Dorma is quiet.
But not empty.
It rarely is.
The new family doesn't know its name.
To them, it's "the old place off the main road,"
a fixer-upper, full of charm, and suspiciously affordable.
The child is the first to feel it.
Her name is Lina. She is seven.
She talks to walls the way some children talk to trees.
Not because she's afraid. But because she knows they listen.
She finds the attic on the second day.
It's locked, of course.
But doors are just suggestions in Dorma.
She opens it with a silver key she swears she found in the garden.
Her mother doesn't remember owning it.
Upstairs, the dust feels like breath.
Lina stands in the doorway.
She doesn't call it scary.
She calls it quiet.
She walks in.
And she doesn't see mirrors, because mirrors only show themselves when you're ready.
But she hears something.
A hum.
A hush.
A voice not speaking, but present.
And she smiles.
Not out of joy.
Out of recognition.
Annora watches her.
Not through eyes.
Through the floor, the walls, the whimper of light against dust.
She sees Lina the way the house sees—
as possibility.
A child who knows.
And for the first time in years, Dorma leans forward.
Not to consume.
Not to trap.
But to welcome.
Because maybe, one day, Lina will choose to stay.
Or maybe she'll carry Dorma's story into the world.
Like Anna once did.
Annora does not press.
She simply waits.
She is not the house's master.
She is its memory.
And in that attic room, a girl and a silence sit together.
No words.
No fear.
Only the beginning of something—
A new whisper.
A new name.
And the echo of a legacy that does not end,
but grows.