The small room in the old cabin was quiet. The only light came from one dusty window. It made everything look yellow and still.Liana was in a wooden chair in the middle of the room. Her arms were tied to the chair's arms with thick rope. Her head hung down, her chin touching her chest. She was still out cold.Victoria stood in front of her. She wasn't moving. She was just staring. Her eyes went over every part of Liana's face. Her closed eyes. Her mouth. The way she breathed. It was like Victoria was reading a book no one else could see.Rowan was leaning in the doorway. He had been quiet for a long time. Now, he spoke. His voice was low."You're thinking it, aren't you?" he asked. "The same thing I'm thinking."Victoria didn't look away from Liana. She just gave one slow, solid nod. "Yes," she said."What?" a new voice asked from the hallway.Victoria and Rowan turned their heads. Leo and Chloe were standing there. They must have walked in quietly. Leo's face was full of questions.

The car felt too quiet. Leo drove. Chloe stared out the window. The trees by the road were just black shapes.They got closer to the city. But something was wrong.Leo checked the clock on the dashboard. “It’s only nine,” he said. “Why are the streets so empty?”He was right. It was a Tuesday night. The streets should have had some cars. Some people. But it was like a ghost town. The traffic lights changed from green to yellow to red for no one.A few people were out. But they were almost running. Heads down. Hurrying.Leo pulled the car over near a woman who was practically power-walking. He rolled down the window. “Hey! Excuse me!”The woman jumped. She looked at them with wide, scared eyes. She didn’t come closer.“What’s going on?” Chloe called out. “Why is everyone hiding?”The woman’s voice was fast and shaky. “You don’t know? Where have you been? There’s a curfew. You shouldn’t be out!”“A curfew? Why?” Leo asked.“The killings!” the woman hissed. She looked over her shoulder a

The papers were spread all over the table. Leo’s head hurt. Chloe’s eyes were blurry from reading. They drank bad coffee to stay awake.“Okay,” Leo said, pointing at a typed page. “It says the focus is something personal. Something that belonged to the person… before.”“Before they became that thing,” Chloe finished. She felt sick saying it.“Right. So we need to figure out who that is. Or was.” Leo leaned back. “How do we find a person from a monster?”Chloe picked up the old drawing of ‘The Hollow One’. She looked at it closely. Then she looked at the notes about how it was made. “The notes say the spirit is ‘bound with regret and violence’. Maybe… maybe it’s someone who died bad. Recently. Darwin would need a fresh spirit, right? Not one from a hundred years ago.”Leo sat up. That made sense. “So we look for news. A recent death. A violent one. Maybe someone forgotten.”He went back to his laptop. He searched the local news from the last month. He typed in ‘unsolved murder’, ‘body

The sun was coming up. It was morning. Light was starting to fill Leo’s messy apartment.Chloe woke up on the couch. She was stiff and sore. She blinked her eyes open. She saw Leo. He was standing by the window. Just staring out. He hadn’t slept. She could tell.She got up. She walked over to him. She didn’t say anything. She just kissed his shoulder. Then she leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Good morning,” she whispered.He turned his head. He kissed her back. It was a soft kiss. Tired. “Morning,” he said.She looked at his face. His eyes had dark circles under them. “You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”He let out a little chuckle. It had no humor in it. “No. Not really.”“What were you thinking about?” she asked. She leaned her head against his arm.“My life,” he said. His voice was quiet. “Just… my life. How it all went. One minute I’m getting out of prison. Just trying to get through the day. Then someone tells me I’m an heir. I have a fortune. Then… then I find out I’m supposed to

She opened it. Inside were drawings of creatures that could change their shape. Their true form was horrible—skin like clay, eyes without lids. The book called them ‘Doppelgangers’ but also ‘Clay-Faces’. They were not born. They were made. A demon was summoned and then bound into a form made of earth and dark magic. It could look like anyone, but it always had a flaw. A mark. A stiff movement. A smell of wet soil. “This is what he is,” Chloe said, showing Leo. “Darwin… or the thing using his name… it’s one of these. A shape-shifter demon.” They read more, their fingers racing over the pages. How to defeat it. The book said the demon was tied to its original clay form. To force it back to its true shape, you had to speak its ‘True Name’ and break the object that held a piece of that original clay. “How do we find its True Name?” Leo asked, frustrated. Chloe kept reading. “It says here… ‘The name is written on the vessel. Look upon the maker’s mark.’ The vessel must be the thing