Letters Across Time ( Part 2 )

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(22)

Clara broke the wax seal with a trembling thumb.The moment it cracked, the wind shifted, soft at first, like a sigh. Then the world stilled.

She unfolded the parchment slowly. The ink was faded, and the paper carried a faint floral scent, like it had slept in roses for a hundred years.

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March 1st, 1874

I saw her again today. But this time... she looked at me.Not like before, not the quiet glances from behind windows, not the half-formed smiles in passing. No. Today, her eyes met mine and held them. She knew me.

She wore the locket. The same one I left in her hands the night the stars fell and the house groaned under the weight of things unsaid.She didn’t speak. But her eyes were louder than words.

And I felt it again, the pull. The house was listening. Breathing. Waiting.I am beginning to forget where I end and she begins.

I think... I think I’m losing myself to her memory.

— A.

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Clara’s knees gave out. She sat on the cold stone bench, hands gripping the letter too tightly.The garden shimmered for a heartbeat.Gone were the weeds. The vines. The decay.

For just a second, the fountain flowed again. Roses bloomed in impossible color. The air was filled with birdsong and laughter and a piano playing somewhere far inside the house.

Clara blinked. The vision vanished like breath on glass.

Sarah rushed to her side. “Clara! Are you okay?”

Clara nodded, but her face was pale.

“I saw something,” she whispered. “I think... I think I was her. For a moment.”

Sarah looked spooked. “What do you mean was?”

Clara turned to Ace. “You said the letters awaken things. This one showed me something.”

Ace’s expression was grim. “Then the boundary between memory and reality is thinning.”

“Do you think I’m her?” Clara asked.

“No,” he said, slowly. “But I think you’re connected. Maybe even chosen.”

A cold gust swept through the garden.

And as Clara folded the letter again, she noticed something carved into the stone beneath the bench, words eroded by time.

Barely visible, but still there, "Return what was lost, and you may find who you are."

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(23)

Clara’s fingers still hovered over the carved words when a whisper cut through the silence.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

All three of them turned.Standing near the rusted garden gate was a woman, tall, poised, and strangely out of place.

She wore a dark velvet coat over a floral dress, and her hair was tied back in a neat bun. Her boots were scuffed like she’d walked through decades. But her eyes, soft hazel, sharp as glass, watched them with knowing.

Clara instinctively stepped back. “Who… are you?”

The woman tilted her head. “The same question I asked myself for years. The house takes that from you first. Your name. But I’ve kept mine.”

She took a few steps forward.

“I’m Vien Whitmore. And I’ve been here since 1996.”

Sarah blinked. “Wait...the 90s?”

Ace narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been here this long and we’ve never met?”

Vien smiled faintly. “We move in different loops. Sometimes our timelines cross. Most times they don’t. But I felt yours collide. When the third letter was opened, the house...stirred.”

Clara was stunned. “How do you know so much?”

“Because I’ve watched it happen. Again and again. People come here chasing something, memories, truth, love, and they get trapped in the story the house wants to tell. It feeds on emotion. On longing. The stronger the pull, the tighter the grip.”

Clara looked down at the letter in her hands.

Vien’s gaze softened. “Yours is a rare loop, Clara. The letters only appear when the house finds someone it deems worthy. Someone connected.”

Sarah crossed her arms. “Connected how?”

“That’s what we’re all trying to find out, aren’t we?” Vien answered with a dry smile.

Ace stepped closer. “You said this loop is different. Why?”

Vien looked at Clara, truly looked at her, as if trying to see something beneath her skin.

“Because you might be the last piece it needs,” she said. “Or the first to break it.”

Clara’s throat tightened. “Break what?”

Vien turned, gesturing for them to follow.

“The curse.”

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(24)

The four of them followed Vien through the winding garden, past overgrown hedges and crumbling stone paths. Despite the years, she walked with certainty as if the house had become part of her.

“I’ve found places,” Vien said softly. “Pockets where time doesn’t bite as hard. Where the house lets its guard down.”

They arrived at a narrow archway swallowed by ivy. Vien pushed the vines aside, revealing a small iron gate, rusted shut.With a swift motion, she reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out an old brass key.

“Where did you get that?” Ace asked.

Vien didn’t answer. The key clicked into the lock like it had waited for her all this time. The gate creaked open.Inside was a hidden alcove, half room, half sanctuary. A wrought iron bench sat beneath a canopy of twisted branches. At the center: a stone pedestal with a small, locked chest.

Vien knelt beside it.

“I’ve been here long enough to find fragments,” she said. “Whispers. Clues. This chest holds the ones I’ve kept, notes, names, sketches, echoes of letters no one else saw.”

She unlocked the chest and pulled out a leather bound journal, the corners worn, the pages frayed with age and use.

“This belonged to me,” she said, handing it to Clara. “Before the house started erasing things.”

Clara opened the first page. In the corner was a drawing, a rose, identical to the wax seal on the third letter.

Sarah leaned in. “You drew that?”

Vien nodded. “Yes. But I don’t remember why. I only remember feeling like I had to. Over and over again.”

Ace scanned the other contents in the chest: a pocket watch with no hands, a cracked locket, and a torn photo of a woman who looked suspiciously like Clara, but in sepia tones, with 19th century clothes.

Clara’s breath caught. “That’s... me?”

Vien shook her head. “No. But it could be who the house remembers. She’s always there, in every loop. A different name, a different voice...but the same face.”

Clara sat on the bench, the journal still open in her lap. Her heart pounded. The letters. The visions. The carvings. And now, this photo.

“What does the house want from me?” she whispered.

Vien’s eyes turned distant. “Maybe not what it wants. But who it’s trying to bring back.”

