Part I

Expedition Archive // Restricted Access
Recovered Documents Dated: December 20th, 1911
Author: Alias Voss

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“Alias…”

My father’s voice reached us from the other side of the front door.

“…open the door.”

My mother stood beside the desk with one hand pressed against her mouth. Tears still covered her face from reading Corvin’s final letter, but the grief within her had changed.

A moment earlier, she had been mourning him.

Now she was listening for him.

I kept hold of her wrist.

Neither of us moved towards the hallway.

The warning from the six-ring journal remained open between us.

Do not follow the voice that sounds most familiar.

My mother looked down at those words and then towards the study entrance.

“What if it really is him?”

“It isn’t.”

“You cannot know that.”

“He warned us this would happen.”

“He warned us because he knew something might use his voice. That does not prove every voice belongs to it.”

“Mother—”

“What if he found a way back?”

I heard the hope in her words.

That frightened me more than the knocking.

Outside the study, the house remained silent. The grandfather clock had stopped. No wind pressed against the windows. Even the settling timbers seemed to have gone still.

Only the voice waited at the front door.

“Elizabeth,” it called softly. “I know you can hear me.”

My mother closed her eyes.

The voice had changed slightly when it spoke her name.

Not in sound.

In warmth.

Corvin had always spoken to her differently when he believed no one else was listening. More gently. As though her name were something private between them.

The thing outside knew that.

My mother whispered, “Corvin?”

I tightened my grip.

“Don’t answer it.”

“If it is him, he already knows we’re here.”

“And if it isn’t?”

She looked at me.

“Then it knows anyway.”

I could not argue with that.

The voice came again.

“I came home.”

My mother’s knees weakened. I guided her into the chair beside the desk before she could fall.

“You disappeared fifteen years ago,” I called.

The answer came without hesitation.

“I know.”

“Where have you been?”

“I cannot explain from out here.”

“You explained enough in your letter.”

A pause followed.

Not long.

Only enough to resemble thought.

“I hoped you would never need to read it.”

My eyes moved towards the pages spread across the desk.

It knew about the letter.

That did not prove it had read the words. The voice could have heard us speaking. It could have been inside the house before reaching the door. It could have learned from Corvin’s memories, or mine, or my mother’s.

Every possibility was worse than the last.

My mother leaned towards the open study doorway.

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes.”

The answer was quiet.

Honest.

Pain entered the voice so naturally that for one treacherous moment I saw my father standing outside in the snow: older, exhausted and wounded, waiting for the family he had failed to return to.

My mother saw him too.

Not with her eyes.

With hope.

“Where are you hurt?” I asked.

Another pause.

“Everywhere.”

It was precisely the kind of answer Corvin might have given to avoid frightening her.

My mother stood.

I stepped between her and the study entrance.

“Let me see him.”

“No.”

“Alias, if there is even the smallest chance—”

“That is all it needs.”

“What?”

“A chance. It does not need us to believe completely. It needs one of us to open the door while we are still uncertain.”

Her expression hardened.

“You think I don’t understand the danger?”

“I think you want him back.”

“So do you.”

“Yes.”

The admission silenced us both.

I wanted my father to be standing outside.

I wanted the warnings to be wrong, the journals to be madness and the figure beyond the Gate to have found some impossible road home.

I wanted to open the door so badly that my hand had begun trembling.

That was why I knew we could not.

My mother looked beyond me into the dark hallway.

“Ask him something.”

“What?”

“Something only Corvin would know.”

“It may have his memories.”

“Then ask something from after he disappeared.”

I raised my voice.

“What happened beneath Hollow Peak?”

The house remained silent.

My mother waited.

So did I.

At last the voice answered.

“You were there.”

“That was not my question.”

“You saw what happened.”

“I saw you cross the chamber. I saw the light take you. What happened after that?”

The silence stretched longer this time.

When the reply came, the warmth remained, but something beneath it had become strained.

