The manor sat at the edge of town like a memory you couldn’t place—stone walls weathered to pewter, dormer windows pinched against a slate roof, and a gate whose ironwork had long ago learned to rattle with the wind. Locals told small stories about it: a woman seen at the attic window, a carriage wheelmaker who never left, children daring each other to touch the mossy steps. But those were the surface murmurs. The manor kept its deeper stories in the bones.