The door sticks when I push it open, and I have to shoulder it harder than I expect before it finally gives, and the smell hits me immediately, thick and stale and heavy with dust and damp wood that has not seen sunlight in weeks.
It smells like old grief. It smells like the day my mother stopped breathing and no one came to clear the air.
I step inside slowly and let the door fall shut behind me, and for a second I just stand there and take it in, the sagging couch, the uneven flooring, the thin curtains hanging limp over the windows like they gave up before I did.
The silence presses in around me, and it is not violent like the packhouse was, not charged with magic or politics or proximity sickness, it is just still and stagnant and untouched.
I walk straight to the windows and yank