“I was lost.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you see?”

“Darkness.”

“That isn’t enough.”

“Alias,” my mother whispered.

I continued.

“What happened to the fragment?”

The voice outside did not answer.

“What was beyond the Gate?”

Nothing.

“Why did you tell me not to follow?”

The lamp flame bent sharply towards the study door.

No breeze entered the room.

My mother watched it.

The voice returned.

“You ask too many questions.”

It still sounded like my father.

But the words were empty.

Corvin had spoken that sentence to me throughout childhood, usually with tired amusement after finding some dismantled instrument spread across the kitchen table. There had always been affection beneath it.

This time there was only irritation.

I stepped into the hallway.

My mother followed closely behind me despite my attempt to stop her.

The entrance hall lay ahead, illuminated by the weak lamp near the staircase. The front door remained closed. No shadow crossed the frosted panes beside it. No outline interrupted the pale strip of snowlight beneath the frame.

Nothing appeared to be waiting outside.

Yet the voice came from directly beyond the wood.

“Open the door.”

“What are you?” I asked.

“I am your father.”

“No.”

“You came searching for me.”

“I was a child.”

“And now you can finish what we began.”

My mother drew a sharp breath.

I stared at the door.

Corvin would never have said that.

Not after the letter.

Not after begging me to abandon his work.

“You haven’t come home,” I said. “You’ve come to make us follow.”

The handle turned.

Once.

Slowly.

The latch held.

My mother stepped back.

The handle returned to its original position.

Then my father’s voice spoke again.

This time it came from much closer to the wood.

“You will follow.”

A faint scraping began against the outside of the door.

Not fingernails.

Something harder.

It moved from the upper panel downwards in one unbroken line, scoring the wood as it descended.

My mother gripped my sleeve.

“Alias…”

“Back to the study.”

“We need to leave.”

“I know.”

The scraping stopped.

A single knock struck the door.

The frame shuddered.

Then a second.

Harder.

The lamp near the staircase flickered.

The third impact did not come from outside.

It rose from beneath our feet.

The floorboards trembled through the entrance hall as something deep below the house answered the knock.

My mother pulled me away from the door.

We retreated to the study together and closed it behind us. I turned the key, not because I believed the thin wooden door could protect us, but because the click of the lock gave my hands something useful to do.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

The front door was struck again.

Once.

Then silence.

My mother stared towards the study entrance.

“We cannot stay here.”

I looked around the room.

Corvin’s journals filled every shelf. Maps covered the walls. His final letter remained open upon the desk beside the page marked NOT THE GATE.

“This is our home.”

“No,” she said. “It was our home.”

“We cannot abandon everything.”

“We cannot carry everything.”

“There may be answers in those journals.”

“There may be traps in them too.”

“What if we leave the one thing that could tell us how to reach him?”

My mother stepped towards me.

“Alias, listen to yourself. You have just proved that the thing outside is not your father, and already you are talking about reaching him.”

“He may still be alive.”

“And you may die trying to prove it.”

“I cannot do nothing.”

“I am not asking you to do nothing.”

“Then what are you asking?”

She glanced at the compass on the desk.

“I am asking you to survive long enough to find the truth.”

The words stopped me.

She lifted one of the journals bearing the six broken rings.

“Corvin marked these for a reason. We take them. We take his letter, the compass and the maps of Hollow Peak.”

“And leave the rest?”

“Yes.”

“Twenty-six years of his work?”

“Yes.”

Her voice broke, but she did not look away.

“You cannot save every piece of him.”

“They are all I have left.”

“No. You have me.”

I lowered my head.

She placed the journal in my hands.

“And I have you. I intend to keep it that way for as long as I can.”

I looked towards the dark window on the eastern wall.

The study stood on the ground floor. Beyond the glass lay the narrow side garden, hidden from the front entrance by thick winter shrubs, an old trellis and the eastern hedge.

The front door was impossible.

