The hidden room under the mall felt different now. Before, it was a place of wonder. Now, it felt urgent. A tool for survival.They went straight to the red leather book about demons. They flipped through the pages. They were looking for something about white eyes. About violence between lovers.They found it. A section titled ‘The Heartsick.’ It described a demon born from a terrible, jealous love. A love that turned to hate at the moment of betrayal. If a person was filled with that rage at the exact moment of their death, their spirit could become a ‘Heartsick.’ It would seek out new people feeling that same jealous rage. It would enter them. It would feed on the feeling. And it would make them act it out. In the worst way possible.“A wronged lover,” Chloe read aloud. “Left for someone else. That’s what that couple was fighting about. She was breaking up with him.”“So the demon found him,” Leo said. “It found a man feeling exactly what it felt when it died. It jumped into him. An

The air in Darwin’s lair was cold and still. It didn’t feel like a room in the modern world. It was a huge, dark space. It looked like an ancient throne room from a forgotten kingdom. Stone pillars rose into shadows. The floor was made of big, uneven slabs of rock.At the far end, on a raised platform, was a throne. It wasn’t a fancy chair. It was carved from a single piece of black stone, shiny like a beetle’s shell. Darwin wasn’t sitting on it. Not yet.He walked across the silent floor. His footsteps echoed. He stopped in front of a statue.The statue was taller than a man. It was made of the same black stone as the throne. It was shaped like a knight in old armor, but its face was a smooth, blank sheet. No eyes. No mouth. In its stone hands, it held a large, round bowl.Darwin reached out. He touched the statue’s arm. The stone was freezing.“Any time now,” he whispered. His voice was full of hungry excitement.He looked into the bowl the statue held. It wasn’t empty. Inside was a