Sandra had spent her whole life believing that she had been born into nothingness.

  She had believed the story her mother had whispered to her in the middle of the night when the wind howled through the cracks in the farmhouse walls and the candlelight flickered as if it, too, wanted to run. She had believed that her family had always been ordinary - just another forgotten name in a town that had never been worth remembering.

  She had been wrong.

  And the proof was here.

  Buried under the floorboards. Tucked between the walls. Hidden in places only blood should be found.

  The house had swallowed its secrets for years, letting dust and time build up over the truth, but it was never gone. Just waiting. Waiting for the right hands to free it.

  Sandra's fingers trembled as she peeled off another board, splinters cutting into her palms, but she barely felt it. She had to know.

  The first thing she found was the box.

  It was small, wooden, polished smooth with age and touch, sealed with a rusted brass latch. Sandra ran her thumb over it, feeling the deep grooves, the worn edges. It had been opened before. Again. And again. And again.

  She wedged her fingernails under the lid and pried it open.

  Inside are letters. Stacks of them, tied together with brittle ribbon, yellowed with age. The ink had bled in places, warped by moisture and time, but the writing was still there. Still waiting to be read. Sandra's breath came too quickly. She unfolded the first letter with cautious fingers. And began to read. The letter was dated 1874. It was addressed to a woman she did not know.

  But the signature at the bottom was familiar.

  Marigold Charleston. Her grandmother.

  Sandra's stomach twisted as her eyes followed the words. The first lines were nothing but pleasantries - empty assurances, words meant to comfort. Then the tone changed. Sandra's fingers tightened on the fragile paper. The market had been calling even then. Her grandmother had known.

  She had written about the symbols, the carvings that never stayed the same, the whispers that came through the walls when the house was silent. She had written about the debt, the promise, the bargain made long before her time. She had written about the blood. About how it had always been the woman in her family who had been chosen. Not for sacrifice.

  For something worse. To keep the door open.

  Sandra's pulse pounded in her skull. The market hadn't invaded. It had never had to. Her family had been the gatekeepers. The ones who kept the quiet rituals, who fed the Market the things it asked for, who made sure the door between their world and something older stayed open.

  Not for their sake. For the market's sake. Because if it ever closed - if the door ever really closed - the Market would wake up hungry. Sandra flipped through more letters, her breath coming fast and uneven.

  The leather of the book was cracked, the pages warped from dampness, but the ink had not faded. The words were still there, waiting to be read.

  Waiting to be remembered. She ran her fingers along the first page, her breath coming too fast, her pulse loud in her ears.

  The handwriting was her mother's. But the words were not. They were instructions. Prayers. Warnings.

  Pages and pages of rituals, of sacrifices, of names long since erased from history, names that should never have been spoken. The market had always been here. Not above, not below, but within. It did not need to invade. It did not need to be consumed. It had been part of Black Hollow from the beginning.

  The city had not fallen to it.

  The town had belonged to it.

  Sandra flipped through the pages, catching her breath at words she didn't understand, at symbols she'd seen carved into wood, stone, and skin. She pressed her hand to one of the pages, her fingers running over the ink.

  It was fresh. It shouldn't have been fresh. And then she heard it. A whisper. Not from behind her. Not from the house. From the book itself. She slammed it shut. But the whisper didn't stop. It crawled under her skin, curled into the spaces between her ribs, and settled into her spine as if it had been waiting for her to find it. For her to finally listen.

  Sandra stumbled back, her breathing uneven, the book heavy in her hands. She had spent her whole life thinking that she was running from something. That Black Hollow was just a town. That her mother was just sick. That Gemini was the only one who had ever belonged to the market. But it had never been Gemini. It had never been just Gemini.

  It had always been them. All of them. And now there was no more running. For Sandra understood the final, terrible truth. She was never meant to run. She was meant to take her mother's place.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Her family had been bound to this place from the beginning - not by choice, not by circumstance, but by something deeper. Sandra swallowed the rising nausea that clung to her throat. She reached for the last letter in the box. Her mother's handwriting. Shaky, jagged. As if written in haste. As if she knew she was running out of time. Sandra's vision blurred as she read.

  "Forgive me, my love."

  "I tried to break it."

  "But the blood always calls her back."

  "It was never Gemini.

  "It was always you."

  Sandra's breath caught. This couldn't be right. She felt the weight of the house pressing against her, the walls breathing, moving, listening. She was wrong. She had to be wrong.

  But the truth was written here, in ink and blood, by a thousand different hands. The market had never been Gemini's. Gemini had never been the key. Sandra had been. And she had walked right back into his hands.

  Sandra could still feel the weight of the letters in her hands, the brittle pages trembling between her fingers long after she had put them down as if the words had sunk beneath her skin and buried themselves deep in her bones. The truth had always been there, waiting in the dark corners of the house, hidden in the rooms where her mother had stared too long at nothing, where the walls had whispered in the dead of night.

  It had never been Gemini. It had always been her.

  The realization sat in her stomach like rot. Like something alive, something writhing. She had spent her whole life believing she was nothing - a forgotten girl in a dying city, another body in a world that didn't care enough to notice her. But she had been wrong.

  The market had noticed. It had always been noticed.

  And Gemini, God, Gemini had always known.

  Sandra stood in the dim light of the living room, the scent of old paper and dust in the air, the echoes of her mother's words echoing through her skull, and for the first time, she felt the house watching her with something other than hunger. It was waiting. Waiting to see what she would do with that truth. She had to find Gemini.

