Selene stared at the third envelope, its presence mocking her attempts to ignore the situation. For a moment, she didn’t move, her hand frozen inches from the door handle. A question weighed heavily in her mind: How does someone leave a letter without being seen?


    Her eyes darted around the yard, her breath visible in the cold air. The tree line stood still, the world silent except for the faint whistle of the wind. No footprints. No signs of anyone having been there.


    Swallowing hard, Selene grabbed the envelope and shoved it into her coat pocket without opening it. She stepped inside, locking the door behind her before leaning against it.


    The weight of the letters, the cryptic handwriting, and the strange activity—the clock, the flyer, the voices in her dreams—pressed on her chest like a growing storm. She couldn’t ignore it anymore.


    Pulling out the envelope, she turned it over in her hands. The same thick paper, the same elegant script, but this time, there was something different. The faint smell of lavender clung to the envelope, subtle but unmistakable.


    Her stomach knotted. She tore it open quickly, her hands trembling as she unfolded the note.


    "You’ve begun to see the patterns, haven’t you?


    Trust is not a leap—it’s a journey.


    Ask yourself what brought you here.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.The answers have always been waiting.


    Yours,


    E."


    Selene sat down hard at the kitchen table, staring at the letter. She reread it three times, trying to decipher its meaning. What patterns? The only pattern she could see was the appearance of these letters, each one more unsettling than the last.


    Her mind drifted to the flyer she’d taken from the library, now folded neatly in her pocket. She unfolded it and placed it beside the letter. The handwriting wasn’t identical, but the similarity was enough to send a chill down her spine.


    She grabbed her notebook and flipped to the page where she’d been collecting the messages. The words swirled in her mind, fragments of meaning slipping through her fingers.


    "Trust is not a leap—it’s a journey."


    Her throat tightened. She had spent her life avoiding trust. It wasn’t something she gave freely, especially not after—


    Selene cut off the thought before it could spiral. She wasn’t going to do this, not now.


    The rest of the evening passed in tense silence. She tried to focus on mundane tasks—sorting the pantry, folding blankets—but her thoughts kept circling back to the letters.


    Who was E? Why were they sending these notes? And how did they know so much about her?


    When she finally crawled into bed, the questions came with her, buzzing in her mind like restless insects. She tossed and turned, her dreams fragmented and uneasy.


    At some point in the night, she heard it again—the faint whisper of a voice, indistinct but close. It wasn’t in the room, but somewhere just beyond it, as though the walls themselves were speaking.


    "Ask yourself what brought you here."


    Selene jolted awake, her heart pounding. The room was dark, the faint hum of the wind the only sound. She sat up, her pulse racing, but nothing seemed out of place.


    Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—or something—had been watching her.