the little signal bars were gone.
Olivia sat up straighter.
White letters appeared in the center of the screen.
BLACKWOOD MANOR
She blinked.
The words remained there for three seconds.
Then another line appeared beneath them.
June 24th–June 27th.
Then another.
Three days.
Another.
All expenses paid.
Another.
One final reunion.
Olivia stopped breathing.
One final reunion.
The phrase slipped beneath her skin with the cold precision of a needle.
Nobody used words like that unless they wanted them to hurt.
She read it again.
One final reunion.
Her first thought was Noah.
Her second was Mason.
Her third was Riley.
She hated that Riley’s name still came to her so quickly.
Before she could close the message, more text appeared.
TEN GUESTS HAVE BEEN INVITED.
The list began forming one name at a time.
Noah Bennett.
Olivia’s boyfriend.
The one person from the old group who had stayed.
Emma Sinclair.
Perfect hair, perfect smile, and a perfect ability to make everyone feel like they were disappointing her.
Liam Carter.
Emma’s boyfriend, charming in the way that made people forgive him too easily.
Sophie Sinclair.
Emma’s younger sister. Quieter. Softer. Always watching more than she spoke.
Ethan Walker.
Sophie’s boyfriend, suspicious of everyone and usually right to be.
Ava Monroe.
Beautiful, messy, loud, and allergic to minding her own business.
Caleb Hayes.
Rich, competitive, and arrogant enough to call it confidence.
Mason Reed.
The funny one.
The one who could make a funeral feel awkward and hilarious at the same time.
Riley Brooks.
Olivia’s stomach tightened.
Three years.
Three years since Riley had stopped answering messages.
Three years since he left the group chat.
Three years since he disappeared from their lives without a real goodbye.
Then the final name appeared.
Olivia Hart.
She read the list twice.
Then a third time.
Ten names.
Ten ghosts from a life she had tried to leave behind.
Her phone buzzed before she could make sense of it.
Noah.
Of course it was Noah.
Noah Bennett: Tell me you got that too.
Olivia stared at the text.
Another message came in immediately.
Noah Bennett: Please tell me I’m not losing my mind.
Despite the cold feeling in her chest, Olivia smiled.
Some things never changed.
Noah panicked first, asked questions second, and pretended later that he had been calm the entire time.
Olivia: Got what?
Noah Bennett: Don’t do that.
Olivia: Do what?
Noah Bennett: The annoying thing where you act like you don’t know what I mean.
Olivia: You’ll have to be more specific. I’m annoying in a lot of ways.
Noah Bennett: Liv.
She smiled again, smaller this time.
Noah only called her Liv when he was worried.
Olivia: Yeah.
Olivia: I got it.
Noah Bennett: What the fuck is Blackwood Manor?
Olivia looked back at the invitation.
The black screen was gone now, replaced by a normal message thread. The invitation sat there like a digital flyer, simple and clean, with the same white words and the same list of names.
At the bottom was a button.
ACCEPT INVITATION
She frowned.
That had not been there before.
Olivia: I don’t know.
Noah Bennett: Did you send it?
Olivia: Why would I send myself a creepy invitation?
Noah Bennett: I don’t know. You like mysteries.
Olivia: I like fake mysteries. In books. Where I am not personally listed as a guest.
Noah Bennett: Fair.
A pause.
Then another message appeared.
Noah Bennett: Did you click accept?
Olivia stared at the button.
Olivia: No.
Noah Bennett: Good.
Olivia: Why?
Noah Bennett: Because this feels like the part in a horror movie where everyone makes one stupid decision and then gets murdered in a basement.
Olivia: Dramatic.
Noah Bennett: Accurate.
Olivia: You once thought a raccoon was stalking you because it looked at you twice.
Noah Bennett: That raccoon had intent.
Olivia rolled her eyes.
Then thunder cracked overhead, sharp enough to make her flinch.
For a second, every light in the apartment flickered.
Olivia looked up.
The television glitched.
The couple on the screen froze mid-argument, their mouths open and their faces distorted into something almost monstrous.
Then everything returned to normal.
Her phone buzzed again.
