Chapter 13 - Blackwood ManorThe Land Rover groaned to a halt at the end of an overgrown, gravel driveway choked with wild heather and towering, ancient oaks.
Before them stood Blackwood Manor: a sprawling, gothic stone fortress draped in creeping ivy and shrouded in a dense perimeter of mountain mist. Tall arched windows stared out like blind eyes, dark and forbidding against the gray Scottish sky.
"Stay in the car, Sarah," Julian instructed gently, opening his door.
"I'm coming with you, Julian," Sarah insisted, securing Leo securely in his carrier sling against her chest. "Whatever is inside that house, we face it together."
Julian hesitated, then nodded. With Arthur leading the way with a heavy brass flashlight, the three of them pushed open the massive iron-studded oak front doors.
The interior smelled of old parchment, dust, and damp stone. A grand marble staircase swept upward into the gloom, remarkably similar to the one in the city estate—as if the builder had tried to replicate a haunting memory.
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Arthur swept his flashlight across the foyer. The beam caught a thick layer of dust undisturbed for decades—except for a single, distinct set of fresh bootprints leading toward the massive double doors of the ground-floor library.
"Someone has been here recently," Arthur murmured, his hand instinctively sliding inside his coat. "Very recently."
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