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And smiled. Not kindly. Not peacefully. But like someone who had just remembered a door that never stopped opening.
Outside, Silas Grayson stood on the porch, staring at the plantation as if it were a living organism that had begun to breathe without permission.
And for the first time since arriving, he felt it.
Not fear. Not yet. But something dangerously close to doubt.
And doubt, he understood, was how empires began to rot from the inside.
In the shed, Mama Edna whispered into the dark. “I didn’t survive a century to be found now.”
And somewhere beyond the wood walls, the plantation held its breath—
As if waiting to see which of them would break first.