The carriage moved in funereal silence… as though even the wheels had learned to hush themselves on the damp autumn road.

The hour was late; the sun, sinking low upon the horizon, bled its last light across the river… a wound that would not close.

Each turn of the wheels carried them deeper into shadow.

​

No word was offered—neither then… nor in the years that followed.

There was no need.

By that journey’s end, Janna’s heart had already grown still… as if life itself had retreated to some unreachable depth within her.

​

At last, the old Hovart manse rose from the wooded hills above the river’s slow bend—its silhouette carved in dark relief against the smoldering sky.

Behind it, the dying sun slid beneath a ridge of pines, staining the clouds a deep wine-red… before surrendering them to the slow creep of indigo dusk.

​

Nerissa turned her head, casting the girl a single, sidelong glance, perhaps seeking a flicker of recognition… or the tremor of a memory.

​

She found none.

Janna’s gaze stayed steady, but inward-turned… unlit by any spark of wonder… or dread.

​

Yet she knew it at once: the thick encircling walls, the Romanesque arches hunched in lengthening shadow, stones blackened by centuries of rain and soot, stitched together with mismatched brick and timber, rooflines sagging beneath the weary weight of weather-worn red tiles, some cracked, others gone entirely.

Every detail had been carved upon her soul long ago.

As the last embers of daylight vanished behind the hills, the house seemed to darken of its own accord… as though it drank the glow the heavens could no longer spare.

Once it had stood proud. Now it wore its ruin like an unhealed wound. Fire… and the slow hunger of greed… had claimed what age alone could not consume. It had been her home once—now it bore another name, and belonged to the Hovarts.

In the courtyard, memories rose like a cold, invisible smoke—not of childhood laughter… but of shouts, and the sting of accusations carried on the night air.

The wind stirred the brittle leaves, their shadows dancing like ash upon the dimming gold of the river.

Crossing the threshold felt less like entering a dwelling than stepping into a dream long faded… and yet unfinished—one from which she had never fully awakened, as twilight deepened into the first quiet hour of night.

​