"They were never meant to touch, only to chase each other through endless skies, he a golden fire forever rising as she, a silver ghost, faded into the abyss of night.

And yet, in the fragile hush of an eclipse, the cosmos bent in mercy, folding time into shadow so they could meet where light could not chase them, where the universe forgot its cruel design, where for one stolen moment, they were.

But even mercy has its limits, and as the sky remembered itself, it tore them apart once more, leaving only the ache of darkness where they had once belonged."

The silver clink of cutlery against porcelain was the only sound in the vast dining hall. Morning light filtered through high, arched windows, spilling in golden sheets over the long table, though I had chosen a seat at one end. The house had always been too large for a single person. It felt larger still in its quiet.

The butler, Mr. Everard, stood nearby, as poised as ever, waiting should I need anything. He had served my grandmother for as long as I could remember-longer, I suspected. There was something unshaken about him, something steady in the way he carried himself, though his gaze, when it met mine, held a depth I could not yet name.

I set my fork down gently. "Mr. Everard," I began, my voice quiet, "tell me about this house. About...Zenith. And, my grandmother."

He did not ask what I meant. There was no need.

His hands, gloved as always, folded neatly before him. "It has been here for generations, Miss Adina," he said. "But it is not the house you remember."

I waited.

He continued, measured. "After your grandmother left, the years were unkind to it. But before that-" He paused, as though sorting through memories he had no right to share. "There was a time when it was different. When she was different."

I felt it then, a shift in the air, not cold but something heavier. "She was happy here once, wasn't she?"

A soft breath, not quite a sigh. "Yes. She was radiant."

I turned my gaze to the high windows, where the sky stretched pale and endless. I tried to picture her-not the woman I had known, sharp-witted and wise, but the woman he spoke of. The one who had loved.

"What happened?"

Everard hesitated, but only for a moment. "Something changed. We never knew what, not fully. But when she left, she was not the same. And before she went, she said to me-" His voice dropped to something just above a whisper, as though the walls themselves might remember.

"I would rather not love if my love won't last. Or my lover won't."

A chill ran through me, though the morning sun was warm. I turned Everard's words over in my mind, letting them settle, letting them breathe. She never told us. But silence does not erase love-it only buries it beneath the weight of time. And love, true love, does not simply fade; it lingers in the walls, in the hush between words, in the way absence feels louder than presence. My grandmother ha=d loved once, so deeply that even the staff had seen its light within her. But then, one day, she had not. Not the mansion, not the life she had built within it, not-him. I would rather not love if my love won't last. Or my lover won't. It was not a lament. It was not grief. It was resolve, sharp and knowing, the kind that comes only from wounds too deep to name.

And yet, the diary. The ink, dark and bleeding into soft parchment. A voice not hers but a man's, woven into its pages with a longing that felt like it had been waiting to be read. Your presence was an unfamiliar warmth... Something inevitable had already begun. But the diary was gone now, leaving only its ghost in my memory. If Everard had never seen this man, if no one had, then what did that mean? Had he been real at all? Or was he, like everything else in this house, a whisper of something unfinished, something lost?

Something happened here. Something so profound, so ruinous, that it had stolen love from a woman who had once loved everything. The mansion, the life within it, the very air she breathed. And if love had been taken from her-then what, or who, had taken it?

I exhaled, slow and steady, before pushing my chair back. The sound scraped softly against the polished floor, but Mr. Everard did not so much as flinch. He only watched, patient and expectant, as though he had anticipated this moment before I had even thought to move.

"Excuse me, Mr. Everard," I said, my voice measured but quieter than before. "I think I need some air."

He inclined his head in a small bow. "Of course, Miss Adina."

I left the dining hall, the echo of my footsteps trailing me as I climbed the grand staircase. The weight of Everard's words followed close behind, slipping into the quiet spaces of my thoughts.

I would rather not love if my love won't last. Or my lover won't.

The words whispered in my mind like the lingering scent of something faded but never truly gone. What had happened here? What had my grandmother seen, felt, lost? And why did it feel as though, by stepping into this house, I had stepped into something unfinished?

The door to my room swung open with the same ease it always had, though the hinges creaked, a sigh of old wood and older secrets. I barely bothered to undress, toeing off my shoes before collapsing onto the bed. The mattress dipped beneath me, swallowing me into its familiar embrace.

I stared at the ceiling, its ornate moldings casting soft shadows in the morning light. Sleep would not come, I knew that. Not with the weight of a love lost lingering in the air. Not with the questions pressing at my ribs like hands urging me to listen.

