Die Falkner vom Falkenhof. Zweiter Band.

Dolores awakens from a night of unsettling visions, where she battles a suffocating fog and a jagged stone path that threatens to tear her feet apart. A looming gray wall appears, flanked by endless abysses, and when she turns back a raging stream has erased her way home. In the sudden clarity beyond the wall she finds herself in her own bedroom opposite Doctor Ruß, whose melodious voice she cannot comprehend as he pushes a strange white‑bound paper toward her. She tears it up and watches the fire consume it, only to see the room dissolve into the swirling mist of the park’s “Hexenloch,” where a pale‑clad Alfred Falkner takes her hand and steps toward a blood‑red stripe of twilight.

The next morning the Falkenhof terrace buzzes with the clink of tea cups as Mrs. Ruß, her husband, and a nervous servant arrange a service. A sudden, urgent entrance by Engels, brandishing a massive bird, draws everyone’s gaze, while Dolores feels an uncanny chill as Doctor Ruß seems to sweeten her tea with a taste that is anything but. A cold hand rests on her forehead and the apparition of her ancestor, Maria Dolorosa, whispers that she has been marked to glimpse the future’s hidden dangers.