Name: Whispers of The Hollow
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Chapter 1 The Inheritance

The road to Hollow Manor was long, winding, and nearly swallowed by nature's slow decay. Overgrown trees arched overhead like skeletal fingers, their bare branches scraping against one another in the cold autumn wind. The dirt path beneath the carriage wheels was uneven, littered with fallen leaves that crunched under the weight of each turn.

Seated inside the carriage, Victor Graves watched the landscape blur past through the grimy window, his expression unreadable. His fingers tapped idly against his knee, his only companion on this journey being the distant hoot of an unseen owl and the occasional jolt of the carriage as it passed over a deep rut in the road.

The driver, an old man with hunched shoulders and a face that had seen too many years, hadn't spoken much since their departure from Blackmere. When Victor had given him the destination, the man had hesitated.

"Hollow Manor?" he had echoed, his voice wary. "Not many would go there willingly."

Victor had only offered a thin smile. Superstitions, old wives' tales, nonsense.

The truth was, Hollow Manor had been left abandoned for nearly a century. Its last known inhabitant-a distant relative Victor had never met-had died years ago, leaving the property in legal limbo. Until now.

Victor reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out the letter that had summoned him here. The parchment was brittle with age, its ink faded but still legible:

> To Victor Graves,

You are the last known heir of the Hollow bloodline. Hollow Manor, and all its belongings, now pass to you.

However, be warned: the house does not forget, nor does it forgive.

No signature. No sender. Only a wax seal pressed into the bottom of the page-an eerie, hollowed-out face, featureless, empty.

Victor smirked. A ghost story, then. He had spent his career dismantling such tales, exposing fraudulent mystics, unraveling the delusions of the gullible. And yet, here he was, chasing a whisper of something beyond reason.

A sharp jolt brought the carriage to a sudden halt.

"We're here," the driver muttered, not turning to look at him.

Victor stepped out, his boots sinking into damp gravel. A thick fog clung to the air, swirling around his legs like grasping hands.

And there it stood.

Hollow Manor.

It loomed in the darkness, a monolithic relic of forgotten times. The once-grand stonework was cracked, overtaken by ivy and rot. The towering windows, black and empty, seemed to watch him with unseen eyes. And the front doors, enormous and heavy with rusted ironwork, stood slightly ajar.

Victor inhaled deeply, exhaling a plume of breath into the cold air. Then, with a determined step, he crossed the threshold.

A House That Breathes

The doors groaned as they swung open, revealing the mansion's vast interior. Dust motes danced in the dim light that filtered through cracked windows, casting long shadows along the marble floors.

The grand foyer stretched upward into darkness, its ceiling lost to time. A massive staircase twisted toward the second floor, its wooden banister adorned with strange, unreadable carvings. Along the walls, faded portraits of long-dead ancestors stared down, their faces worn and peeling-some missing eyes, others completely erased.

Then, a whisper.

Soft. Indistinct.

Victor froze, his ears straining against the silence.

The sound had come from the parlor to his left.

Slowly, he stepped inside.

The parlor was a graveyard of forgotten elegance. Ornate chairs, draped in dust-covered sheets, stood like mourners around a long-dead fireplace. Above the mantel hung a massive portrait-its subject a tall, rigid man dressed in fine black attire.

But the face...

It was blurred. Smudged. As if someone had taken a cloth and erased his features, leaving behind only a shadow of what once was.

Victor's stomach tightened. It was unsettling, the way the faceless figure seemed to be watching despite its lack of eyes.

Then-a sound.

**Scrape.

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Whispers of The Hollow

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Contents

Chapter 1 The Inheritance

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