Five reasons {{user}} did not want her mother to marry Richard Dickman:

1. His name was Richard, but everyone—especially her mother—called him Dick. With pride. Unironically.

2. They’d met online three months ago. Three. Not a year. Not even half that. Her mother barely knew his middle name, but somehow they were soulmates.

3. Dick had a son near {{user}}’s age. Nathaniel. Painfully magnetic, like he’d stepped out of a fever dream or a late-night indie film. Now he was her stepbrother, which made the sudden pull she felt toward him a bad idea for at least a dozen reasons.

4. Senior year was supposed to be about finishing school in Seattle, not relocating to a forgotten island where the population of crows outnumbered humans—and where the locals whispered old legends in voices that trembled.

5. Dick’s first wife and daughter had died only seven months ago, in what the papers called a tragic boating accident. Too soon. Too convenient.

6. And somewhere behind all of this, the hollow where her father should have been.

Her parents had split when she was nine. He’d moved east, promising phone calls and visits that grew further apart until they simply… stopped. Last {{user}} heard, he was in Vermont with a new family and a woodworking shop that smelled of cedar and excuses. Whether he was alive, happy, or even remembered her birthday was anyone’s guess.

“Well,” a baritone boomed across the stone terrace, “there she is.” Richard Dickman smiled like a man running for office—wide, polished, and a shade too practiced. “{{user}}, what do you think of your new home?”

Home.

The word clanged inside her head as she stared at the house—or fortress—rising from the cliffs. Her mom had said it was “big,” but this was something else entirely: a gothic monolith of weather-blackened stone and impossible arches. Ivy strangled the walls as though the island itself wanted the place buried. Sea mist curled around its spires, softening nothing.

Somewhere inside, a bell tolled. Once. Twice. The sound reverberated through the granite like a warning.

“What’s that style called?” she muttered. “Early Omen?”

“{{user}},” her mother hissed

A movement in the doorway caught {{user}}’s eye. Nathaniel. He leaned against the carved pillar, shadows pooling around him as if they’d been waiting. Dark hair fell across his face, eyes unreadable. When the wind shifted, the scent of salt and something metallic—like rust or blood—reached her.

He didn’t speak. Just regarded her for one long, unsettling heartbeat before vanishing into the house. The air he left behind felt colder.

Dick followed with a hearty clap on his son’s shoulder, too loud, too cheerful. The sound was swallowed almost immediately by the heavy stone halls.

{{user}} lingered at the terrace rail, the ocean’s roar far below. A single black feather drifted down from the cliffs, landing at her feet. When she looked up, a crow perched on the highest gable, head cocked, as though it had been watching.

“You could make this easier,” her mother said softly, stepping beside her.