A gust of wind swept through the alcove, and for a moment, the sound of a piano echoed through the air again, faint, aching, and impossible.The garden didn’t feel still anymore.It felt alive.And listening.

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(25)

Clara turned the brittle pages of Vien’s journal with cautious fingers. Each one was filled with sketches, scribbled thoughts, and dates, most crossed out. As if time had failed to mean anything to Vien anymore.

Near the middle of the book, Clara paused.There was a page unlike the rest, clean, purposeful, the ink fresh compared to others. The handwriting was elegant, more careful.

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“February 17, 1998

I heard the name again. Evelyn.

I don't know who she is. But every time I dream, I see her, always standing at the edge of the garden, always turning away before I can reach her. The house reacts to her name. The walls shift. Doors vanish.

And then I forget.

But this time... I wrote it down before the memory faded.

Evelyn.

Evelyn.

Evelyn.”

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Clara whispered it under her breath. “Evelyn...”

The garden stirred again. Leaves rustled without wind.

Vien looked up sharply. “You read the name aloud?”

Clara nodded. “Who is she?”

Vien slowly sat beside her, the color draining from her face. “I never found out. But every time I did, something changed. A new path would appear. A door that was never there before. But there was always a cost.”

Sarah frowned. “What kind of cost?”

Vien looked away. “Pieces of me vanished. Little things. My mother’s face. The sound of my voice. I can’t remember who I loved. I only remember being loved.”

Ace stepped forward. “So why keep chasing her?”

Vien’s voice was barely a whisper. “Because I think Evelyn is the key. To the curse. To the house. To all of this.”

Clara ran her fingers over the name, feeling its weight settle in her chest. She didn’t know why, but something about it felt familiar.

“I think she’s connected to me,” Clara said. “I think... she might be the woman from the first letter. The one signed with L.”

Vien’s eyes widened. “Then maybe you’re not just caught in the story. Maybe you’re the one it was written for.”

As Clara closed the journal, something fell out from between the pages, a single rose petal, dry and perfectly preserved.

But as it hit the stone floor of the alcove... it turned to ash.

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(26)

Clara stood in the center of the garden alcove, the weight of the name still heavy on her tongue.

"Evelyn," she whispered again.

The ground rumbled.Not violently, but enough for pebbles to shift, for the leaves above to shudder. It was like the house had heard her, and it was thinking.

Vien stood up immediately. “Something’s happening. That name… it stirs the loop.”

Ace instinctively positioned himself in front of Clara. “Be ready for anything.”

Then, the sound came. Not a scream. Not a whisper.A chime.A delicate, melodic bell ringing from somewhere inside the house.

Vien’s eyes widened. “That room...it only rings when something is about to change.”

“What room?” Clara asked.

Vien pointed to the main hall of the house, its grand, arched doorway now slightly open, though none of them had touched it.

“That room didn’t even exist before,” Ace muttered. “That hallway wasn’t there yesterday.”

Clara didn’t hesitate.Drawn as if by gravity, she stepped through the arch.

Inside, the walls were different. No longer cracked and forgotten, but pristine. White molding curved elegantly around tall windows, and the chandelier above glowed softly as if lit just moments ago.

At the end of the corridor stood a door. Painted dark red. A brass handle. And there, just above it, a plaque read, “Evelyn’s Room.”

Vien gasped. “It’s real. It was never real before.”

Clara approached the door, heart pounding. She glanced at the others.

“I have to know what’s behind it.”

Sarah looked unsure. “Should you go in alone?”

“She has to,” Vien said quietly. “The house made this for her.”

Clara gripped the handle and pushed.

The door opened with ease, revealing a small sitting room bathed in golden light. Dust floated through the air like slow snowfall. A fireplace glowed faintly in the corner, though there was no wood. Just embers that seemed to breathe.

On the mantle sat another letter.Clara’s feet carried her forward.She picked it up.No seal. Just a folded page. Inside, a single line:

“You came back for me.”

There was no signature.But Clara knew, deep in her bones, that this letter wasn’t from the past.

It was from someone waiting.

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(27)

Clara stood frozen, the letter trembling in her hands.

“You came back for me.”

The words echoed in her mind like a memory half-formed, familiar and strange all at once. She looked around the room again, slowly, her breath catching.Everything inside felt like a life lived.

There was a velvet armchair near the window, worn at the arms. A porcelain teacup on the side table, as if someone had just set it down. A lace shawl draped over the edge of a chaise lounge. It didn’t feel abandoned.It felt... paused.

She moved toward the bookshelf against the wall. Its rows were filled with leather bound novels, journals, and old music sheets. One caught her eye,“A Season Between Two Souls”.

She ran her fingers along its spine and pulled it out. A photograph slipped from its pages.Clara gasped.

It was the same woman from the sepia-toned photo in Vien’s chest. The same face. Her face. But younger, radiant, caught in a moment of laughter beside a man whose face had been scratched out.

She turned the photo over.

In faded ink,“Evelyn & A.Summer, 1894.”

Her pulse quickened. A. 

"Ace?"

But before she could think more, the room shifted.

The air thickened. The fireplace dimmed. Behind her, the door creaked shut.

She whirled around. “Sarah? Vien?”

No answer.

She reached for the handle. It wouldn’t budge.

The room had locked her in.

The fireplace flickered brighter, then dimmed again. Shadows stretched across the walls, long, elegant, like dancers. And then a voice...a soft male whisper, as if right behind her:

“You said you’d never leave me.”

Clara spun around. No one there.But a cold chill crawled up her spine.

“Who are you?” she whispered, voice shaking.

The shadows began to gather near the bookshelf. Not threatening. Just... waiting.

And in that moment, Clara knew: this wasn’t just Evelyn’s room.This was a memory.

And somehow, she was the key to waking it.

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