  She moved quickly through the house, her bare feet pressing against the warped wooden floor, her breath sharp and uneven. The hallways seemed longer now, stretching beyond what they should be, the doorways higher, the ceilings pushing in as if the house itself was shifting to accommodate something larger, something growing just beneath the surface.

  She found Gemini standing by the window in the front room, bathed in the light of a sky that no longer belonged to this world.

  The red haze had deepened, thickened, curling into the spaces between the buildings outside, staining the air with shades of rust and blood. The houses no longer looked real, their edges blurred like a painting left out in the rain too long.

  The city was no longer Black Hollow. It was something else.

  And Gemini looked like she belonged there. She stood with her back to Sandra, her long dark hair hanging loose over her shoulders, her dress still damp from the market air, her bare feet leaving no marks on the dusty floor. Sandra swallowed, her hands clenching into fists.

  She had been used. Used like a pawn in a game she had never even known she was a part of. She had been dragged back here - not by fate, not by chance, but because Gemini needed her back.

  The words were already burning in her throat when Gemini finally turned to face her, her expression unreadable, her dark eyes gleaming with something almost amused. "You found it, didn't you?" Gemini murmured. Sandra's jaw clenched.

  "You knew." A slow, knowing smile curled across Gemini's lips. "Of course I knew." The confession should have made Sandra feel vindicated and should have given her the satisfaction of catching Gemini in her lies, but instead, it only sent a chill down her spine.

  Because Gemini wasn't ashamed. She wasn't afraid. She had wanted Sandra to know the truth. She had led her to it. Sandra took a step forward, her pulse pounding. "All this time... you let me believe that you were my sister. You let me believe that you were the reason we were trapped in this nightmare." Her voice trembled.

  "Why?" Gemini sighed, tilting her head as if the question bored her as if the answer was so simple it wasn't even worth asking. "Because you had to be willing to understand, little bird. And you weren't."

  Sandra's stomach twisted. "Understand what?" Gemini's smile widened. "That this was always meant to be." Sandra shook her head and stepped back, Sandra's body was cold.

  Not the kind of cold that came from the night air or from standing too long in a drafty house, but something deeper, something that settled beneath the skin and refused to leave, something that curled into the spaces between her ribs and pressed against her lungs until every breath felt too tight, too shallow, too stolen.

  Gemini's words still hung in the air, thick and unshakable, seeping into the walls, the floors, and the very marrow of the house. "This was always meant to be."

  Sandra shook her head, denying it before she fully understood what it meant. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms, the sting keeping her grounded, keeping her from slipping into the slow, creeping horror that threatened to pull her under.

  Gemini stood before her, untroubled, unmoved, her expression soft, almost patient, as if she had all the time in the world to wait for Sandra to finally understand the shape of the truth she had uncovered. And Sandra hated her for it.

  "You used me," she whispered, her voice trembling no matter how hard she tried to keep it steady.

  Gemini's lips curled, slowly and deliberately, as if Sandra had just said something funny, something sweet. "Of course I did," she murmured. "What else are little sisters for?" Sandra pounced. She wasn't thinking. She wasn't planning. She was just moving, her body acting on pure, blinding instinct.

  Her hands wrapped around Gemini's throat, her fingers pressing into her skin, and for a moment single, fleeting moment felt something real.

  Gemini's body was warm. Alive. It was proof that she wasn't untouchable, that she wasn't some ghostly thing that slipped through the cracks of the world, that she could be hurt, that she could be made to suffer like everyone else. But Gemini didn't fight back.

  She didn't gasp, she didn't claw at Sandra's wrists, she didn't even flinch. She just laughed. Deep and soft and knowing. As if Sandra was exactly where she was supposed to be. Sandra's grip wavered.

  Gemini tilted her head, her dark eyes shining. "You still don't get it, do you?" Her voice was soft, untroubled, curling around Sandra like smoke. "You weren't a victim in this, Sandra. You were a door. A key."

  Sandra let go as if burned. She stumbled back, her breath coming fast and sharp, her hands shaking. "No," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "That's not..." But she couldn't finish the sentence. Because it was a lie. Because deep down, in the part of her mind, she had ignored for years, she knew. She had always known.

  From the moment they had stepped back into Black Hollow, from the moment she had seen the town watching them, from the moment she had heard the market still breathing in the shadows - she had felt it. This wasn't about Gemini. It had never been about her. The blood that had bound itself to the Market long before she was born.

  The Market had asked for a life. But it had never asked for Gemini. It had asked for Sandra. Gemini watched her unravel, her expression unreadable, something dark and unreadable behind her eyes, and when she finally spoke, her voice was almost kind.

  "It's all right, little bird," she whispered. "It's better this way."

  Sandra took another step back, shaking her head again and again, because none of this could be true, none of it could be real, none of it could be her fault. And then there was something moving behind Gemini. Something in the walls. The shadows shifted, stretched, and curled, something inside them stirred. Sandra's pulse jumped.

  Because the house was listening.

  Because the city was listening.

  Because something else had been waiting for this moment, waiting for the choice to be made, waiting for Sandra to stop pretending she didn't know what she was meant to be. For the first time since this nightmare began, she felt like she was about to wake up. Because the truth wasn't just in Gemini's words.

  It was in the bones of this city. It was in her.

  And it was time to face it.