The kitchen door opened onto exposed ground behind the house.

The cellar was worse.

My father’s journal had already warned us about the footprints leading down.

“There is another way,” I said.

My mother followed my gaze.

“The window.”

“It opens into the eastern garden. Whatever is at the front may not see us from there.”

“May not?”

“It is the best I can offer.”

She looked towards the study door.

“We still need food, blankets and medicine.”

“We go together.”

“We will make more noise.”

“I am not letting you walk through this house alone.”

“And I am not letting you carry everything.”

A faint smile passed between us, fragile and brief.

Then the floorboard outside the study creaked.

Once.

Not near the front entrance.

Immediately beyond the locked door.

The handle began to turn.

Slowly.

My mother and I looked at each other.

The thing at the front door was no longer our only problem.

And if we intended to leave the Voss house alive, we would have to cross part of it one final time.

FIELD LOG 17 — LEAVING HOME

Part II

The study door handle continued turning.

Slowly.

Patiently.

The lock held, but the metal mechanism strained beneath the pressure. A faint clicking moved through the room as though someone on the other side were testing each part of it, learning how it worked.

My mother stood beside the desk, holding one of the six-ring journals against her chest.

I reached for the iron poker near the fireplace.

She looked at it.

“Will that help?”

“No.”

“Good. I was worried you had become optimistic.”

The handle stopped.

Neither of us moved.

For several seconds there was only silence.

Then three light taps sounded against the study door.

Not the heavy impacts from the front entrance.

These were almost polite.

My father used to knock that way before entering.

My mother recognised it too.

Her face tightened.

A voice spoke from the hallway.

“Elizabeth?”

Corvin again.

Soft.

Concerned.

Closer than before.

“You should not be in there.”

My mother’s fingers closed more tightly around the journal.

I whispered, “Don’t answer.”

The voice continued.

“Alias has been unwell for a long time.”

She stared at the door.

“He sees things that aren’t there.”

I felt the words enter the room between us.

Not shouted.

Not threatening.

Placed carefully.

“He needs rest,” the voice said. “He needs you to help him.”

My mother looked at me.

For a moment I saw doubt move behind her eyes.

Not belief.

The memory of every night I had woken from dreams. Every time I had spoken about whispers, figures and impossible places. Every concern she must once have carried that grief had broken something inside me.

The thing outside understood that too.

“It will say anything,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

She looked hurt.

“Yes.”

The voice answered before she could say more.

“Elizabeth, you know what he has become.”

My mother turned towards the door.

“No.”

It was the first word she had spoken to it since we entered the study.

The silence beyond the door changed.

Not in sound.

In attention.

The thing had heard her.

“You know,” it repeated.

“No.”

“You were afraid of him before I returned.”

“That is not true.”

“You were afraid when his eyes changed.”

My mother went still.

I stared at her.

“What does it mean?”

She did not answer me.

Outside, the voice continued with my father’s calm certainty.

“You watched him sleeping.”

“Stop.”

“You listened outside his room.”

“Stop.”

“You wondered whether your son came home from Hollow Peak alone.”

My mother crossed the room and struck the door with the flat of her hand.

“You are not my husband.”

The voice ceased.

The pressure on the handle disappeared.

For the first time since the knocking began, the house seemed genuinely silent.

My mother leaned her forehead against the door.

I moved towards her.

“What was it talking about?”

She kept her eyes closed.

“There were nights after you returned from the mountain when you spoke in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“I couldn’t understand most of it.”

“Most?”

She turned.

“You repeated your father’s name.”

“That isn’t unusual.”

“Not Corvin.”

Cold spread through me.

She stepped away from the door.

“You said Nytherion.”

I looked towards the journals.

“How many times?”

“Enough.”

“You never told me.”

“You were already frightened.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.”

“No. It was mine.”

Her reply carried no apology.

Only exhaustion.

