The house had been empty for more than twenty years.
At least, that was what people said.
It stood at the end of a forgotten road, surrounded by dry trees that never lost their leaves, as if time itself had given up on that place. The windows were broken, yet no one had ever seen an animal enter. Or leave.
Demon stopped in front of the rusted gate and felt something strange in his chest — a slow, constant pressure, as if the air there were heavier.
"It's just a house," he murmured to himself.
But the house seemed to disagree.
The gate screeched far too loudly when he pushed it. The sound cut through the silence like a scream, and for a moment Demon felt as if someone had heard it.
Or something.
He didn't believe in stories. He didn't believe in monsters. He was only there because he had to be. His new job required photos of abandoned places, and that house was perfect. Isolated. Old. Forgotten.
Exactly how he felt.
When he took his first step onto the property, the wind stopped. The trees ceased to move. Even the insects vanished. The world became far too quiet.
The front door was half open.
Demon didn't remember seeing it like that in the old photos.
"Strange…"
He pushed the door carefully. It opened without resistance, as if it had been waiting.
The inside of the house smelled of dust, mold… and something else. A metallic odor, almost like rust mixed with dried blood.
The floor creaked with every step, but the sound felt delayed, like an echo that refused to follow him.
The walls were stained. Not with ordinary dirt, but with long, irregular marks, as if something had been dragged across them again and again.
Demon raised the camera.
Click.
On the screen, something appeared behind him.
He turned quickly.
Nothing.
The hallway stretched dark ahead. To the left, a staircase led to the second floor. To the right, a closed door.
The house cracked.
Not like old wood.
Like a sigh.
"Is anyone there?" he asked, immediately feeling foolish.
The answer came.
A dull thump, from upstairs.
Demon swallowed hard. Reason still struggled to stay in control. Old houses make noises. That was all.
He climbed the stairs.
Each step seemed to sink more than it should, as if the house were testing his weight. The handrail was warm to the touch. Far too warm.
At the top of the stairs, the hallway was narrow and long. The doors were aligned, all of them closed.
Except the last one.
From inside it came a low, almost imperceptible sound.
A slow scratching.
Demon walked toward it.
The closer he got, the more the sound changed. It no longer sounded like scratching. It sounded like breathing.
He stopped in front of the door.
He felt something behind his eyes, a pressure that made no sense. Images flooded his mind without permission: people running, screaming, blood spreading across the floor of the house.
"This isn't real," he whispered.
The door opened by itself.
The room was empty.
But the walls… were alive.
They pulsed slowly, as if the house had a heart. In the center of the floor, there was a dark, ancient stain, impossible to clean.
Demon stepped back.
The door slammed shut.
The room went completely dark.
Then a voice spoke.
It did not come from outside.
It came from the house.
"You came back."
The air turned icy. Demon tried to scream, but no sound came out. The voice continued, now closer, more intimate.
"Others came before you. They died."
The darkness began to move.
Something crawled along the walls, forming itself, growing, as if the house itself were creating a body for what had died there years ago.
The monster.
It had no fixed shape. It was made of shadows, wrong bones, and memories that belonged to no one. It was born in that house. It died in that house.
And now it wanted to use the house to kill again.
"You will help."
The light suddenly returned.
Demon was alone in the room.
The door was open.
But something had changed.
Deep marks had appeared on his arm, as if invisible claws had grabbed him.
And on the wall, written with something dark, two words:
YOU STAY.
In that moment, Demon understood.
The house did not want him to die.
The house wanted him to stop that thing from escaping.
Because if the monster got out…
Other people would die.
And the house would never allow that to happen. Demon ran.
He didn't care about his camera or his job anymore. He reached the front door and pulled the handle with all his strength. It didn't budge. It wasn't locked with a key; it felt like the door was now part of the wall, a single solid piece of wood that refused to move.
"Let me out!" he shouted, his voice echoing back with a strange, metallic distortion.
He looked at his arm. The claw marks were glowing with a faint, bruised purple light. Every time he moved toward an exit, the marks burned. The house wasn't just holding him; it was connected to him.
He looked at the window in the living room. It was broken, an easy escape. He ran toward it and tried to jump through, but an invisible force slammed him back onto the dusty floor. It was like hitting a wall of ice.
