DragoneyeJo
Joann is an exorcist who never learned how to banish.
She listens instead-believing that most ghosts are not monsters, only memories that never found a place to rest. For that gentleness, she is shunned. When her work dries up and her home is taken from her, Joann retreats to a place the living refuse to stay: an abandoned castle deep in the mountains, rumored to house more dead than stone.
She expects solitude. Maybe peace. Perhaps the quiet work of helping a few forgotten souls move on.
Instead, death greets her the moment she arrives.
When a boy dies inside the house, Joann's desire to disappear turns into responsibility. A grieving noblewoman demands her son's return. A castle that remembers fire begins to watch her choices. And the dead-some kind, some broken, some far too aware-take notice of the living girl who stayed.
With only a week to keep a promise she doesn't know how to fulfill, Joann finds herself unwillingly drawn back into a world of power, hierarchy, and expectation-accompanied only by a watchful cat who seems far too comfortable among the dead-forced to navigate nobility, ghosts, and her own limits after barely tasting the life she wanted.
This is a story about hunger, restraint, and the cost of listening when silence would be easier.