BACK-COVER BLURB
In a town where silence is practiced and names are handled with care, something has been listening for a very long time.
When the narrator returns after years away, time has stalled at 3:17, mirrors are covered, and a bell rings only when memory becomes dangerous. People recognize her without acknowledging her. A building everyone avoids stands waiting—lit, intact, patient.
The rituals performed there are not dark.
They are precise.
They do not summon anything.
They empty someone.
As forgotten memories surface through waking dreams and a notebook that is never blank, the truth begins to fracture reality itself: the town survives because someone remembers what no one else can. Someone anchors the silence. Someone becomes the structure.
They are called Listeners.
As the Seventh Chant approaches, the narrator must make an impossible choice—remember everything and collapse the system that protects the town, or forget one final time and become the thing that holds it together.
This is a psychological horror novel about memory as violence, forgetting as mercy, and the terrifying cost of permanence. There are no monsters in the dark—only clarity, breath, and walls that learn how to listen.
Once you begin reading, the bell has already rung.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This story was not written to scare you.
Fear is loud.
This book is about what remains when fear learns to be quiet.
The Seventh Chant is a novel about memory—how it shapes us, erodes us, and sometimes replaces us. About the strange comfort of routines that harm no one directly, and the terrible relief of letting someone else carry what we cannot.
The rituals in this book are not based on spectacle or darkness, because real horror rarely is. It lives in repetition. In clarity. In systems that survive because everyone agrees not to look too closely at what they cost.
The Listener is not a hero.
They are not a villain.
They are a function.
If this story feels familiar at times—if it feels like remembering rather than discovering—that is intentional. Some truths don't arrive new. They return.
Thank you for reading carefully.
Thank you for listening.
And if, at any point, you felt the urge to pause, to breathe slower, to check the time—
That means the book worked.
PROLOGUE
Some towns survive by remembering.
Others survive by forgetting.
This one learned how to do both—and charged a price for it.
At first glance, nothing about the town demands attention. The roads are narrow but maintained. The houses are modest, familiar, built with the quiet confidence of places that expect to endure. People greet one another politely. Children grow up, leave, and sometimes return. Time appears to move forward in the way it always does.
But time behaves differently here.
It pauses.
It loops.
It waits.
There are rules no one teaches you outright. Names are spoken carefully. Certain buildings are not acknowledged. Certain hours are treated with an almost religious precision. And when the bell rings—once, never twice—people stop whatever they are doing, not in panic, but in recognition.
Because recognition is safer than surprise.
This story is not about a cult in robes or rituals performed in shadow. It is not about monsters with claws or gods that demand blood. It is about clarity. About rooms lit too well. About silence measured not in seconds, but in breath. About ordinary people who make extraordinary accommodations so that something older, something listening, can remain contained.
At the center of this containment is a role that should never be remembered.
The Listener.
Not a leader.
Not a witness.
Not a savior.
An anchor.
Listeners are not chosen; they are revealed. They are the ones who remember what others cannot afford to carry—the faces that disappear, the screams that never echo, the rituals that leave no mark except in the body. They hold memory until memory becomes too heavy, until it hardens into something permanent.
Into structure.
Into walls.
Into breath.
What follows is a record of cracks forming—first in dreams, then in waking life, then in the architecture of reality itself. It is the story of forgetting as mercy, remembering as violence, and the terrible cost of choosing either too late.
This is not a warning.
Warnings allow escape.
This is a remembering.
And if you are reading this, it means the building is already listening.
CHAPTER 1- THE HOUSE THAT KNEW MY NAME
The mirrors were not the only things covered. Every clock in the house had stopped—not broken, not delayed, but stopped, all at the same moment: 3:17. I noticed it because the silence felt heavy, not quiet—heavy, like air before a storm that never arrives. The ceiling fan rotated above me in slow, lazy circles, clicking faintly with every turn, while the tube light buzzed, flickered once, and settled into a dull glow. Electricity was not the problem. I checked my phone. No signal. The screen refreshed, adjusted the time, and froze again at 3:17. My throat tightened, and a soft laugh escaped me before I could stop it, thin and rehearsed, like something I'd practiced for moments exactly like this. "Power cut," I whispered. Saying it out loud made it feel official, as if the house required an explanation before it decided what to do next. Nothing responded.
I moved through the living room slowly, my bare feet pressing into the cold tile. Every sound felt amplified—the scrape of skin against the floor, the soft rustle of fabric. The house felt attentive, as if it had been quiet long enough to finally hear me. In the kitchen, the sink was completely dry, no dampness, no leftover drops clinging to the steel. Still, the tap released a single drop of water—just one. It struck the basin and echoed. I stood frozen, listening as the sound faded, waiting for another drop that never came.
The back door stood slightly ajar. Beyond it, the yard looked darker than it should have been, weeds tangled and overgrown, and past that lay the narrow dirt path leading into the forest. I hadn't walked that path in years—not since childhood—yet my feet stopped at the threshold automatically, toes curling against the tile as if they remembered something my mind refused to approach. That was when I saw the mark scratched into the damp mud beside the doorframe: seven vertical lines, one crossed through. My stomach dropped. The pattern felt familiar in a way that made my skin prickle. I bent down quickly and scrubbed at it with my shoe, smearing the mud until the lines vanished into shapeless brown streaks. Relief came too fast, too thin.
Behind me, something exhaled—not a voice, not words, just breath—close enough that I felt it brush the back of my neck. I turned so quickly I nearly lost my balance. Nothing stood behind me. The kitchen was empty, except for the dining table. A notebook sat at its center. It hadn't been there before. I was sure of that. The cover was dark leather, cracked along the edges, the spine worn as if it had been opened and closed more times than paper should survive. It lay open, waiting. A single sentence had been written on the first page, the letters pressed deep into the paper, the ink dark and deliberate: Do not erase what has already been counted.
My hands trembled as I reached for it. The paper felt warm. I slammed the notebook shut and backed away, my pulse loud in my ears. The house remained silent—no footsteps, no whispers, no breath. That night, I didn't sleep. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, counting the seconds between my breaths, afraid that if I stopped counting, something else would do it for me. At exactly 3:17 a.m., the bell rang once—not inside the house, but closer than that. CONTINUE......