First timer

Previously

…I sank to my knees, exhaustion washing over me in a tidal wave. I had faced it. I had understood it, in a way. And I had survived. But the experience had irrevocably changed me. The house was no longer just a place; it was a scar. And I knew, with a chilling certainty, that the echoes of its darkness would follow me, a constant reminder of what lay hidden beneath the veneer of the ordinary. I had escaped its embrace, but its memory, its chilling whisper, would forever be a part of me. The cycle was broken, for now. But the house, I suspected, would always remember. And so would I.