Thalia stared at the warning for a long moment.
DO NOT OPEN.
The black ink had faded with age, but the words still stood out clearly against the yellowed floor plan.
The room circled beside them looked especially strange among the neatly labeled storage rooms, wine cellar, and old boiler room.
Ivan stood on the other side of the table, studying the same plan.
“If Adrian really didn’t want anyone to open that room, why would he leave the basement plan behind?”
Thalia did not answer immediately.
That was exactly what bothered her.
If Adrian had only wanted to warn people away from the basement, destroying the plan would have been far simpler than hiding it inside a wooden box with several letters.
And considering everything that had led them here—the brass key hidden inside the silver pocket watch, the marked room on the ground-floor plan, and now the box concealed behind the wall—it was impossible to believe any of it had been accidental.
Adrian seemed to have wanted someone to follow the clues and find this place.
Yet at the same time, he had apparently wanted them to stop here.
The contradiction made it difficult to understand what he had truly intended.
“Let’s finish the letters first,” Thalia said.
“Maybe there’s an explanation in the others.”
She set the basement plan aside and picked up the letter dated October 3, 1996.
They had already read the beginning.
Whoever had written it mentioned the reappearance of the ring and had specifically warned Adrian not to let the person wearing it enter the basement of Eremon Manor.
Thalia continued reading.
The second half of the letter had not survived as well as the first.
Dampness had blurred several sections, leaving only fragments that could still be made out.
The seal in the basement remains unchanged for now…
Do not trust what you see down there…
The next line was completely illegible.
Thalia tilted the paper toward the light coming through the window and studied the faded writing until she finally managed to make out the last sentence.
If something calls your name, do not answer.
She frowned.
Ivan had read it as well.
His expression became noticeably more serious.
“Whatever happened in that basement, it sounds worse than we thought.”
“And whoever wrote this must have been down there before.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have given Adrian such a specific warning.”
Rather than speculate further, Thalia carefully set the first letter aside and picked up the second, dated October 7.
The handwriting was noticeably rougher than in the first letter, as though the writer had been in a hurry.
Several words nearly ran into one another.
Again, there was no greeting at the beginning.
I went back to Eremon last night.
The door on the lower level has not been opened, but what is happening down there is not what we thought.
Thalia continued.
I believed the voice could only be heard near the door.
Last night, I heard it from the stairs.
It knew my name.
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
Ivan instinctively glanced toward the open doorway.
The corridor outside remained empty.
Nothing moved except the faint breeze slipping through the manor’s broken windows.
Thalia noticed and looked at him.
“I thought you weren’t worried.”
“I’m checking our surroundings.”
His voice remained calm as he looked back at the letter.
“Keep reading.”
Thalia decided not to point out the obvious and continued.
There was little more information in the second letter.
The writer explained that he had never entered the room at the deepest part of the basement, nor had he touched its door.
Yet after returning from the manor, he had occasionally begun hearing indistinct voices in his sleep.
The letter did not explain what those voices said.
At the bottom of the page was only one final warning, underlined twice.
Adrian, do not go down there again.
Thalia placed the second letter beside the first.
From what they had read so far, the unknown writer had clearly investigated Eremon Manor alongside Adrian and knew far more about the basement than either of them did.
Yet none of the letters carried a signature.
She picked up the third one.
October 12, 1996.
Unlike the previous two, this letter had survived in better condition.
The handwriting was neat again, although the message itself was much shorter.
Thalia unfolded the paper.
Her eyes reached the first line, and she stopped.
I found the records concerning Acheron.
It was a name neither of them had encountered before.
“Acheron…”
Thalia read it aloud.
The instant the name left her lips, the obsidian ring on her left ring finger suddenly grew warm.
The reaction lasted only a moment, but it was sharp enough to make her look down immediately.
Ivan noticed.
“The ring?”
“Yeah.
It reacted when I said the name.”
Thalia watched the ring for a moment.
The black stone had already returned to normal.
Nothing about its appearance had changed.
After a brief hesitation, she tried the name again.
“Acheron.”
Nothing happened.
The room remained silent, and the ring stayed cool.
Thalia waited another few seconds before turning back to the letter.
The name is older than Eremon Manor itself.
There are very few surviving records, and those I have found contradict one another.
Some claim it is nothing more than a name distorted through generations of retelling.
Others suggest that he truly existed.
Water stains had blurred part of the next few lines.
Thalia adjusted the angle of the paper and continued until she found a sentence that was still mostly intact.
I don’t know which version is true, but one thing is certain.
The black ring is connected to him.
Thalia’s thumb brushed unconsciously along the edge of the ring.
Ever since the obsidian ring had appeared on her hand, she had been trying to understand where it came from.
At first, she had considered the possibility that it was simply an unusual antique with a strange history.
That explanation had become increasingly difficult to believe.
The silver pocket watch, Eremon Manor, the hidden letters—everything seemed to lead back to the ring.
And now they finally knew something else.
It had never belonged to Adrian.
Its history was likely far older than Eremon Manor itself, and somehow, a man named Acheron was connected to it.
Thalia continued reading.
If you meet the person wearing the ring, do not tell her who Acheron is.
Do not let her learn that the room at the deepest end of the basement is connected to him.
A large blank space followed.
Only near the bottom of the page did another line appear, the ink so faded that it was barely visible.
Some things, once remembered, can never be forgotten again.
Thalia finished the letter but did not put it down immediately.
Her gaze returned to the obsidian ring.
It sat quietly on her finger, giving no sign that it had reacted only moments earlier.
Ivan was silent for a while before asking, “Have you ever heard the name Acheron before?”
“No.”
Thalia thought about it, then shook her head.
“Not that I remember.
