The lights didn't flicker.
They died.
One moment, Emilia was staring at a blinking red cursor on the monitor. The next, the room was swallowed whole by silence. No hum of electricity. No buzz of heat.
Just stillness.
And then—
Thump.
Upstairs.
A single, slow footstep on the hardwood floor above them.
Emilia turned to Damien, but he was already moving, gun raised, jaw locked like he'd expected this moment every day since he was born.
"Stay behind me," he growled.
She did.
But something inside her had cracked open.
She wasn't scared in the way she'd been before—lost, soft, spiraling.
Now she was sharp.
Awake.
And furious.
---
They made it to the main stairwell in darkness. Calla was at the top, her silhouette backlit by candlelight—how had she moved so fast?
"North hallway's blocked," she said in a low voice. "Emergency exits wired. He's playing."
"Did you see him?" Damien asked.
She didn't answer. Just dropped a single silver blade into his hand.
"Close enough."
---
Another sound now.
Not footsteps.
Breathing.
Emilia heard it before she felt it—the sense of being watched, not from the hallway, not from the stairs, but from within the room she had just left.
Her body tensed.
She turned.
A shadow moved behind the glass of the server case.
Too slow to be a trick of light.
Too real.
She backed away—
And a whisper sliced through the dark like a match across stone.
> "You blinked, little bride."
---
Damien was beside her in an instant, hand at her waist, dragging her down the corridor like the walls were about to collapse. Calla fell in beside them, muttering codes and names like spells under her breath.
Behind them, another monitor shattered.
Then another.
One by one, glass teeth littered the floor.
"He's not here to talk," Calla hissed. "He's here to break something."
---
They reached the underground exit—hidden beneath a false wine cabinet.
Damien yanked the latch.
Nothing.
The floor stayed still.
Locked.
"Override it," he barked.
Calla swore. "He's already changed the code. He's inside the system."
"So he never left," Emilia whispered.
Calla's voice dropped to something colder than ice. "Sweetheart. He is the system."
---
A red light blinked overhead.
Then the house began to speak.
Only it wasn't the voice of their security interface anymore.
It was his.
Vale's.
> "Damien. So eager to protect your pet."
"Calla. Still using your dead name."
"And Emilia…"
Silence.
> "She wears Annabelle's bones well."
Emilia stepped forward before Damien could stop her.
"You want to talk to me?" she called out. "Do it to my face."
A long pause.
> "That's the problem, darling."
"You still think you have one."
---
A hiss of compressed air echoed through the vent shaft above them.
Then: gas.
Sweet. Faint. Almost floral.
Damien grabbed her and ripped open a sealed oxygen mask from the side wall.
One. Only one.
He shoved it into her hands.
She looked at him in shock. "What about—"
He didn't let her finish.
"Put it on."
---
She did.
Everything went quiet after that.
Just the hiss of her own breath.
The distant thrum of Vale's voice, speaking through every speaker like God on judgment day.
And then—
Boom.
A wall behind them imploded, concrete dust billowing like a demon exhaling.
Vale had blown open his own path.
---
In the smoke, Emilia saw a figure.
Tall. Silent. Not running. Just walking.
A man in black.
His face was obscured. But she felt the cold of his gaze like a blade pressed to her ribs.
And in his hand—
A matchbook.
Red-tipped.
He struck one.
And smiled.
---
Calla screamed. "MOVE!"
Damien threw his arm around Emilia.
They ran.
Not for safety—there was none left.
But for distance.
Because when Vale came, he didn't knock.
He burned the door down.
---