Not Noah this time.
Weekend Warriors
Olivia’s heart dropped.
The old group chat.
The one nobody had used in years.
The one still buried somewhere in her phone beneath work conversations, delivery codes, appointment reminders, and people she actually spoke to.
The chat name alone brought back a hundred memories.
Weekend Warriors.
Mason had named it after a disastrous camping trip during their sophomore year, when the rain flooded two tents, Caleb dropped everyone’s food into a creek, and Ava screamed for six minutes because a moth flew into her hair.
Back then, they had laughed until they couldn’t breathe.
Back then, Olivia had thought they would stay friends forever.
Back then, forever still sounded believable.
Messages began pouring in.
Ava Monroe: Okay. Who is doing this?
Ava Monroe: Because it’s not funny.
Mason Reed: I disagree. It’s a little funny.
Ava Monroe: Mason, if this is you, I swear to God.
Mason Reed: Wow. First of all, rude.
Mason Reed: Second of all, I cannot afford a place called Blackwood Manor. I can barely afford gas.
Caleb Hayes: It isn’t Mason.
Emma Sinclair: How do you know?
Caleb Hayes: Because the invitation mentioned private transportation and paid lodging. Mason would invite us to a motel with a broken ice machine.
Mason Reed: That happened ONE time.
Liam Carter: It happened twice.
Mason Reed: You’re all obsessed with my failures.
Sophie Sinclair: Did everyone get the same message?
Ethan Walker: Looks like it.
Ava Monroe: Why are you answering like this is normal?
Ethan Walker: I’m not.
Ethan Walker: I’m saying don’t click anything.
Ava Monroe: Too late.
Emma Sinclair: Ava.
Ava Monroe: What?
Emma Sinclair: You clicked it?
Ava Monroe: It said all expenses paid.
Emma Sinclair: That is not a reason.
Ava Monroe: It is absolutely a reason.
Caleb Hayes: She has a point.
Emma Sinclair: Caleb, don’t encourage her.
Caleb Hayes: I’m just saying, if someone wants to fund a luxury weekend for us, I’m willing to hear them out.
Ethan Walker: That is how people end up on missing posters.
Mason Reed: If I end up on a missing poster, please use a good picture. Not the one from Caleb’s birthday.
Ava Monroe: The one where you look drunk or the one where you are drunk?
Mason Reed: Yes.
Olivia found herself smiling despite everything.
The chat felt alive.
Chaotic.
Annoying.
Familiar.
For a moment, she was twenty again, sitting cross-legged on someone’s dorm-room floor with cheap snacks, loud music, and the belief that growing apart was something that happened to other people.
Then Emma sent another message.
Emma Sinclair: Has anyone heard from Riley?
The smile faded.
The chat slowed.
Noah texted her privately at the exact same time.
Noah Bennett: Don’t answer that.
Olivia stared at Emma’s question.
Has anyone heard from Riley?
Nobody had.
Not really.
There had been rumors, of course.
Someone said they saw him working at a bar two towns over.
Someone else claimed he had moved out west.
Ava once swore she matched with someone who looked like him on a dating app, but when she tapped the profile, it disappeared.
Olivia had tried texting him three times after he left.
Once angry.
Once drunk.
Once on his birthday.
He never replied to any of them.
Noah Bennett: Liv.
Olivia: I’m not going to.
Noah Bennett: Good.
Olivia: You’re acting weird.
Noah Bennett: This whole thing is weird.
Olivia stared at the group chat.
The typing bubbles came and went.
No one answered Emma.
Then a new message appeared.
Riley Brooks: Too late.
Olivia’s phone suddenly felt heavy in her hand.
The room seemed to shrink around her.
No one sent anything for several seconds.
Not Mason.
Not Ava.
Not even Caleb.
The silence was worse than the storm.
Riley Brooks.
His profile picture was the same.
A blurry photograph by the lake, his face half turned away from the camera and sunlight flashing off the water behind him.
Olivia remembered taking that picture.
She remembered laughing because he hated photographs and had tried to duck out of the frame.
She remembered too much.
Ava Monroe: Riley?
