“They say stories can’t hurt you. That ink is harmless. But they’ve never read the kind that breathes.”

I hadn’t spoken to my grandmother in almost twelve years when the letter arrived.

No call. No email. Just parchment paper, heavy with the scent of lavender and smoke, tucked into a wax-sealed envelope like something out of another century.

The message was short — typed on an old typewriter, her signature scrawled in trembling black ink at the bottom.

Eleanor,
The Nest is yours now. Do not let the pages be opened. Not unless you’re willing to finish what I started.
—Aurelia Vale

The following morning, I received the second message: Aurelia Vale — deceased. Cause of death: asphyxiation by ink inhalation.

The words shouldn’t have meant anything.

Except they did.

Raven’s Nest — her crumbling estate on the edge of Blackthorn Moor — was a place of whispered childhood stories and half-remembered warnings. A place where ravens lined the roof like sentries. Where dreams lingered long after you woke. Where my mother had refused to return after the night she left… and never spoke of again.

I told myself I was going back to sign some papers. Maybe collect a few books. Say a tidy, adult goodbye.

But the moment the car turned down that winding cliffside road and I saw the pointed gables rising like bones against the sky, I felt it:

A pull.

A memory.

And something watching.

Now the house waits, heavy with silence and the smell of old ink. Her journals are still here. Her typewriter. Her locked study. The raven still comes at dusk.

And somewhere inside this place — somewhere beneath the rot and dust and history —

A story is still writing itself.

And it knows my name.