The days following Emma and Jack’s return to the real world passed like the settling of dust after a storm—silent, slow, inevitable. The estate, with all its haunted corridors and haunted history, seemed to recede into memory, but never truly let them go. It clung to them like smoke in their lungs, like an afterimage burned into the mind’s eye. The world outside carried on—cars honked, people laughed, coffee shops bustled—but for Emma and Jack, reality had lost its edges. The familiar ...