No answer.
Mason Reed: Holy shit.
Emma Sinclair: Are you serious right now?
Liam Carter: Where have you been?
Sophie Sinclair: Riley?
Caleb Hayes: This better actually be you.
The typing bubble appeared beneath Riley’s name.
Then vanished.
Then appeared again.
Olivia held her breath.
Riley Brooks: I accepted.
Three words.
That was all.
Not an apology.
Not an explanation.
Not even a hello.
Just:
I accepted.
Ava Monroe: After three years, that’s all you have to say?
Mason Reed: Ava.
Ava Monroe: No, don’t Ava me.
Ava Monroe: He disappears for three years and comes back because of a creepy mansion invite?
Emma Sinclair: Ava, stop.
Ava Monroe: Why?
Ava Monroe: We’re all thinking it.
The chat went silent again.
Because Ava was right.
They were all thinking it.
Olivia’s thumb hovered over the keyboard.
She wanted to type something.
Anything.
Where have you been?
Are you okay?
Why did you leave?
Did we do something?
Did I?
Instead, she typed nothing.
Noah called.
His name filled the screen.
Olivia almost declined, but then she answered.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
No hello.
No breathing room.
Just Noah, tense and sharp.
“I saw.”
His voice lowered. “That’s actually him?”
“I don’t know.”
“It has to be someone using his account.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Olivia stood, unable to sit still anymore.
She carried the phone into the kitchen and turned on the small light above the stove. The warm yellow glow made the apartment feel less haunted, but only a little.
“It looked like him,” she said.
“It was a text, Olivia.”
“You know what I mean.”
Noah was quiet for a moment.
Rain battered the windows behind her.
Then he said, “You shouldn’t go.”
She looked down at the invitation again.
ACCEPT INVITATION
“Who said I was going?”
“You’re curious.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“With you, it kind of is.”
Olivia hated that he knew her that well.
She leaned against the counter and folded one arm across her stomach.
“It’s not just curiosity,” she said.
“I know.”
His voice softened, and that made it worse.
Because Noah knew too.
He knew how much Riley’s disappearance had bothered her, even when she pretended she didn’t care anymore.
He knew how many nights she had sat awake replaying old conversations, searching for the moment everything started to crack.
He knew because he had been there.
For some of it.
Not all.
No one had been there for all of it.
“We should ignore it,” Noah said.
“And if everyone else goes?”
“Then everyone else is stupid.”
“Helpful.”
“I’m trying.”
“No, you’re scared.”
“Yeah,” he snapped.
Then, quieter, he admitted, “Yeah, I am.”
That shut her up.
Noah rarely admitted fear.
He joked around it. Dodged it. Became protective when he couldn’t control it.
But he almost never said it plainly.
Olivia stared at the floor.
“What do you think this is?” she asked.
“I think someone knows us.”
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
“Knows us how?”
“I don’t know. Enough to get all our numbers. Enough to reactivate that chat. Enough to know Riley would get our attention.”
Thunder growled again.
Olivia looked toward the living room.
Her television flickered once.
Then the screen went black.
“Noah,” she said slowly.
“What?”
“My TV just turned off.”
“Power?”
“No. The lights are still on.”
The black television screen reflected the room behind her.
The couch.
The blanket.
The rain-streaked window.
For one brief second, Olivia thought she saw something else reflected there.
A shape.
Standing behind her.
She whipped around.
Nothing.
Just the kitchen.
The hallway.
Her own breath coming too fast.
“Liv?” Noah’s voice sharpened. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t sound like nothing.”
“I thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
The television turned back on.
This time, the reality show was gone.
The screen remained black.
White text appeared.
WELCOME BACK, OLIVIA.
She froze.
“Noah.”
“What?”
“My TV.”
“What about it?”
The text vanished.
New words appeared.
WE’VE MISSED YOU.
Her skin went cold.
“Noah, is your TV doing anything?”
A pause.
Then a quiet, “No.”
Olivia took a step backward.
The invitation glowed in her hand.
The same message appeared on the television and her phone at the same time.
WELCOME, GUEST.
A second line followed.
