Great – **hauntings and ghosts** take over Chapter III. 🕯️Below is a **long, gothic sequel**, full of whispers, darkness, and presences from the afterlife.--

# 📖 STORY I — CHAPTER III

## **Voices from a House That Is No Longer There**

The fog appeared unexpectedly. It enveloped the town like a heavy curtain, muffling sounds and making the night seem thicker than usual. Anna stood in the middle of the street, heading towards the place where the Vorheim house once stood. She couldn't sleep. She had been hearing whispers for hours.

These weren't dreams.

Her brother's voice repeated her name as clearly as if he were standing right behind her. She turned around – no one. But the echo of the voice lingered in her consciousness, bitter, poignant, steeped in despair.

As she stepped onto the black earth, the fog stirred, as if something were breathing within it.

"Marku...?

Are you feeling up?" the whisper replied.

The voice no longer resembled her brother's. It was lower, cold, devoid of human sound, as if someone were trying to imitate human speech, but this was the first time.

--

## **Footsteps in the Fog**

Someone was following her. Clear footsteps on the damp cobblestones. She turned slowly, trying not to panic.

Nobody.

Only the fog, rippling like a curtain through which the shadow of something tall and still pierced.

Suddenly, the footsteps came again—closer this time.

"Hello?!" she called, though she was surprised to find her voice in a throat choked with fear.

A figure emerged from the fog.

Man? Woman? It was impossible to tell.

The figure was slender, tall, dressed in long, ancient cloaks. The face was hidden in the shadow of the hood.

The figure paused, as if… listening to the clocks.

And then Anna heard them too.

*A quiet, but regular ticking.*

From where? There was no house, after all.

--

## **Spectre**

“Who are you?” she asked.

The figure lifted its head.

Beneath the hood, there was no face.

In place of eyes, only darkness gleamed—as if the empty corridor of the house that once stood there were staring back at it.

“They return,” the specter whispered, echoing as if hundreds of voices, locked in time, were speaking through it. “They always return.”

“Who?”

The creature turned toward the black earth.

There… in the void… the line of what looked like foundations began to emerge.

And then Anna understood:

The house was beginning to return.

Not built with bricks… but summoned by the presence of spirits.

---

## **Room of Shadows**

The wind blew so violently that Anna closed her eyes. When she opened them, the fog was thicker, and before her stood an entrance. Not a door – the outline of an entrance, like the shadow of architecture.

And whispers. Hundreds of whispers. Some pleading for rescue, others angry, others… quiet, yet ominous.

Anna stepped back, but the earth beneath her feet pulsated like breathing skin.

Hands reached out from the fog.

Pale, thin, with long fingers, as if reaching out to her from a time that never came.

“Help us…” they whispered.

"Or become one of us..."

---

## **Cold**

Suddenly she heard something completely familiar.

"Anne..."

Her brother. A real voice. Not an echo.

She turned sharply and saw... his silhouette.

He stood a few steps away, in the fog.

His face was pale, his eyes darker than she remembered, but it was him.

Marek.

"I had to come back," he whispered. "Time hasn't let me go."

Anne felt her knees buckle.

"Where were you? What did they do to you?"

Marek looked into the void.

As if something were calling him.

"Space is only an illusion, Anne. Home never leaves. HE waits."

"Who?"

"The family that came to live here never left..."

Marek raised his hand and pointed to the ground.

"Look."

Shadows of people began to emerge from beneath the surface as if from water.

--

## **End of Chapter**

One of the figures lifted her head. Her eye sockets were empty, and her mouth was sewn shut with thin threads.

Slowly, laboriously… she ran her index finger across her throat.

A warning.

Or a threat.

The clocks began to strike simultaneously. Not thirteen. Not one. Not any known hour.

The sound was unfamiliar.

Home was returning.

And the ghosts with it.

--