For twenty years, Elara has lived in darkness, trapped in a mansion of shadows and silence, haunted by a tormentor whose face she barely dares to remember. Every corridor holds secrets. Every room whispers of cruelty. And every shadow hides a lie.

When a hidden door reveals journals and photographs chronicling her life, Elara discovers a truth more horrifying than her captivity: the man who imprisoned her is her own uncle. Family, it seems, can be as deadly as any stranger.

Armed with knowledge, cunning, and a fragile, flickering hope, Elara must navigate a labyrinth of fear, deceit, and psychological traps. The mansion itself seems alive, watching, waiting — as predator and prey blur, and the line between freedom and vengeance dissolves.

But escaping the house is only the beginning. In the darkness, wings stir. Shadows shift. And survival comes with a price that might be higher than she ever imagined.

In a world where captivity shapes the mind as brutally as the body, can one girl truly claim her freedom… or will the darkness claim her first?

Prologue
The Awakening

Rain lashed the mansion in relentless sheets, striking its stained glass like a thousand tiny hammers, each shard of colored light trembling in response. The wind howled through shattered windows, snaking through corridors and hollow chambers, carrying with it the scent of damp stone, rot, and the faint iron tang of memories long trapped. Inside, the halls stretched endlessly, folding back on themselves, dripping with shadow that seemed almost sentient. Every step she took was measured and deliberate, yet she never truly moved forward. The mansion itself dictated distance, bending perception, stretching space, twisting angles until a single hallway could contain decades of wandering. She stirred somewhere beyond the length of those corridors, seated alone in an upper chamber whose windows had long since been blackened by soot and neglect. Her fingers traced swirling patterns in the dust coating the cold stone floor, fingers moving unconsciously, choreographed by years of repetition and obsession. Dust rose in spirals around her, catching what little light filtered through the cracks in the shutters, ghostly motes dancing like spirits too timid to speak. Each swirl seemed to answer her movements, whispering faint echoes of the past soft laughter, stifled cries, the scratch of nails on stone. Sunlight was a forgotten memory. The sensation of air brushing against her skin, warm and fragrant, existed only in dreams, fracturing into images she could not fully grasp. A human voice, the softness of conversation, or a touch of comfort, had long since become myth. She measured her time not by seasons, not by the sun or moon, but by walls, steps, shadows, and the mansion’s rhythm. The heartbeat of the stone, the tremor of the floors beneath her, the groan of beams under pressure they were her clock, her compass, her only proof of continuity.