The morning sun didn't feel like warmth anymore. It felt like a spotlight in a horror play—false, cruel, mocking.
Maya sat on her bed, staring at the bloody page in her hand.
> The bloodline must pay.
Her hands trembled. Her mind buzzed with images—floating faces, the priest's mouth full of flies, the door in her room. None of it felt like a dream. It was too vivid. Too loud.
She ran to her father, the paper clutched tightly.
But he wasn't in the kitchen. Not in his room.
Not anywhere.
His shoes were gone.
The front door was wide open.
There were footprints… bare footprints… leading out of the house.
Into the woods.
"Maya…" a voice whispered behind her.
She turned fast. No one was there.
"Maaayaa…" it whispered again, crawling through the walls like a cockroach.
She grabbed her jacket and ran outside, following the footprints into the trees. She should have been scared—but the fear was something different now. It was inside her bones.
Deeper into the forest. Deeper into the silence.
Then she saw him.
Her father.
Standing still, facing the broken bridge. Arms limp. Eyes wide open, glassy. Lips moving, but no words coming out.
"Dad!" she shouted.
He didn't move.
Maya stepped closer.
"Dad—look at me! Please!"
Then, he turned. Slowly.
His face was wrong. His expression was twisted. A grotesque smile spread across his lips, wider than a human smile should be. His eyes rolled back, showing only white.
His body began to twitch.
"Maya…" he rasped. "It wants you."
She screamed as his neck snapped to the side with a sickening crack—and then he charged.
She stumbled back, heart racing, lungs freezing. He moved unnaturally fast, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. Just as he reached her, something stopped him.
A chain.
Wrapped around his legs.
From the ground.
From the soil.
Maya gasped as dozens of bony hands rose from the forest floor and held him down. Screaming. Wailing. Her father's body writhed, then went still.
She crawled backward, eyes wide in terror.
"Run," her father whispered suddenly—his real voice, for a second, broke through. "Run before it—"
His body convulsed again, and the voice changed.
> "SHE IS MINE."
The ground exploded in a gust of black ash.
When she opened her eyes again, she was back home.
On the kitchen floor.
Alone.
Her father was gone.
Everything was clean.
But the torn page was still in her hand.
And now, a second sentence had appeared.
> Open the book before the 10th night. Or be buried alive.