“I had lost your father. You came home bleeding, barely conscious, talking about a doorway beneath the mountain and a voice in the dark. I did not know whether telling you would help or push you farther towards it.”

“And now?”

“Now I know silence did not protect either of us.”

The handle moved again.

Only once.

Then released.

My mother straightened.

“We gather what we need.”

I placed the poker down.

“Together.”

“Together.”

We moved quickly.

Corvin’s letter and the ash-marked page went into my coat. I took the brass compass from the desk and opened it briefly.

The needle pointed towards the study door.

I closed it at once.

The Hollow Peak maps were already stacked near the far end of the desk. I rolled them tightly and secured them with the strap around them.

My mother searched the shelves for the six-ring journals.

There were five in total.

Each bore the same mark burned into the leather: a central circle enclosed by six broken rings.

I placed them into the strongest satchel we had.

Nothing else.

No loose notes.

No additional journals.

No sketches from other expeditions.

Every page I left behind felt like a choice I might later regret.

My mother watched me glance towards the shelves.

“Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t need to.”

“There could be something important in them.”

“There is something important in every book your father ever touched. That was how he justified keeping all of them.”

“This is different.”

“It always was.”

I looked at her.

She softened.

“Alias, we agreed.”

I tightened the satchel straps.

“I know.”

Another creak sounded in the hallway.

Farther away now.

A slow step.

Then another.

Moving towards the kitchen.

My mother lowered her voice.

“It wants us to think the way is clear.”

“Or it is moving there because it knows what we need.”

“Food.”

“Medicine.”

“Blankets.”

The footsteps stopped.

Somewhere beyond the study, a cupboard door opened.

Then closed.

My mother and I exchanged a look.

“We cannot wait,” she said.

I unlocked the study door.

The corridor outside stood empty.

No shadow.

No figure.

No trace of anyone who might have been standing there.

Only the lamp near the staircase, burning lower than before.

I stepped into the hall first.

My mother followed with the empty supply bag.

 

We left the study door open behind us.

There was no point pretending locks mattered anymore.

The grandfather clock remained stopped at midnight.

Its pendulum hung motionless behind the glass.

As we passed it, the mechanism clicked once.

The minute hand moved backwards.

My mother saw it.

“Keep walking.”

We reached the entrance to the sitting room.

The room beyond was dark, its furniture reduced to black shapes beneath pale window light.

A figure sat in my father’s chair.

I stopped.

My mother almost walked into me.

“What is it?”

I raised one hand.

The figure did not move.

A man’s outline.

Head bowed.

Hands resting upon the arms of the chair.

My father had sat there every winter evening before his obsession confined him to the study. I remembered watching him read while my mother stitched beside the fire.

The figure slowly lifted its head.

There was no face.

Only darkness beneath Corvin’s familiar shape.

My mother’s breath caught.

Then the lamp in the hallway flickered.

The chair was empty.

We did not enter the room.

We continued towards the kitchen.

The air changed as we approached.

Warmer.

The smell of bread drifted through the corridor.

Freshly baked.

My mother stopped.

“We haven’t made bread today.”

“I know.”

The scent deepened.

Bread.

Tea.

Wood smoke.

The ordinary smells of our life before Hollow Peak.

I heard plates being placed upon the kitchen table.

A chair moved across the floor.

Then my father began humming.

A tune he used to sing badly while preparing breakfast.

My mother closed her eyes.

“It remembers everything.”

“No,” I said. “It knows what we miss.”

The kitchen doorway stood only a few steps ahead.

Warm light spilled across the corridor floor.

We had left no lamp burning inside.

My mother opened her eyes.

“We go in together.”

I nodded.

Neither of us believed the kitchen would be empty.

But everything we needed to survive the road beyond the house was somewhere inside.

And behind us, from the direction of the study, came the quiet sound of a window latch lifting by itself.

Part III

The warm light spilling from the kitchen should not have existed.

We had left only one lamp burning in the study.

