Adam didn’t sleep that night.The house was too still. Too aware. Every tick of the wall clock seemed to echo inside his skull, magnified by the kind of silence that felt alive. The air was heavy — thick with something he couldn’t name, like invisible dust pressing down on his chest.He sat at his desk, his laptop glowing faintly before him, its screen still open to the church’s online archives. The page was half-filled with Latin phrases he couldn’t translate, words that made Malrick stir inside him.> “Not yet. Don’t read it aloud.”Malrick’s voice was faint — like static. “That text… it speaks to me. I know those names.”Adam’s reflection flickered in the dark screen. For a heartbeat, it wasn’t his face at all. Something older looked back — sharper, regal, and broken. When he blinked, it was gone.He turned off the screen and leaned back, eyes burning. He thought of Jake — his mother’s new boyfriend — the too-warm smile, the way his eyes never quite matched his tone. And the way he

The echo of Elena’s scream cut through the night like a blade.Adam’s body moved before his mind did — sprinting out of the broken church, his boots crunching on the gravel, lungs burning with a strange, electric panic.The streets were empty, dead quiet except for the distant barking of dogs and the low moan of the wind. The red sky had faded to a bruised gray, but the color still clung to the edges of the clouds like old blood.“Elena!” he shouted. His voice bounced off the cold buildings and came back to him hollow. No answer.“You shouldn’t care,” Malrick whispered inside his skull, low and sharp. “She’s just noise — distraction. We have bigger prey.”“Shut up,” Adam hissed under his breath. But the voice only laughed, rich and velvety, dripping with something close to pleasure.“There it is again — that spark. Fear. Attachment. How human of you. Do you even remember why you started this, Adam?”He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His thoughts were a blur of light and sound and running

The last candle guttered out as the church doors creaked wider.Elena stood framed in the doorway, the rain behind her hissing against the threshold. Her hair clung damply to her face, and her eyes— they glowed faintly, a molten red threaded with gold, like embers trying to hide behind glass.For a moment, Adam forgot how to breathe.Everything—the charred altar, the half-collapsed pews, the fragments of mirror around him—blurred at the edges. All that remained was her and that impossible light.“Elena…” His voice cracked.She stepped inside, slow, deliberate, her boots echoing on the marble. The air trembled as though the church itself feared her arrival.“I think,” she said softly, “I saw something you were meant to hide.”The words hit him like a whisper through broken glass.He wanted to move toward her, to pull her out of that cursed place, but his body felt pinned by an unseen weight. Malrick’s voice coiled through his skull, low and warning.“She’s marked. Step back, Adam.”But

The world was made of whispers.Elena floated somewhere between waking and sleep, her body heavy, her mind caught in a web of voices that spoke in languages older than time.The dream—if it was a dream—began in the church again. Only this time, it wasn’t burned or broken. The stained-glass windows glowed with living light, showing scenes she didn’t recognize: winged figures chained to the ground, flames twisting into the shape of eyes.At the altar stood Jake.Not the smiling man her mother adored, but something behind that smile—cold, ancient, and familiar in a way that made her blood turn to frost.He was whispering in Latin, the same strange cadence that sometimes echoed in her mind when she was alone. A woman stood beside him. Elena’s breath caught.It was Lilith.She looked the same—dark hair, soft eyes—but there was something vast and hollow in her shadow, as if another presence moved within her skin.Jake turned toward Elena, and for a heartbeat his eyes weren’t human—they were

The night felt wrong.The air itself shivered, a low, inaudible hum pressing behind her ears as Lilith walked toward the cathedral that loomed like a fossil of light and ruin. Storm-rain clung to her lashes; every step echoed against stone slick with moss.She didn’t remember deciding to come here.She only remembered the pull.Inside, the sanctuary was drowned in darkness, candles guttering under drafts that seemed to breathe. The marble saints had no faces. Beneath their feet, an iron stairway spiraled down into the crypt. The song that had lured her—a broken fragment of an old hymn—beat faintly from below.Lilith descended.Each step tasted of rust. The hymn grew clearer, layered with another sound: whispering. It wasn’t a voice she knew, yet her body reacted as if it were part of her own memory.“Still chasing ghosts?”Jake’s voice, calm and dry, from the base of the stairs. He stood beside an altar eaten with age, candles trembling around him. His eyes caught the light like w