What Remains Of Us (Yang Tersisa dari Kita)

The rain had not stopped for hours. It tapped against the windowpanes like a persistent memory Ava couldn't shake. She sat at the edge of the bed in the dim motel room, still wearing her coat, hair damp from the storm. Her fingers gripped the worn leather journal she found inside the townhouse library—the one marked "Property of Cassandra W. Ellery."

Flickering light from a faulty lamp played across the pages as she flipped through them. The ink had bled in places, water-damaged and aged, but some entries were still legible. Cassandra's writing was elegant, almost meticulous, but there was a nervous energy behind her words.

"March 19, 1987. He came again today. He said it wasn't a warning, but it felt like one."

Ava paused. She reread the line, then the next. The name "Ben" surfaced twice—only not her Ben. This Ben was older, a mentor of sorts to Cassandra, someone she referred to in hushed tones.

Ava circled the name with her pen. She reached for her phone and snapped a photo of the page. She would send it to Caroline later, once she had better signal.

She didn't sleep that night. The words spun in her head like a song she couldn't stop humming. Cassandra, Ben, the warnings, the key. It was a pattern. A cycle repeating itself through time.

By morning, Ava was on the road again.

The GPS led her east—to a coastal town called Darlow Bay. She'd never heard of it before, but it appeared in the back of Cassandra's journal, scribbled beneath a crude drawing of what looked like a sea cave.

"The past doesn't knock. It breaks in," she muttered again, repeating the phrase Ben once told her.

Darlow Bay was a ghost of a place. Rusted signs hung from empty shopfronts. The air smelled of brine and old wood. The motel was half-collapsed, but a diner nearby still served coffee.

Inside, Ava sat across from a woman in her late fifties—Gillian Holloway. She had been a childhood friend of Cassandra.

"She always had secrets," Gillian said, stirring her tea. "Even when we were girls. But there was something different after she came back from Ellery House that winter. Something changed."

Ava leaned in. "Ellery House?"

"You passed it coming into town. That old mansion up on the cliffs. No one goes near it now."

"Why not?"

"Because it's cursed. Or haunted. Depends who you ask."

The wind howled through the diner windows.

"Did Cassandra mention anyone named Ben?"

Gillian hesitated. Her eyes flicked to the window.

"Yes. But not in a way you'd expect. He wasn't her lover, not exactly. More like… a shadow. A guardian. Maybe even a jailer."

Ava left the diner an hour later with more questions than answers. She drove the winding road to Ellery House.

The mansion was cloaked in fog. Tall iron gates hung open like yawning jaws. Her boots crunched on gravel as she approached. Each step toward the house felt heavier, as though the ground itself wanted her to turn back.

Inside, Ellery House was all creaking wood and shattered glass. Wallpaper peeled like old skin. But what caught Ava's attention was the smell—saltwater and roses.

She moved room by room, Cassandra's journal in hand. The drawing of the sea cave was tucked between pages, marked with the initials "C.W.E."

Then she found it.

A hidden door behind a tapestry. It led to a narrow staircase, downward.

Ava descended, flashlight in hand. The air grew colder. She emerged in a stone passage lined with damp earth. And at the end of it—the sea cave.

Waves lapped softly against the rocks. The cavern walls shimmered with minerals. In the center, illuminated by a shaft of pale light, sat a stone pedestal.

On it, a second journal.

It bore Ava's name.

She reached for it with trembling fingers.

The moment she touched it, the cave seemed to breathe.

And then she heard a voice.

"You were never supposed to come this far."

She turned—but no one was there.

The journal pages fluttered open on their own.

More secrets waited, buried beneath the surface.

And Ava knew this was only the beginning of the end.

---