I would rather not love if my love won't last. Or my lover won't.

The more I thought about it, the more the words took on a shape that unsettled me. She had loved this mansion once-loved it more when she had loved him. And yet, when she left, it was not just him she abandoned, but Zenith itself.

Why?

It felt like a cruel kind of symmetry. She had been in love, and the house had felt alive with her. Then she was not, and neither was it. But what if it was not her love that had faded? What if it had been him? What if he had vanished before she ever had the chance to stop loving him?

And if he had lived in this house, why had Everard never seen him? Why had none of the staff?

Unless...

I sat up, the thought creeping into my mind like a slow-moving shadow. Unless he had never been a man in the way Everard was. Unless he had been something else. Something-someone-who was never meant to last. My breath hitched, a sudden, sharp pull of air.

Had my grandmother loved a ghost?

The thought sent a shiver crawling down my spine. Not because it was absurd-but because it made sense. The way she had spoken of love. The way she had left, hollowed, never the same. And the diary. The ink bled into parchment, a voice not hers, but a man's, full of longing. If Everard had never seen him, if no one had-then had he even been real?

Or had he been nothing more than the house's secret?

The air in my room felt heavier now, thick with something I couldn't name. I pressed a hand to my chest, grounding myself against the wild rhythm of my own heart. If this was true, if my grandmother had loved something that Zenith itself had given her-then I had been wrong about one thing.

It wasn't the mansion which was alive, it was him. And given how I had felt from the point I stepped into this mansion, it was very likely he was still here. And love-her love-had tethered him to this place. Had breathed warmth into these walls, had made them hum with something more than just memory.

But love, too, had left.

What happens to something that was never meant to exist beyond it? Does it simply vanish-dissolve like mist in the morning sun? Or does it linger, hollowed out, stripped of warmth, of presence, of self-left to wander the corridors where it once was?

A coldness coiled at the base of my spine.

Because from the moment I had stepped into Zenith, I had felt it. Not just the weight of the past, not just the unsettling stillness of an empty house. Something else. Something just beyond the threshold of sight. A whisper of movement where there should have been none. A breath that wasn't mine stirring the stillness. A gaze that scraped against my skin when I turned my back.

He had never left.

And yet, a deeper unease gnawed at me, something beyond fear-something instinctive. Because if he had been shaped by love, if he had been real only through her devotion-then what was he now? A memory refusing to fade? A presence that no longer knew what it was?

The thought curled through my mind like mist through old rafters, silent but seeping into every crevice. If he had been born from love-if her presence had given him form-then what had become of him when she left? Did love unravel him like thread pulled too taut? Did he fade into the dust and quiet, become nothing more than a sigh lost between the walls?

And yet, he remained.

The mansion had kept him. Held him. Bound him within its ribs like a breath it refused to exhale. But if he was still here, if some part of him still lingered-

Did that mean he had been watching me?

The realization sent a slow, crawling sensation over my skin. Since the moment I had stepped into Zenith, I had felt something stirring beneath its silence. Not a presence that intruded, not a specter that sought to frighten-but something else. Something woven into the fabric of the house itself, as much a part of it as the air I breathed. The strange mirrors, the piano, the scent...

Had he been watching from the moment I crossed the threshold? From the moment my hands pressed against the timeworn wood of the doors, from the first night I slept beneath this roof?

Had he been waiting? And if he had-for what?

My grandmother had left him, left this place. I had never questioned why before. She had always spoken of Zenith with something like reverence, a quiet fondness-but never with longing. Never with the ache of someone who had lost something dear. No, her love for the mansion had faded when she left, as if whatever bound her to it had been cut away.

And love does not simply fade. It is severed. It is torn. Something had happened. Between her and him.

Had she chosen to leave? Had she walked away knowing she would never return, knowing that she was abandoning something-someone-who had once meant everything? Or had something forced her hand, something she could not fight, something that made her afraid?

I tried to imagine it. My grandmother, young, standing where I stood now, feeling the warmth of a love so deep it had made a house feel alive. The light of it in her, in him. And then-The moment it all broke. A rift, a silence, an absence so profound it made the walls feel hollow in a way they never had before. Had she been the one to let go? Or had something taken him from her? And if he remained...

If he was still here...

Then was I standing in the place where her love had ended? Was I walking through the echoes of something unfinished?

Or was I meant to finish it?