"You are the lock," the house whispered, the floorboards vibrating under his feet.
Demon stood up, trembling. "What do you mean? What lock?"
He looked at his camera, which was lying on the floor. The screen was cracked, but it flickered to life. On the display, he saw a video playing—but it wasn't a video he had recorded.
It showed the same hallway he was in, but forty years ago. A family was laughing. Then, a shadow moved across the wall. Not a shadow of a person, but something jagged, something made of "wrong bones," just like the monster he saw. One by one, the people in the video vanished into the walls, their screams cut short by a sound like a heartbeat.
The video ended, and a new image appeared: a photo of Demon, taken just a second ago, from the perspective of the ceiling.
Above his head in the photo, a pale, long-fingered hand was reaching down.
Demon slowly looked up.
The ceiling was pulsing faster now. The dark stain from the upstairs room was beginning to drip from the light fixture, thick and cold.
"If I stay," Demon whispered, his eyes narrowing as his mysterious side took over, "I need to know how to fight that thing."
Suddenly, the rusted gate outside creaked. Demon looked through the window. A car had stopped at the end of the road. Someone else was coming.
The marks on his arm burned white-hot. The house wanted him to protect the newcomers, but the shadow on the ceiling was already descending.
The sound of the car engine outside was like a hope that Demon knew would be crushed. He wanted to scream, to tell them to run, but his throat felt like it was filled with dry ash.
He turned away from the window and saw his camera again. The lens wasn't just cracked; it was glowing. He picked it up, and instead of the photo of the hand above his head, a new image appeared. It was a photo of a newspaper clipping, so old the edges were burnt.
Demon looked at the floor where the camera was pointing. There, under a loose floorboard that hadn't been open a second ago, sat a physical piece of yellowed paper.
He knelt down and picked it up. The date at the top made his blood run cold: October 14, 1935.
The headline read:
"THE ARCHITECT'S SILENCE: ENTIRE FAMILY VANISHES IN NEW MANSION."
Demon read the small text, his eyes darting quickly:
"...neighbors reported hearing no screams, only a rhythmic thumping that lasted for three days. When police entered the house, they found the dinner table set for five, the food still warm, but not a single soul inside. The architect, Mr. Blackwood, had claimed the house was 'built to breathe,' but now the town fears it has learned to swallow."
"Built to breathe..." Demon whispered.
Suddenly, the house shook. A heavy, wet thud came from the hallway. The shadow from the ceiling was no longer there; it had moved.
Demon looked at the newspaper again and noticed a hand-written note in the margin, dated 1935:
"The lock needs a heart. If the gate isn't held, the Hunger walks the streets."
Demon looked at the purple marks on his arm. They were pulsing in time with the house's heartbeat. He wasn't just a prisoner. He was the only thing keeping the "Hunger" from 1935 from reaching the people in that car outside.
The front door of the house suddenly creaked open. Not for Demon to leave, but to let the newcomers in.
"Hey! Is anyone here?" a voice called from the entrance.
Demon stood up, clutching the 1935 newspaper. He had to decide: hide and let the house take them, or become the hero the house forced him to be. Demon froze. The single voice from the entrance, calling out to the empty house, vibrated through his bones. He knew he had seconds to decide.
"They are here for you," the house whispered through the floorboards, but this time, the voice was different. It wasn't the monster. It was the house itself, a desperate plea.
Demon stared at the newcomers, two young teenagers, a boy and a girl, standing hesitantly at the open front door. They were holding smartphones, probably recording. Urban explorers. Just like he had been.
"Get out!" Demon screamed, his voice hoarse, but it came out as a weak, strangled whisper. The house seemed to absorb the sound, twisting it into a barely audible groan.
The monster, which had been hiding, chose that moment to reappear. It solidified from the shadows in the center of the hallway, between Demon and the door. It was no longer a vague shape; it was a towering figure, made of twisted, sharp bones, covered in a black, pulsing membrane. Its head was a skull, too large, with empty, burning sockets.
The teenagers at the door gasped, dropping their phones. They had seen it.
"You try to break the spell, Demon," the monster's voice rumbled, not from its mouth, but from everywhere at once, vibrating through Demon's very being. "You try to defy the Hunger."
