CHAPTER 42: THE HAUNTED MANSION

They called it the Haunted Mansion, but its ghosts were not the kind that rattled chains or drifted through walls. No, this place was haunted by memory.

From the moment Ahce arrived at the edge of the Pentecase estate, the mansion loomed before her like a relic torn from the bones of a dream. Once, it must have been magnificent, a palace of white stone and glass that caught the sun like a mirror to heaven.

Now, time had eroded its grace. Ivy strangled its balconies. Moss climbed the marble lions guarding the gate. The windows, once pristine, were cracked into veins of colorless glass that scattered candlelight into fractured rainbows. And the air, heavy with cedar, old dust, and rain, carried the faint perfume of something long dead but not yet gone.

They said this house once belonged to the first Duchess of Pentecase, a woman who went mad waiting for her husband’s return from war. Her diary, still sealed in the west wing, was said to whisper when the night wind blew.

The servants spoke in hushed voices of music drifting from empty rooms, of laughter that belonged to no living soul, and of corridors that lengthened after midnight.

No one entered after sunset.

No one but her.

This was the mansion of heirs, the proving ground for the bloodline’s chosen successor. It was both sanctuary and trial, a place that devoured the unworthy.

Ahce stood at its gates on her first night, feeling the mist curl around her boots, the wind tug at her coat. She was not easily frightened, yet something about the silence unsettled her. It was too heavy, too deliberate, as if the house itself were holding its breath, watching her.

When dawn came, the trial began.

At precisely 4:00 A.M., a bell tolled through the halls, its chime echoing like a heartbeat in the dark. No servant came to wake her. No kind hand guided her way. This was her initiation.

Fifteen minutes later, she stood in the training yard, uniform sharp, eyes alert, hands clenched against the biting cold. The instructors greeted her not with courtesy, but command.

From 4:15 to 7:00, her mornings were carved from sweat and steel, swordsmanship, firearms, and unarmed combat. The instructors showed no mercy.

"You’re not here to learn," one said, circling her like a hawk. "You’re here to survive what your enemies will never teach."

From 7:30 to 9:00, her world shifted from steel to strategy. Breakfast was served in silence as nobles and tutors dissected the politics of nations and the art of manipulation. She learned to wield words as deftly as weapons, to smile while concealing a dagger beneath her tongue.

9:30 to 12:00 brought history lessons, Pentecase wars, scandals, betrayals. Each page of her ancestors’ legacy was written in blood. The family’s empire had been built on intellect, deception, and sacrifice. And she was expected to remember every name that ever fell in their service.

Lunch was a luxury, fifteen minutes of solitude, no conversation, no respite.

By 1:00, she was back in the field. Command simulations. Tactical warfare. She learned how to read soldiers, how to break men with a sentence, how to make decisions that cost lives and sleep soundly afterward.

By 6:00, her body ached. Her hands trembled from exhaustion. But still, the day wasn’t over.

After dinner came the mansion’s task, cleaning, restoring, and mapping. Every heir candidate was required to "tame" the estate. To earn the house’s acknowledgment.

"Only those the mansion accepts," the Duke had said, "may inherit its blood."

At midnight, she collapsed onto her bed, eyes fixed on the ornate ceiling that seemed to breathe with shadows. Sometimes, she heard footsteps pacing outside her room. Sometimes, the mirrors rippled as if the glass itself were alive. Still, Ahce endured. Fear was irrelevant.

She had not come for comfort, she had come for purpose. And if this house held the key to her power, to Richard’s truth, then she would walk its haunted halls until they broke her or bowed.

The storm came without warning.

Rain slashed against the glass, and thunder rolled through the mansion’s bones. Sleep eluded her. The world outside blurred into gray and lightning. So she rose.

Lantern in hand, she wandered the halls, barefoot and silent. And inevitably, her steps carried her to the forbidden place, the west wing.

The black door. Every heir was warned never to open it. But curiosity had always been her curse.

The hinges groaned as the door creaked open. The corridor beyond was narrow, drowned in shadow. Her lantern flickered as she stepped inside, the air colder than the rest of the house, thick with the scent of old iron and burnt wax.

The walls were lined with portraits, faces long forgotten, eyes that seemed to follow her with quiet accusation. At the corridor’s end stood a mirror taller than she was, framed in silver etched with ancient Pentecase sigils.

Her reflection wavered in the dim light. The glass shimmered like disturbed water. And then, it whispered.

At first, it was only a hum, soft, melodic, like a choir beneath the earth. Then came words, slow and deliberate.

"Ahce Shang Pentecase..." the voice murmured, echoing inside her mind rather than her ears."...do you hear them too?"

Her breath caught. The lantern flared blue.

Her reflection smiled.

She did not.

"You have the sight," the whisper said, voice now a chorus of echoes. "Just like she did. Just like every heir who bleeds Pentecase blood."

The glass rippled again. A figure emerged, a woman draped in crimson, her golden eyes glowing faintly through the haze. Her beauty was haunting, her sorrow palpable. The first Duchess. The mad one.

"The Pentecase are blessed with the mind’s eye..." the Duchess’s voice wove into the storm. "...and cursed by what it reveals."

Images cascaded through Ahce’s mind, battles, blood, crowns falling, heirs burning in madness. She gasped, clutching her head as visions of the past tore through her like fire. Generations of pain, ambition, and sacrifice surged within her veins. She saw the truth.

The Pentecase line was not merely noble. They were seers, wielders of psychic sight that reached through time and thought. Their power came with a cost, each gift fed on the sanity of its bearer. The stronger the sight, the deeper the fall. And now, hers had awakened.

The mirror cracked, snap! A line down its center. Blood dripped from her nose, spattering the marble. It seeped into the cracks of the floor, and something beneath the mansion stirred, deep and ancient, like a beast rousing from slumber.

The lantern’s flame died. Darkness swallowed the hall. Then came the voice again, soft, sorrowful, and ancient.

"Welcome home, successor," the Duchess whispered, her tone both a blessing and a curse. "Let us see... if you can survive the family’s madness."

And as lightning split the sky outside, Ahce stood trembling before the shattered glass, her reflection now gone, her heartbeat echoing in the silence. The mansion was awake. And so was she.