I don’t recall coming across it in any of the historical records or antique research I’ve worked with either.”
“Then there’s no point guessing who he was yet.”
Ivan looked toward the final letter on the table.
“Let’s see what else we have.”
Thalia nodded and carefully set the third letter aside before picking up the last one.
October 17, 1996.
Unlike the others, this envelope appeared to have been opened many times.
Deep creases marked the edges, and one corner had begun to tear.
Thalia carefully removed the letter.
There was surprisingly little inside.
Less than half a page.
Adrian, I’m leaving.
What happened last night proves that everything we believed was wrong.
Whatever is beneath the manor does not exist because of Eremon.
It may be the other way around.
Eremon Manor may have been built here to keep whatever lies below contained.
Thalia’s expression grew more serious.
If that was true, then whatever existed beneath the manor could predate the building itself.
She continued reading.
The next line had been deliberately blacked out.
Most of the sentence was impossible to recover, but a few words remained visible.
The ring…
The pact…
And one final word.
Bride.
Thalia stopped.
“Bride?”
Ivan frowned as well.
Clearly, he had not expected the word to appear there either.
Thalia examined the damaged line again, but too much of it had been destroyed.
There was no way to reconstruct the original sentence.
She had no choice but to move on.
Only a few lines remained.
Do not open the innermost door.
If the ring has already chosen a new bearer, then under no circumstances should she be allowed inside.
Acheron will know she has come.
That was where the letter ended.
There was no signature.
No explanation of what bride meant.
And nothing that explained why Acheron would know when the ring had chosen someone new.
Thalia slowly lowered the letter onto the table.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Wind moved through the trees outside and slipped through the cracks in the broken windows.
Several old sheets of paper stirred faintly on the table.
Ivan reached out to keep one from moving, then looked at Thalia.
“I think we should stop here for today.”
She looked up.
“You don’t want to see the basement?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to.
We just don’t know enough yet.”
Ivan gestured toward the letters.
“Every one of these warns Adrian about the basement, especially after the ring appeared.
You’re wearing that ring now, and we don’t even know who Acheron was.
Going down there without knowing anything else doesn’t make sense.”
Thalia did not argue.
She wanted to know what was hidden beneath the manor, but curiosity alone was not enough reason to ignore repeated warnings.
The letters had mentioned her ring too many times, and the final line—Acheron will know she has come—was difficult to dismiss.
She picked up the basement plan again.
“Then we find the entrance, but we don’t go down.”
Ivan gave her a look.
“Just confirm where it is?”
“Just confirm where it is.”
Thalia pointed to the staircase connecting the ground floor to the lower level.
“We’re already here.
We should at least make sure this plan from thirty years ago still matches the manor as it is now.
If we come back after finding more information about Acheron, we won’t have to search for the entrance all over again.”
It was reasonable enough.
Ivan eventually agreed.
They returned the four letters to their original order and placed the still-wrapped object back inside the wooden box.
Thalia paused when she picked up the dark red bundle.
Whatever was inside felt surprisingly light.
Through the cloth, she could make out something thin and solid, possibly a piece of metal.
Since they had already decided to stop the investigation for now, she resisted the temptation to unwrap it and returned it to its original place.
Once everything had been put away, they left the room and followed the basement plan in search of the entrance.
According to the drawing, the staircase should have been on the north side of the manor, behind the old dining room.
After several decades of neglect, however, parts of the interior no longer matched the plan perfectly.
Fallen furniture blocked some corridors, forcing them to take a longer route.
It took them more than ten minutes to reach the marked location.
Behind the old dining room was a narrow passage that would have been easy to overlook.
They followed it to the end.
There, they found a flight of stone steps descending underground.
A wooden door had once covered the entrance, but most of it had rotted away.
Only half of the door remained, hanging crookedly from the frame.
There was no light below.
The deeper the steps went, the darker they became, until the staircase disappeared completely into shadow.
Thalia switched on her phone’s flashlight and aimed it downward.
The beam illuminated the first dozen or so steps.
Beyond that, there was only darkness.
She did not go down.
Instead, she stood at the entrance and studied the staircase from above.
The moment she moved closer to the first step, the obsidian ring began to warm again.
Thalia stopped.
Ivan noticed immediately.
“The ring again?”
“Yeah.”
She looked down at it.
“And this is stronger than when I said Acheron’s name.”
Ivan stepped in front of her at once, making it clear that he had no intention of letting her move any closer.
Thalia had not planned to descend in the first place.
She simply raised the flashlight again and looked into the darkness below.
There was nothing there.
Only silence.
Now that they had confirmed the entrance matched the floor plan, there was no reason to stay.
Thalia lowered her phone and turned to leave.
Then she heard something.
A faint sound drifted up from somewhere deep beneath the stairs.
It was so quiet that it nearly disappeared beneath the cold air moving through the underground passage.
Thalia stopped.
She turned back toward the staircase.
Nothing had changed.
The darkness below remained still.
For a moment, she thought she had heard someone speak, but the sound had been too faint to make out.
She could not even be sure whether it had truly been a voice or simply the wind passing through the old passage.
“Ivan.”
He turned immediately.
“What is it?”
“Did you hear something just now?”
Ivan went quiet and listened.
After several seconds, he shook his head.
“No.”
Thalia said nothing.
She stared into the darkness a little longer, but no other sound came.
Maybe it really had been the wind.
She finally looked away.
“Let’s go.”
Ivan nodded, and the two of them headed back through the passage.
Neither of them noticed the faint dark-red glimmer that passed across the surface of the obsidian ring as Thalia walked away.
It vanished almost immediately, swallowed by the black stone.
Far below the staircase, somewhere beyond the reach of the light, the voice came again.
This time, it was just a little clearer.
“…She’s here.”