The house let out a low, mournful creak. The air grew colder, heavy with a smell of fear and ancient dust.
Demon gripped the newspaper from 1935 tighter. "What do you want?" he demanded, his own fear now replaced by a chilling resolve. "What is the Hunger?"
The monster took a slow, agonizing step forward, its bone-like fingers stretching, reaching for the petrified teenagers.
"I want what was taken," the monster hissed, its voice echoing from the walls, making the house shudder. "And you, little lock, will bring it to me. Your choices will feed the house, and your heart will set me free."
One of the teenagers screamed, a high-pitched, piercing sound. The monster turned its head, its empty eye sockets fixing on the sound.
Demon knew. He was the lock. If he let the monster take them, the house would be free, and he would be free. But the horror from 1935 would walk the world again.
He looked at the newspaper headline: "The Architect's Silence."
Then he looked at the monster, a creature of pure malice, the "Hunger" itself.
He took a deep breath, and for the first time, Demon didn't run. He moved
The air in the hallway didn't just turn cold; it turned ancient. As Demon moved toward the towering skeleton of the Hunger, the newspaper in his hand began to burn with a white flame that didn't consume the paper. The monster stopped. Its massive, skull-like head tilted to the side, and the burning sockets of its eyes dimmed from a predatory red to a sorrowful, hollow blue.
"You moved," the Hunger whispered, but the voice wasn't coming from the walls anymore. It was coming from inside Demon's own mind. "After all these years, after the silence of 1935, you finally moved toward me instead of away."
The two teenagers at the door were frozen, their breath visible in the freezing air, but Demon didn't look at them. He couldn't. His vision was blurring, being replaced by flashes of a life he didn't remember. He saw a garden. He saw a man—the Architect—drawing plans for a house that looked like a heart. And he saw two boys playing in the dirt. One was quiet and observant, always drawing in a sketchbook. The other was wild, full of energy, always hungry for more life, more space, more power.
"I was the first to fall into the foundations," the Hunger rumbled, its massive bone-fingers retracting, becoming almost human for a fleeting second. "The Architect didn't build this house to breathe, Demon. He built it to keep us together. He knew that my hunger would consume the world, so he turned me into the Shadow. And he turned you into the Light that holds the door shut."
Demon's arm throbbed. The purple marks were no longer burning; they were pulsing like a second heart. He looked at the monster—his brother—and saw the fragments of the boy from the garden hidden beneath the black membrane and the "wrong bones."
"Why now?" Demon asked, his voice finally finding its strength. "Why call me back to this house after twenty years?"
The Hunger stepped closer, its presence overwhelming. "Because the house is dying, brother. And if the house dies, the lock breaks. I don't want to walk the streets. I want to be whole again. But for me to be whole, you have to remember who we were before the Architect renamed us."
The teenagers finally found their feet and ran back toward the car, but the gate outside slammed shut. The house didn't want them to leave. It needed witnesses. It needed the cycle to complete.
"You aren't just a photographer, Demon," the monster hissed, leaning down until its cold, metallic breath hit Demon's face. "Your name isn't a title. It's a warning. We were born of the same shadow. You are the part that learned to love the world. I am the part the world tried to forget."
Demon closed his eyes, and the 2,000 words of history between them began to pour into his soul—the tragedy of the Blackwood brothers, the secret ritual of 1935, and the reason why the house "wants him dead." It doesn't want his life to end; it wants his humanity to merge with the monster so the Hunger can finally be at peace The air in the hallway didn't just freeze; it crystallized. Demon stood his ground, the 1935 newspaper still clutched in his hand, glowing with a fierce, white light that fought against the suffocating darkness of The Hunger. Behind him, the two teenagers were paralyzed, their smartphones reflecting the terrifying scene: a boy who looked ordinary standing against a nightmare made of "wrong bones" and ancient malice.
"Brother," the Hunger growled, the word vibrating the floorboards like an earthquake. "You move like a hero, but you bleed like a prisoner. Why protect these fleeting souls? They are but dust. We are the foundation."
The Hunger didn't wait for an answer. It lunged.
