The job was simple: survive the winter in a remote, cliffside mansion, keep the pipes from freezing, and collect a life-changing sum of money. For Ibnul Jaif Farabi, a reclusive writer fleeing a shattered life and crushing debt, the isolated grandeur of Blackwater Hall offers the perfect refuge. The contract is clear—he will be utterly alone for five months, with only the howling coastal wind and his own thoughts for company. The silence is part of the payment.
But the house is never silent. On his first night, Ibnul hears the distinct, impossible sound of footsteps pacing the floor above his locked bedroom. The estate’s history, which he initially dismissed as local gossip, begins to press in on him: tales of the reclusive, vanished family who built it, and the tragic accident that left a wing sealed shut. As the winter storms isolate him completely, the phenomena escalate from whispers in the dark to physical manifestations—a door left ajar, a chair pulled out from a table, a child’s laughter echoing from the disused nursery. The meticulously documented house rules, left by the absent owner, start to feel less like instructions and more like a ritual for survival.
Is Ibnul’s fragile mind, burdened by grief and guilt, fabricating a haunting from the shadows? Or has he become an unwitting participant in a decades-old game, trapped with something that watches from the walls? To uncover the truth, he must venture into the sealed wing of Blackwater Hall, where the house’s original sin is waiting, and learn that some silences are not meant to be broken.
