CHAPTER 1: The Sound No One Wanted to Hear
Every guest at the Ashford Mansion believed the little girl was simply throwing another childish tantrum.
Three-year-old Lily sat in the middle of the grand marble hallway, refusing to move. While servants whispered and her mother tried desperately to calm her, the little girl ignored everyone.
Instead...
She kept dragging her tiny fingers across the polished floor.
Scratch...
Scratch...
Scratch...
The sound echoed through the luxurious mansion, making every conversation stop.
"Lily!" her mother, Emily, cried, rushing toward her. "Stop that! You're ruining the floor!"
But Lily didn't even look up.
She stared at the marble with frightening focus, tracing invisible circles as though someone was telling her exactly where to touch.
Across the room, billionaire architect Daniel Ashford frowned.
His daughter had never behaved like this.
Not once.
He walked toward her, expecting tears or another childish excuse.
Instead, Lily looked up with eyes strangely calm for a three-year-old.
"Daddy..."
She pointed to the floor.
"Someone is crying under the house."
The room exploded with awkward laughter.
One guest chuckled.
"Kids have wild imaginations."
Another whispered,
"She's probably watched too many ghost cartoons."
Emily forced an embarrassed smile.
"She's just tired."
But Daniel didn't laugh.
Because Lily wasn't smiling.
She looked... terrified.
Tiny tears rolled down her cheeks.
"They've been crying every night," she whispered.
"They want to come out."
An icy silence filled the hallway.
Daniel knelt beside his daughter.
"What do you mean, sweetheart?"
Lily placed her tiny hand flat against the cold marble.
"The lady keeps asking me to tell you."
Emily grabbed Daniel's arm.
"Enough. She's imagining things."
But before anyone could pull Lily away...
She suddenly slapped both hands onto the floor.
Hard.
The sharp sound echoed through the mansion.
Then...
A deep...
Hollow...
THUD.
Not from above.
Not from the walls.
From underneath the marble itself.
Every face turned pale.
Daniel slowly knocked on the floor with his knuckles.
Another hollow echo answered.
His expression changed instantly.
"This section shouldn't be hollow..."
The mansion blueprints had shown nothing beneath the entrance hall.
Nothing.
Yet the sound beneath his feet said otherwise.
Emily's voice trembled.
"Daniel..."
Before she could finish—
Lily whispered one sentence that made the blood drain from everyone's face.
"They buried her...
...before she could tell you the truth."
Daniel froze.
Because only one woman had disappeared from the Ashford estate twenty-five years ago without leaving a single trace.
His own mother.
And no one had ever found her.
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END OF CHAPTER 1...
Just as Daniel orders workers to break open the marble floor, they uncover a hidden iron hatch sealed for decades... and what waits beneath it will destroy everything the Ashford family has believed for the last twenty-five years.