The speed was impossible for something so large. Its skeletal fingers, elongated and sharp like obsidian blades, tore through the air. Demon dived to the right, feeling the wind of the strike graze his shoulder. Where he had stood a second before, the wall was shredded, the wood splintering into a thousand needles.
Demon didn't just run; he thought. His "Genius" side, the strategist within, began to analyze the environment. The house was his brother's body, but it was also Demon's cage—and a cage can be turned into a weapon if you know where the bars are.
"The house wants me to stay!" Demon shouted, his voice echoing with a new authority. "If I am the lock, then I control the flow!"
He slammed his hand against the pulsing purple marks on the wall. The house groaned in pain and recognition. Suddenly, the floorboards under The Hunger's feet rose like a wave, bucking and twisting. The monster roared as it was thrown toward the ceiling.
But The Hunger was clever. It didn't fall. It attached itself to the ceiling, its black membrane stretching like spider silk, and began to crawl toward Demon with a sickening clicking sound. Click-clack. Click-clack. Each sound was a heartbeat of 1935, a memory of the Architect's betrayal.
"You use the house against me?" The Hunger hissed from above, its empty sockets glowing with a dark violet fire. "I am the house, Demon. Every nail, every brick, every drop of dried blood in these walls belongs to the Hunger!"
The monster released a wave of shadow from its chest. It wasn't a physical attack, but a mental one. Images of the 1935 disappearance flooded Demon's mind: the dinner table, the screams that were never heard, the feeling of being swallowed by the very floor you walk on. Demon fell to his knees, his head throbbing.
One of the teenagers, the boy, finally found his voice. "Hey! Use the light!" he yelled, pointing to Demon's camera that lay on the floor, its lens still humming with residual energy.
Demon looked at the camera. He looked at the Hunger, descending from the ceiling like a falling star of shadow. He knew he couldn't win with strength. He had to win with the truth of their shared past.
He grabbed the camera and aimed it upward.
"Smile, brother," Demon whispered, his mysterious eyes cold and focused.
FLASH.
The hallway exploded in a light so bright it seemed to tear the darkness apart. The Hunger shrieked, a sound of grinding metal and weeping children. The shadows burned away, revealing for a split second the human boy underneath the monster—a boy who looked exactly like Demon.
The fight had only just begun. The first layer of the nightmare was peeled back, but the Hunger was now truly angry. The flash from the camera hadn't just blinded the Hunger; it had cracked the reality of the house. For a few seconds, the walls stopped pulsing, and the metallic smell of blood was replaced by the scent of old paper and rain. But the silence didn't last.
The Hunger retreated into the darkest corner of the hallway, its form flickering like a corrupted video file. "You think a flicker of light can erase a century of darkness?" the monster spat, its voice now sounding like a choir of a thousand whispers. "I have been eating the silence of this town since 1935. I have grown fat on the secrets you are too afraid to face."
Suddenly, the floor beneath Demon didn't just shake—it liquefied. He felt himself sinking into the wood as if it were black water. The teenagers screamed as the walls around them began to stretch, the hallway growing miles long in a matter of seconds. They were being separated.
"Stay together!" Demon yelled, reaching out, but his hand caught only shadows.
He was alone now. Or so it seemed.
The Hunger didn't attack physically this time. Instead, it projected a vision directly into Demon's mind. He saw the Architect, their father, standing in the center of this very room in 1935. The man looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot. He was drawing symbols on the floor with a chalk made of bone.
"One must stay so the other can walk," the Architect whispered in the vision. "The Hunger is a gift, my sons. It is the power to never be forgotten."
Demon saw the younger version of himself crying, while the boy who would become the Hunger stepped willingly into the chalk circle. It wasn't a murder; it was a deal. His brother had sacrificed his humanity to give Demon a chance to live in the outside world.
"You see?" the Hunger's voice echoed, surrounding Demon in the darkness. "You are the one who ran. You are the one who enjoyed the sun, the games, and the life, while I became the wood and the stone. You owe me your soul, brother. Give it back."
Demon felt a heavy weight on his chest. The purple marks on his arm began to spread, turning into black veins that crept toward his heart. He was losing. The guilt of a life he had forgotten was more painful than any physical blow.
But then, he remembered his camera. Not as a tool for photos, but as a record of the present.
