Page 1

Prologue

Time, like all things, had a way of slipping away from him.

Days bled into weeks, weeks into months, months into years.

An eternal, endless life stretched before him.

Forever trapped, never destined to move on.

Some days he thought that his life before was a dream and there had only ever been…this. This endless abyss, the echoing silence, the weight of memories and regrets stacked against him.

Hauntings of laughter, the thunderous roll of feet pounding over the stone, the scent of freshly-tilled earth and the cold spray of the sea. He closed his eyes and placed himself, stepping into one of those memories that had started to feel like a dream. He retraced his footsteps through the house seeing it as it had once been.

Lively, bright.

Full of noise.

Full of life.

Over the years, the place emptied.

The family he had once mourned and ached for grew, spreading from generation to generation. Now, Kilmorran Castle was a burden. A weight to carry. A mere property to maintain. It broke his heart to see it, that the rooms and grounds he’d spent his childhood in and made so many memories inside of was now something to be huffed and sighed over.

For a while, there was nothing.

And then, something changed.

They let strangers into his home.

Rowdy guests poking around his things.

Laughing at the decor and photos on the walls.

It made him sick.

Made his insides revolt and if he could, he would have screamed. Would have raged. No matter how many times he begged for them to leave it be, his voice was never heard.

It was a miserable way to spend eternity, speaking but never being heard. Being heard but never seen.

He resigned himself to it and spent his days trying to come to terms with the fact that he was not blessed enough to move on and find some semblance of peace. Instead, he was cursed to linger inside his castle, watching the world change and move on without him.

Noise came from outside the window and he turned from the sea.

The horizon line, like him, never seemed to change.

He made his way through the castle, face pressed against the glass. A car rolled into the driveway, tires crunching over gravel. The woman behind the wheel exited, lifting her face to the wind.

Another nameless face. Another intruder walking into his eternal damnation.

He sighed, wishing he knew what his purpose was. Why he was the one destined to be chained to a place he had once loved so fully.

So many had come and gone, and none had ever seen him.

In the end, she would be no different.

It broke something in him to know that he would be here, forever alone, trapped within the stone.

Chapter 1