Diamond Lake is used to ugly deaths. Cave-ins. Knife fights. Men who vanish into the Cairn Hills and don’t come back.

But this one is different.

At dawn, Sheriff Cubbin’s deputies forced their way into the Lantern House—the orphanage that used to be a pleasure den back when the town pretended it had standards. Inside they found two adults dead: a hired night watchman and a stranger who’d paid for a cot.

Both were headless.

The doors were locked. The windows latched. No signs of a struggle. No screams in the night. Not even the sound of footsteps.

And the caretaker keeps repeating the same thing through clenched teeth:

“I checked the children every hour. I never heard a thing.
Not crying. Not shouting. Nothing.
Just that hallway door… the one that’s been sealed for years…
and last night it felt like something on the other side was pressing back.”

The deputies want to call it a monster and start swinging axes at shadows. The mine bosses want it buried before it scares labor away. The town gossips are already whispering about a traveling chandler selling black tallow candles that burn without smoke… and a silence that swallows prayer.

Cubbin wants this handled quietly.
Because tonight, the Lantern House will be full again…

…and whatever opened The Sealed Door might come to finish its count.