Yet amber firelight now danced across the flagstone floor, and the familiar smell of fresh bread drifted into the hallway exactly as it had when I was a child.

For one dangerous heartbeat...

...it felt like home.

My mother took a slow breath.

"Do you smell it?"

"Yes."

"I haven't baked today."

"I know."

The scent became stronger.

Bread.

Tea.

The faint sweetness of blackberry jam.

My father always insisted homemade bread tasted better with blackberry jam, despite burning half the loaves he attempted himself.

The memory arrived so naturally that I almost smiled.

That frightened me.

The thing inside the house was no longer simply borrowing voices.

It was rebuilding memories.

"We stay together," I whispered.

My mother nodded.

"No matter what we see."

"No matter what."

I stepped into the kitchen first.

The room was empty.

The table stood exactly where it always had.

Cold.

Dust covered the chairs.

No fire burned inside the range.

No kettle steamed above it.

Only darkness.

The warm light had vanished the moment we crossed the threshold.

The smell disappeared with it.

My mother released a long breath.

"I almost believed it."

"So did I."

She crossed quickly to the pantry.

The shelves still held the supplies we had prepared before winter.

She worked without hesitation.

Two small bags of preserved food.

Nothing more.

The household medicine tin.

She placed both carefully into the satchel.

I collected the two travelling blankets folded inside the old oak cupboard beside the hearth.

They had accompanied my father on dozens of expeditions.

Perhaps now they would accompany his family on one last journey.

We spoke little.

Every unnecessary word seemed too loud.

Once the satchel was packed, my mother looked towards the rear kitchen door.

"We could leave here."

I shook my head.

"The garden behind the kitchen is completely open."

She looked through the frosted glass.

Snow stretched away towards the fields.

No walls.

No hedges.

No cover.

"If it's watching the front..."

"...it could still see us crossing."

She nodded.

"The study window."

Neither of us suggested the cellar.

Not once.

Some places become frightening enough that even speaking their names feels like inviting attention.

We left the kitchen together.

The hallway seemed darker than before.

The lamp near the staircase had almost burned out.

As we passed the cellar door, I noticed something that had not been there earlier.

Fresh mud.

Only a few flecks.

Dark against the wooden floor.

My mother saw them too.

Neither of us stopped.

The footprints Corvin described in his journal had begun somewhere very similar.

We kept walking.

The study lay only a short distance ahead.

Halfway there...

the grandfather clock began ticking again.

Not normally.

Its pendulum moved far too quickly.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Faster.

Faster.

Until the mechanism rattled violently inside its case.

My mother grabbed my arm.

Without warning...

the clock struck midnight.

One bell.

Then another.

Then another.

Twelve deafening chimes filled the hallway.

Each seemed to echo from somewhere beneath the house rather than inside the clock itself.

When the final chime faded...

every lamp in the house went out.

Darkness swallowed us.

My mother reached for my hand immediately.

"I've got you."

"I'm here."

For several seconds we remained completely still.

Then...

footsteps.

Not ours.

Slowly crossing the entrance hall.

They stopped.

Directly outside the study.

I heard the study door creak open.

We had left it open ourselves.

But no one should have been there.

A voice drifted softly through the darkness.

"Alias."

Not from the front door.

From inside the study.

My father again.

"I found something."

I closed my eyes.

"No."

"You'll want to see this."

"No."

"It changes everything."

My mother's grip tightened around my hand.

The voice became quieter.

Almost amused.

"Curiosity always wins."

The words struck deeper than I wanted to admit.

Because they were true.

Curiosity had defined my father.

It defined me.

Perhaps that frightened me most of all.

The darkness remained absolute.

Then, one by one...

the windows throughout the house began glowing with pale moonlight.

Enough illumination returned for us to see the corridor again.

Nothing stood outside the study.

The voice had vanished.

I looked at my mother.

"Go."

She didn't hesitate.

We hurried into the study.

Everything remained exactly as we had left it.