He struggled to lift his hand, his fingers feeling like lead. He didn't point the camera at the monster. He pointed it at himself.
"I didn't run," Demon whispered, his eyes glowing with a cold, analytical light—the same look he gets when he's about to win a fight he should have lost. "I was sent away to be the lock. And a lock only works if it stays strong."
He pressed the shutter button. The flash didn't hit the Hunger. It illuminated Demon's own face, reflected in a shard of a broken mirror on the wall. The light bounced back and forth, creating a feedback loop of pure energy.
The vision of 1935 shattered like glass.
Demon was back in the hallway. He saw the Hunger reeling back, clutching its head. The teenagers were shivering nearby, protected by a small circle of light that the house itself seemed to be providing.
"The lock doesn't just keep things in," Demon said, standing up and wiping dust from his jacket. "It keeps the balance. You aren't a god, brother. You're just a hungry shadow that forgot how to be a person."
He noticed something then. In the spot where the Hunger had been standing during the vision, a small, rusted key had appeared on the floor. It wasn't made of metal; it was made of the same bone material as the Architect's chalk.
The Hunger roared, a sound that cracked the remaining windows. It realized that Demon was no longer afraid of the past. The monster's body began to bloat, its "wrong bones" snapping and reforming into a massive, multi-limbed beast that filled the entire hallway.
"If you won't give me your soul," the Hunger
bellowed, "I will take your flesh!"The hallway was no longer a part of a house; it was a throat. The walls pressed in, wet and pulsing, as The Hunger reached its final, most grotesque form. It was a mass of shadows and ivory-white ribs, stretching across the ceiling and floor simultaneously. The two teenagers were trapped behind a barrier of splintered wood, watching as Demon stood alone against the titan of 1935.
Demon looked at the Bone Key in his hand. It felt warm, vibrating with the same rhythm as the house's heartbeat. He realized then that the Architect hadn't just built a prison; he had built a machine. And like any machine, it had a fail-safe.
"You think a piece of our father's sins can stop me?" The Hunger's voice was a tidal wave of sound, knocking Demon back against the wall. "I have outgrown his designs! I am the Hunger that never ends!"
The monster lunged, a dozen skeletal arms reaching for Demon's throat. Demon didn't flinch. He used his "Gênio" (Genius) instinct to calculate the timing. As the first claw grazed his neck, he slammed the Bone Key into the purple mark on his own arm—the mark that connected him to the house.
The effect was instantaneous. A shockwave of white and violet energy erupted from the contact point. The house screamed. Not the voice of a person, but the sound of iron bending and stone cracking.
"The lock isn't a door, brother," Demon shouted over the roar of the collapsing hallway. "The lock is a choice! I choose to remember you not as a monster, but as the boy who stayed!"
Demon grabbed his camera one last time. He didn't use the flash. He turned the screen around to show The Hunger the physical newspaper from 1935. As the monster's eyes fixed on the headline—"The Architect's Silence"—Demon twisted the Bone Key inside the mark on his arm as if he were unlocking a safe.
The shadows began to dissolve. The "wrong bones" snapped and fell away, turning into harmless dust. The massive, terrifying shape of The Hunger shrank, losing its malice and its power. The black membrane evaporated, leaving behind a faint, glowing silhouette of a young boy.
For a brief moment, the hallway returned to normal. The sun broke through the boarded-up windows, casting long rays of light across the dust. The boy silhouette looked at Demon and smiled—a sad, tired smile.
"Thank you… brother," the silhouette whispered.
With a final sigh of wind, the boy vanished. The heavy pressure in the air evaporated. The purple marks on Demon's arm faded into thin, silver scars—a permanent reminder of what he truly was.
The front door of the house swung open, and this time, it stayed open. The teenagers ran out into the fresh air, sobbing with relief, but Demon stayed behind for a second longer. He picked up his camera and looked at the last photo taken.
It wasn't a photo of a monster. It was a photo of a peaceful, empty hallway, filled with light.
Demon walked out of the rusted gate and didn't look back. He was still mysterious, he was still the "lock," but he was no longer alone. He knew that even if his brother was gone, the house was finally at peace.
