The silence in the house wasn't peace—it was a warning.
Things had been oddly quiet since Starr, Max, and Zee began taking shifts to ensure Vivian was never left alone. It seemed to help. The shadows hadn't moved. The whispers hadn't returned. Not yet.
But everyone felt it—*the calm had teeth.*
Each day, they buried themselves in the tattered, dust-covered journals Starr had salvaged from the abandoned site. Pages were brittle, smeared with ink that bled like dried blood. Strange symbols repeated themselves—some eerily similar to the glowing mark on Max's hand.
And that was the terrifying part.
*Only Max could hear it.*
The voice.
The whisper that slithered into his ears when no one else could hear it.
At night, when the others slept, he would sit up in bed, hand pulsing with light and pain, listening to a voice speaking in a language he shouldn't understand, but somehow did. It wasn't a voice from outside—it came from *inside him.*
Zee, the quiet observer, had finally spoken after hours of decoding one of the older texts.
"It's bloodline. Only someone from the demon's origin can truly hear it. That's why Max can connect."
A shiver ran through the room.
"If this demon… this entity… has a lineage," Starr said slowly, "and Max is connected… what does that make him?"
Max couldn't answer. Neither could the mark that now wrapped around his wrist like a tightening vine.
Zee continued, his voice grave.
"If we can trace the first markings—symbols from the original pact—they might reveal the true blood host. But what if… the host isn't here? What if it's someone outside this circle?"
"And what if," Vivian added, barely a whisper, "it's someone already marked for death?"
They all went still.
If they could uncover the *second* set of markings, Zee believed they'd unlock the truth behind the demon hunt—and a way to stop it for good.
But the second markings meant nothing without the *first*.
And the first… was lost in time.
Buried beneath rituals, bloodlines, and secrets best left forgotten.
The journals hinted at it. A page torn, stained with what looked like dried tears—or something darker—spoke of a "first vow" carved in bone and sealed by fire.
But where was it made?
By whom?
What clues had they missed?
Every theory led them in circles. Every page only thickened the shadow.
And then… the knock came.
A slow, hollow knock at Max's door.
Standing there in the threshold was *Tari.*
Max's old friend.
One of them who had gone to the excavation site.
But after they returned, *Tari vanished.* No calls. No texts. No messages.
Now, he stood pale and sunken-eyed, lips stitched into silence—not literally, but something about him felt like his voice had been *taken.*
He didn't speak. He couldn't.
He just held up a notebook with shaky hands, scrawled across it in jagged writing:
*"You shouldn't have opened the gate."*
Max stepped back, heart rattling in his chest.
Starr moved closer, her voice low, "Tari? What happened to you?"
He pointed to his throat and then drew a symbol in the air with trembling fingers—one Max recognized from his dreams. The one that burned when he got too close to the truth.
Zee's voice was quiet but grave.
*"He's been marked… and silenced."*
The room went cold. The lights flickered.
And Tari wrote one more thing:
*"It watches through mirrors. Never be alone. Never look too long."*
Behind him, in the dark reflection of the hallway mirror, something moved—tall, crooked, and *smiling.*