Except the window.

It stood open.

Neither of us had touched it.

Snow drifted slowly through the opening onto the wooden floor.

The curtains moved gently in the freezing air.

My mother stared.

"It opened itself."

"Maybe."

"You don't believe that."

"No."

"What do you believe?"

I looked through the window.

The eastern garden lay silent beneath fresh snow.

The old trellis stretched across the stone wall.

Dense winter shrubs concealed most of the narrow path leading towards the eastern hedge.

It was the safest route we had.

"If something opened it..."

"...then perhaps it wanted us to leave."

She looked at me sharply.

"Or wanted us to think that."

"Either way..."

I shouldered the satchel.

"...we're going."

I climbed through first.

The cold struck immediately.

Fresh snow reached almost to my boots.

I took the bags from inside while my mother carefully stepped through after me.

The study window closed behind us.

Neither of us touched it.

The latch clicked softly into place.

We stared.

Then chose not to question it.

The eastern garden felt strangely untouched.

Snow covered every path.

Every flower bed.

Every stone.

Only our footprints disturbed the surface.

We moved quickly beneath the shelter of the old trellis and crouched behind the overgrown shrubs.

From there we could finally see the front of the house.

The front door remained closed.

No figure waited outside.

No footprints approached it.

Nothing.

Had we imagined the voice?

No.

The scratches remained visible across the timber even from this distance.

Proof enough.

We reached the gap in the eastern hedge.

Before crawling through, I looked back one final time.

The study window remained dark.

Then...

a light appeared.

Not in the study.

In the upstairs bedroom.

A second illuminated the landing.

Another glowed within the sitting room.

Then the dining room.

Then the kitchen.

One by one...

every room in the Voss house came alive.

Golden light filled windows that moments before had stood black and empty.

Shadows crossed the curtains.

People moved naturally inside.

Someone climbed the staircase.

Someone else crossed the sitting room carrying what looked like a tray.

Laughter drifted faintly across the snow.

Warm.

Comfortable.

Ordinary.

The front door opened.

Yellow light spilled onto the path.

A man stood inside the doorway.

Too far away to see clearly.

Yet I recognised his silhouette immediately.

Corvin.

He did not wave.

He simply stood there...

waiting.

Beside me, my mother began to cry.

I took her hand.

"Don't."

"I know."

Her voice barely carried.

"I know."

The figure in the doorway slowly raised one hand.

Not beckoning.

Not threatening.

Simply waiting for us to come home.

Then another figure appeared behind him.

Myself.

Older.

Smiling.

The life we should have lived.

The life we had lost.

My mother buried her face against my shoulder.

"Keep walking," she whispered.

I nodded.

Without another glance towards the house, we slipped through the hedge and disappeared into the snow-covered woodland beyond.

Only when the trees hid the Voss house from sight did I finally stop.

The silence felt different now.

Natural.

Alive.

The wind moved through the pines.

Somewhere in the darkness an owl called.

For the first time that night...

the world sounded real again.

I took my father's compass from my coat.

The needle spun wildly.

North.

South.

East.

West.

Then...

slowly...

it settled.

Not towards Hollow Peak.

Not back towards the house.

It pointed somewhere between them.

As though our journey had already begun...

...and neither destination would ever be quite what we believed.

I closed the compass.

My mother looked at me.

"Ready?"

I looked back only once.

The Voss house had vanished behind the trees.

Our home was gone.

Not destroyed.

Not abandoned.

Lost.

I adjusted the satchel containing my father's journals.

"Let's go."

Together...

we turned towards the long road leading back to Hollow Peak.

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📖 CONTINUE THE CHRONICLES

Field Log 018 — The Road North

After hearing Corvin's voice at the front door, Alias and Elizabeth realise something has followed him home. Forced to abandon the Voss house forever, they begin the long journey back to Hollow Peak while an impossible presence watches from the darkness.

→ Continue to Field Log 018

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