The first part of his journey was over, but as he looked at the silver scars on his arm, he knew that other "houses" were waiting. The Hunger was just the beginning... After the exhausting battle of the previous episode, Demon lay on the living room floor, surrounded by the deathly silence of the house that had finally stopped pulsing. The two young urban explorers, still in shock, did not see what Demon saw. To them, there was no brother or "The Hunger"—only a nightmare monster that had just evaporated.
The boy, trembling, held a gasoline can he had found in the back garage. The girl held a lighter.
"We need to end this, Demon," the young man said. "This thing... this place... it can't continue to exist. If the monster returns, we won't have your luck again."
Demon felt the silver scars on his arm burn. He knew his brother's spirit had been released, but "The Hunger" had left residues behind. The house had been a record of pain since 1935.
"Don't do it," Demon whispered, trying to stand up.
"Why not?" the girl screamed. "It almost killed us! You almost died!"
Demon looked at the walls. He felt the house's gratitude for being pacified, but he also felt that it was tired. The Architect Blackwood had built it to be a heart, but it had become a tomb.
The youths did not wait. The strong smell of fuel flooded the entrance hall. The transparent liquid ran across the dry, porous wood.
"If you are the lock, Demon," the boy said with eyes full of tears of fear, "then we will be the key that destroys the door."
The lighter fell.
The flames did not rise like an ordinary fire. They were blue and intense, fed by memories and the ectoplasm that remained in the cracks of the floor. Demon saw the flames climb the stairs, licking the marks where his brother used to hide.
The heat was unbearable, but Demon didn't run immediately. In the midst of the fire, he saw the shadows of 1935 dance one last time. The Blackwood family seemed to wave in gratitude. The fire was cleansing the curse.
"Demon! Get out of there!" the youths shouted from outside, near the car.
Demon grabbed his camera. He took one last photo: the house being consumed by light. As he ran out, the structure let out one last crack, like a sigh of relief. The rusted gate fell.
Outside, the three watched the house collapse under the purifying fire. The sun was rising, and for the first time in decades, that road no longer seemed forgotten.
Demon looked at the two teenagers. They had done what he didn't have the courage to do: they ended the cycle for good.
"Who are you, really?" the girl asked, seeing the scars on his arm glow under the sunlight.
Demon put away his camera and adjusted his jacket, regaining his mysterious air.
"Just someone who knows the weight of a secret," he replied, walking away as the smoke rose to the sky.
The lock was destroyed, but the secret that he and The Hunger were one was now engraved in his soul forever. The hallway was disintegrating. Flames, fed by ancient guilt and spilled gasoline, roared like a beast, but the two brothers didn't move. They were locked in a final, brutal embrace of shadows and light. Demon's hands were stained with the black ichor of the monster, and The Hunger's claws were buried deep in Demon's shoulders.
The monster's face, now a half-human mask of agony, leaned close to Demon's ear. Its voice was no longer a roar, but a cold, final prophecy.
The Hunger: "If I die, you will become the life of this house. You will never leave again. The walls will be your skin, and the floor will be your bones. You are the lock, Demon. And a lock is nothing without its door."
Demon felt the heat of the fire melting the very air around them. He looked into the burning blue eyes of his brother, and for the first time, he didn't feel fear. He felt the weight of the truth he had been carrying since 1935. He realized that the Architect's curse couldn't be broken by survival—it could only be broken by sacrifice.
Demon: "I will fix my own guilt. It was my fault... all of it. The blood on these floors, the disappearance of our family... it's a burden I won't carry into the world anymore. If I am the lock, then I choose to break. If we both die here, the Hunger ends. The silence of the Blackwoods ends today."
The Hunger shrieked, but it wasn't a sound of anger; it was a sound of release.
As the roof began to cave in, Demon pulled his brother closer. The silver scars on his arm flared with a blinding light, merging with the shadows of the monster. The house let out a final, deafening roar as the foundations gave way.
The two teenagers outside watched in horror as the mansion folded in on itself, swallowed by a pillar of fire and dust. There was no escape. No hero walking out of the smoke this time.
The house died. The Hunger died. And Demon, the mysterious boy with the camera, was finally free from the secret, even if it meant he would never take another photo again.
It was the end of everything.