The voice from the grave

ic chamber when her heart raced. The room felt colder now, the temperature plummeting with each passin

he floor underneath her seemed to groan in protest. Rachel's spine straightened. Her fingers s

herself. She und

d to run, to flee the oppressive darkness that seemed to push in fr

flickering bulb above her created long, unlit shadows stretching across the walls of the low-lit roo

o something yet more horrible? The creak came once more closer before Rachel could collect her thoughts. Her neck's back hair arched on the end. She wasn't dreaming this. Someone-or perhaps something-was on the move in the dark, barely visible. Desperately wanting to go, her heart thumped in her chest as she walked toward the door, but when she gripped the handle, th

symbols and the cryptic language were all there. The drawing was there. Crude but clear was the image. A silhouette holding what appeared to be a woman's body. Beneath it all, in bold, jagged script was a single word: *"Renewal."* Rachel's blood ran cold. Exactly the same word as printed on the photograph's back. Was Emma's death a piece of this? Was she being used in some tormented ceremony? Her brain whirled with queries, but the answers only seemed like they would slip farther away the more she pondered upon them. Once more the floorboards groaned. Nearer. Rachel's head whipped around, and her respira

n. A witness to what is on the horizon, the number responded. "Here now you, Rachel are also." Rachel opened her sight. Witness. The picture's word. notes. More than a title, it was not. It was a cautionary. "What is coming?" demanded Rachel, her voice shivering but strong. "Emma, what did you happen to?" The figure was slow to react. Rather, it made another sluggish step ahead, its presence deafening. Rachel sensed a cold, suffocating pressure close around her chest as if invisible hands were squeezing their hold. "It's already started," the man replied practically mournfully. "What you found was merely the start. Emma's demise was simply the initial link in a series of events. There is much more yet to com

breathing something poisonous, and her stomach turned. The figure moved even nearer, their breath chill against her face, the darkness under their hood growing as if it were c

rembling. Everything stopped just as fast as it had started. Still, the room was. The gloom had gone. The image had disappeared. Rachel fell to her knees, pan

er than Emma's passing. Rachel had become engrossed in something she could not escape, something much older and much more sinister than she could have possibly imagined. As her brain rushed to grasp wh

unfeeling, burned cut into her heart. She knew now that whatever this force was- it was hunting her, she was not alone anymore. Once