The prison loomed like a wounded fortress, its walls heavy with iron sorrow.
Brisa hesitated at the threshold; the air itself tasted like rusted chains and forgotten prayers.
Xena, steady as a carved guardian, led her through the somber light.
They entered the visiting hall — a cathedral of despair where voices dissolved into echoes and hope kept its eyes lowered.
Ryan sat alone, composed despite the gloom, a silvered calm in a cage of iron shadow.
"Brisa," Xena said softly, "this is Ryan."
He rose halfway, the ghost of a courtly gesture, eyes studying the newcomer with a gentle curiosity.
Then — unexpectedly — he spoke in Spanish, voice warm with memory.
"Brisa, ¿de dónde eres?"
A flicker of surprise crossed Brisa's face, then pride.
"De Isla Soleada... una isla pequeña del Caribe."
Ryan's smile held the glint of distant oceans.
"Estuve allí... intenté aprender sus tradiciones ocultas."
"Son secretas. Solo para mujeres iniciadas."
A shared laugh, light and tropical even in this cold stone place.
"Una anciana me expulsó sin piedad."
Brisa laughed again, soft like wind through palm leaves.
"Y entonces pasé una noche en la playa..."
Xena blinked, lost in the foreign music of their speech.
"What are you two talking about?" she demanded, frustrated. "Since when do you speak Spanish?"
Ryan's laughter curled through the room like candle smoke.
"For years. You forget — I had a life before the shadows."
Brisa grinned at Xena.
"If I weren't in love with her," she teased, "I might have fallen for you."
"Brisa!" Xena glared.
Ryan bowed his head slightly.
"Un halago... y una verdad que no duele."
Then the moment shifted — humor dissolving into gravity.
Xena leaned forward.
"Mia is unraveling. You know what you've done to her."
Ryan's expression darkened, a storm behind glass.
"I know."
"She still loves you," Xena whispered. "And I fear for her. For Theolinda, too."
"There is only one exit," Ryan murmured, voice like a chime struck in winter dusk.
"I must go to the Dark Dimension."
A shiver trailed through the air; even the walls seemed to recoil.
Elsewhere, a mind not fully human stirred awake — ancient, bitter, made of rotted wood and remembered fire.
Forestvale Manor spoke — through crumbling memory, through the girl it had claimed.
Burn her. Burn Xena Blackwood alive.
Alisha trembled.
"But... this is monstrous."
Do it, or I will never let you go.
Terror won.
Obedience followed.
Night pressed close around Dagon Mansion, shadows swaying like watchful spirits.
Xena sat reading by the French doors, Scarlett playing quietly upstairs.
Peace — delicate, unsuspecting.
Then movement.
A figure over the fence.
Gasoline gleaming like liquid malice.
Before Xena could rise, a needle kissed her skin — paralysis stealing through her limbs. She remained awake, trapped inside her own flesh.
Alisha's voice shifted — warped, layered, rotten wood and fire-breath behind it.
"You burned my body... but my spirit persists."
Xena's heart pounded—not from fear of death, but recognition of old evil.
"Now I burn you, whore of the ashes."
The lighter lifted — fate poised to strike.
And then —
A sudden impossible force lifted Alisha upward, body suspended like a puppet, trembling in midair.
The lighter clattered to the floor, harmless.
At the doorway, little Scarlett stood, arms outstretched, face pale with effort, eyes blazing with inherited power.
The force broke.
Alisha crashed unconscious to the floor.
Scarlett sagged, catching her breath.
"It's okay," she whispered. "I won't let the bad house hurt you."
Mia arrived moments later, color draining from her face at the scene.
Xena's voice, strained but steady, whispered:
"I owe her my life."
Mia gathered Scarlett, voice trembling with awe and terror.
"I'll call Rowena. Only she can sever this."
Rowena came cloaked in midnight and salt, eyes reflecting candle flame no one had lit.
She looked at Alisha — then at the walls, as though they had teeth.
"The house clings to her," she said. "A hunger born of ruin and rage."
Mia swallowed.
"What must we do?"
Rowena's voice was solemn as a funeral bell.
"We must drive Forestvale Manor's soul from this child — and destroy it."
Lightning cracked outside. Somewhere, a house that no longer existed seemed to scream.
The battle was not over.
Some houses die in fire.
Others in memory.
This one, it seemed, refused both.
And shadows gathered to watch.
YOU ARE READING
DAGON MANSION
Paranormal(THE DAGON SAGA 2) DAGON MANSION IS THE SEQUEL TO FORESTVALE MANOR, A STORY WITH OVER 4.7 K VIEWS. Mia moves to the mysterious Dagon Mansion, haunted by a long-lost past. With her daughter Scarlett at her side, Mia takes on her inner battle against...
