For a heartbeat, the thing lifted its head.
Its eyes—if such things could be called eyes—blazed into view. They weren't human orbs but cold beacons, two frozen torches burning with the color of shattered ice, blue so bright and pitiless it pierced the world like shards of the dead winter sky.
William felt the gaze skewer him. It stripped him bare, scraped marrow from bone. His soul turned over on itself, brittle as glass, cracking under the weight of that stare. Every thought, every shred of willpower emptied out of him. He was smaller than he had ever been—an insect before a predator's fangs, a squeaking mouse flattened beneath the shadow of a hungry beast.
The creature said nothing. Yet the silence was worse than screams. It swelled, pressed into his skull until it hummed in his senses, vibrating beneath his skin. It wasn't an absence of sound—it was a chorus of whispers, a murmur born from every shadow in the room, all tugging at the edges of his sanity.
