Aria hadn't told the others yet.
She didn't know how to. Or if she should. Because what she saw might not have been real. It might have been a dream. Or worse—something planted in her by the house. Something designed.
But the seventh girl was still there.
In the window.
Every morning since the mirror incident, Aria would wake just before the others and go to the far end of the hallway. She would stand by the small square window facing the eastern wing—the only one that overlooked the rotted garden wall.
And every morning, the same thing.
A girl standing just beyond the hedge. Pale dress. Dark hair. No face.
Aria didn't mean she was faceless. No. She meant the girl's face changed. Sometimes it was Sofi's. Sometimes Mina's. Once, horribly, it was her own. Like a mirror that wanted to belong to her.
Today, it was Tara's.
---------
Aria stared.
The girl in the garden stood with her hands folded in front of her, head tilted slightly, mouth open as if speaking.
But the window was sealed.
The air felt too still. The glass didn't fog when she breathed on it.
Then the girl in the garden did something new.
She raised her hand.
Aria stumbled back.
The girl mimicked the motion — same hand, same angle.
Aria turned and ran.
Downstairs, the others sat in silence around the breakfast table. It had become their habit—silent mornings, broken only when someone coughed or the silverware clinked against chipped porcelain.
The food was always bland now. Always grayish. It wasn't always the same dish, but it felt the same. As if the house cooked with memory instead of ingredients.
Aria sat last.
No one asked where she'd been. No one asked anything anymore.
Until Reya spoke.
"I had a dream last night," she said. "About a spiral staircase."
"The one from the west wing?" Mina asked.
"No," Reya said. "This one was made of teeth."
They all looked at her.
"Human teeth. Or maybe not. They didn't look... alive. But they weren't dead either."
Sofi wrapped her arms around herself.
"Was it just a dream?" Tara asked softly.
Reya didn't answer.
---------
That afternoon, they walked the west wing together.
They no longer wandered alone. After the black room, the second attic, the mirrors, and Tara's vanishing — they'd made a silent pact: We stay together.
The west wing corridor had changed again.
Where there had once been a dead end, now stretched a hallway that went far too long. Longer than the length of the house should've allowed. Doors lined either side, all closed. No labels. No signs.
"Pick one," Mina said.
Lina reached for the closest knob.
"Wait," Aria said suddenly. "Look at the floor."
They did.
The scuff marks.
Six pairs of footprints — small, dusty impressions in the wood.
"They're ours," Reya said.
"And they're going into the hallway," Tara whispered.
They turned.
The door to the west wing was closed behind them.
When had that happened?
No one had touched it.
--------
They chose a door at random.
Inside: a library.
Empty. Neat. Dustless.
But not silent.
The books hummed.
Mina stepped forward and reached for one of the tomes. As her fingers brushed the spine, it leapt from the shelf, hit the floor, and opened by itself.
Words scribbled across the page at lightning speed, forming sentences in long black ink.
"Welcome back, Aria."
Everyone froze.
"I didn't do anything," Aria said. "I haven't been here before."
"Yes you have," the book wrote. "You forgot. You always forget."
Tara took a step back.
The shelf behind her slammed shut.
One by one, the doors around them locked.
Sofi gasped. "We're trapped."
"No," Mina said. "We're being told something."
Reya walked to another book, opened it.
"Do not speak her name. Do not turn your back. Do not—"
The sentence cut off.
Blood oozed between the pages.
Tara closed her eyes. "I can't be here."
She turned.
The door was gone.
--------
Time bent in that room.
They didn't know how long they stayed. The books eventually stopped writing. The walls went gray. Reya collapsed once from the pressure in her head. Lina tried kicking the shelves. Nothing broke.
Until Sofi said, "Try saying her name."
Everyone turned.
"Whose?" Aria asked.
"The girl in the window," Sofi replied. "I saw her too. Just now. Reflected in the glass on the case. I think… she wants us to say her name."
"What name?" Tara asked.
"She doesn't have one. That's why she's stuck."
"No," Reya said quickly. "No. That's what the house wants. It wants us to name her. If we do, it becomes real."
Aria felt something shift inside her chest.
"What if we already did?" she whispered.
"What?"
She pointed to Tara.
"She didn't have a name. Until we met her. Until she told us."
Tara stepped back. "I told you because I trusted you."
"You think that changes what the house sees?" Aria asked. "It chose you. Maybe it gave you the name. Maybe it let us speak it."
Mina looked between them. "Aria, stop."
But Aria didn't stop.
"I think that girl in the window is Tara."
----------
The books screamed.
Not aloud. But visibly. The pages all fluttered open at once. Words scrawled themselves across the bindings, the covers, the floor.
TARA. TARA. TARA.
Ink bled through the walls. The room stank of rotting paper.
The door appeared again. But it was wrong.
Twisted. Bent. Slightly ajar.
The hallway beyond was darker than before.
And the girl in the garden stood just beyond it.
Aria fell to her knees.
"I didn't mean it," she whispered. "I didn't mean it."
But it was too late.
---------
They got out.
Somehow.
The hallway rewrote itself, shortened, and returned them to the parlor. None of them spoke for a long while. No one mentioned the books. Or the screams.
Not even Aria.
Especially not Aria.
But Sofi sat beside Tara that night.
Held her hand.
"I don't care what they say," she whispered. "I know it's really you."
Tara nodded once.
But in the dark, where no one could see, she stared at her reflection in the mirror across the room.
And whispered to herself.
"I'm not so sure anymore."