The house no longer felt like home. Every creak in the floorboards now seemed deliberate, every shadow more watchful than before. Since Amaira's disappearance, the once-warm rooms of their Victorian haven had turned cold, hollowed by unease. Tylor sat with Amaira's sketchbook in his lap, flipping through the pages. The last drawing she made—a spiral-shaped tower surrounded by gears—hadn't been there the day before. Her pencil lay beside it, recently used. Somehow, she was still communicating.
Kayla traced her fingers along the grandfather clock's brass-lined interior, her breath catching as the gears began rotating without power. "It's like… someone's using it as a doorway," she whispered. Elias agreed. "We thought we collapsed the last rift. But this—it's not a fracture. It's a tunnel. Something older."
In search of answers, they pried deeper into the walls behind the clock, discovering an old crawlspace leading into what should have been solid foundation. Instead, they found a corridor—lined with fragments of their past: a toy Amaira lost years ago, Kayla's childhood drawing of the sun, a torn page from Elena's journal never recovered. Tylor's throat tightened. "This isn't just memory—it's being rewritten."
A figure moved in the dark at the end of the corridor. Kayla froze. "Amaira?" The figure stepped closer—and though it wore her sister's shape, its eyes shimmered like silver mirrors. "She's caught between," Elias muttered. "Whoever built this… they've got her trapped in a temporal fold."
Elena's journal—its previously blank final page—now bore fresh ink. A new warning appeared: "The Spiral does not end. Follow the thread beneath the tree." They rushed outside to the oak, its roots impossibly large now, curling like vines across the lawn. Beneath the soil, they uncovered a circular hatch etched with the same spiral symbol—sealed tight with a gear-shaped lock. The same gear Amaira left behind.
As the hatch opened, warm air hissed out—carrying the faint scent of metal and lavender, Amaira's favorite. Inside: stairs winding downward, lined with flickering lights that pulsed like a heartbeat. At the bottom, a voice echoed up. Not Amaira's, but something else, distorted, familiar.
"Time forgot her," it said, "but we remember. You opened the door."
They stepped into the Spiral's root. The next journey had already begun.