It Should've Stayed Buried

Casa Valleclair did not simply stand.
It watched.

High above the quiet streets of Coastfield, its windows glowed like solemn eyes guarding generations of De La Valles.

Inside those walls, Julian Rune De La Valle the First lived what she believed was a fairy tale.

Perfect family.
Perfect faith.
Perfect life.

Until the illusion shattered.

She woke up in a hospital bed with no memory of her childhood, her home, or herself.

Everything was gone... except one thing.

A name whispered into the void of her mind.

Alexander.

She didn't know who he was.
But the name pulsed, warm, dangerous, alive.

Like something she once held tightly,
or something she should have run from.

And while her memories stayed buried, something else began to rise.

Shadows skittered across ceilings.
Figures lingered where the light couldn't reach.
And the Woman in Black, faceless, silent, unblinking, appeared again and again,
watching her with a stillness that chilled her bones.

The truth surfaced slowly.

Her family's fairy tale had never been perfect.
It had only been buried.

Something had been taken from her.
Something had been opened instead.

And every path,
every lie,
every fear
led back to one forbidden name.

Alex.

But what she didn't know...

Some secrets weren't buried by accident.

Some... should have stayed buried.