YOUR INVITATION EXPIRES IN FIVE MINUTES.
A countdown appeared beneath it.
04:59
04:58
04:57
Olivia could hear Noah breathing through the phone.
Then he said, “What the fuck?”
“You see it now?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I see it.”
His voice was no longer protective.
It was afraid.
The group chat exploded again.
Emma Sinclair: Is anyone else seeing a countdown?
Mason Reed: Okay.
Mason Reed: Not funny anymore.
Sophie Sinclair: Ethan, what do we do?
Ethan Walker: Don’t touch it.
Caleb Hayes: It says the invite expires.
Ava Monroe: Why does that sound like a threat?
Liam Carter: Because it is one.
Riley Brooks: Accept.
The chat froze around that one word.
Accept.
Olivia stared at it.
Ava Monroe: Excuse me?
Emma Sinclair: Riley, what do you know?
Caleb Hayes: Answer her.
Riley Brooks: Just accept.
Mason Reed: Bro, that is the least comforting thing you could say.
Riley Brooks: If you don’t, it gets worse.
Olivia’s mouth went dry.
Noah whispered, “What does that mean?”
On the television, the countdown continued.
03:21
03:20
03:19
Olivia typed into the chat with shaking fingers.
Olivia Hart: Riley, what gets worse?
For ten seconds, nothing happened.
Then Riley replied.
Riley Brooks: The truth.
A loud crack of thunder shook the windows.
Olivia nearly dropped the phone.
Noah swore under his breath.
The countdown hit two minutes.
02:00
01:59
01:58
Every rational part of Olivia told her to shut off the phone.
Unplug the television.
Call the police.
Do anything except play along with whatever sick joke this was.
But then another message appeared.
This one appeared only on her phone.
Still having nightmares about the bridge?
Everything inside her went still.
The bridge.
No.
No one knew about that.
Not really.
There were things people knew.
The accident.
The rain.
The sirens.
The fact that afterward, nothing between them had ever been the same.
But the nightmares?
The specific ones?
The ones where Olivia stood on the bridge in the dark and heard someone calling her name from below?
She had never told anyone.
Not Noah.
Not her mother.
Not a therapist.
No one.
The countdown continued.
01:13
01:12
01:11
Noah’s voice came through the phone, distant now.
“Olivia?”
She couldn’t answer.
“Liv, talk to me.”
The invitation button pulsed faintly on her screen.
ACCEPT INVITATION
The television showed the same thing.
ACCEPT INVITATION
The storm outside roared.
The apartment felt too small.
Too watched.
Too known.
Olivia swallowed hard.
“Noah,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“They know about the bridge.”
Silence.
Then, very quietly, he asked, “Who knows?”
“I don’t know.”
“Olivia, don’t press anything.”
The countdown hit thirty seconds.
00:30
00:29
00:28
In the group chat, messages flew by.
Ava had accepted.
Caleb had accepted.
Mason was cursing.
Emma was demanding answers.
Sophie was panicking.
Ethan kept telling everyone to stop.
Riley said nothing.
The countdown hit fifteen.
00:15
00:14
00:13
Olivia’s thumb hovered above the button.
Noah said, “Please don’t.”
She closed her eyes.
For one second, she saw rain.
Headlights.
A bridge railing.
A hand slipping from hers.
Her eyes snapped open.
00:05
00:04
00:03
Olivia tapped ACCEPT.
The phone screen went black.
The television went black.
The apartment fell silent.
Even the storm seemed to pause.
Then white text appeared.
THANK YOU FOR ACCEPTING, OLIVIA HART.
A second line followed.
TRANSPORTATION ARRIVES FRIDAY AT 6:00 P.M.
A third.
PACK CAREFULLY.
Then the final message came.
This time, it did not appear on the television.
It was not written in the group chat.
It was spoken through her phone in a voice she did not recognize.
Soft.
Calm.
Almost pleased.
“Welcome to Truth or Die.”
The call ended.
Olivia stood alone in the kitchen, staring at her reflection in the dead television screen.
Behind her, the storm kept screaming.
And for the first time in three years, she knew the past had found its way back to her.
