Chapter 1: The Inheritance
The rain wouldn’t stop.
It pelted down like nails against the windshield as Mira drove through the winding roads of Elmswood Valley. The GPS had lost signal twenty minutes ago, and the trees lining the road were so tall and thick, they blocked out what little light remained from the setting sun.
She glanced at the old envelope resting on the passenger seat. Yellowed and fragile, it held a single piece of paper: the will of her late Aunt Clara.
“To Mira Anne Caldwell, I leave my home in Elmswood. May she find in it what I never could—peace.”
Peace.
Mira scoffed under her breath. She hadn’t seen her aunt in over a decade, not since her mother’s funeral. And now she was driving toward a house she didn’t remember in a village she’d never heard of, to claim an inheritance she hadn’t asked for.
The car coughed once, then sputtered.
“No, no, no…” she muttered, thumping the dashboard. The engine gave one last wheeze before dying altogether.
Dead silence.
Mira sat for a moment, listening. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, the only sound the soft ticking of the cooling engine. She grabbed her coat, flashlight, and the envelope, then stepped into the cold.
A narrow path led into the woods.
And at the end of it, barely visible through the fog, stood the house.
It rose like a giant out of the earth—three stories tall, covered in creeping ivy and rot. The windows were dark, the front door slightly ajar. A gust of wind pushed it open with a creak.
Mira hesitated.
Then she stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind her.
