The words hung in the damp cellar air, more terrifying than any shriek or monster. Its new skin. It wasn't just playing with her. It was measuring her. Tailoring a cage not just for her mind, but for her very essence.
Elias cowered back into his corner, pulling his ragged knees to his chest, as if trying to make himself smaller than the shadows. The can opener shook in his hand. He was a living fossil, preserved in a strata of pure fear.
"You have to eat," Lane said, her voice gentle but firm. The memory of the peaches, the life-giving syrup, was fresh. She had nothing to give him but the empty can. She showed it to him. "I found your stash. The peaches."
His eyes, wide and luminous in the candlelight, fixed on the can. A tremor of something other than fear passed through him—recognition, then a profound, gut-wrenching sadness. "You found it," he whispered. "I knew… I knew someone would, eventually. I hoped it would be me."
"There must be more," Lane insisted. "You survived down here. There has to be water. Something."
He gave a weak, rattling laugh that turned into a cough. "Water?" He pointed a grimy finger at a dark, slimy trickle running down the stone wall beside him. "It gives just enough. Tainted, but enough. It knows. It always knows. It keeps the livestock alive." He licked his cracked, bleeding lips. "The peaches… they were my sin. My secret. The one thing I took for myself. The one thing it didn't control."
He was insane. The years of isolation and terror had sanded his mind down to a single, sharp point: survival through absolute submission. He had accepted his role as livestock.
Lane's pity hardened into a fierce, protective resolve. She would not let that happen to her. She would not become this.
"We're getting out of here," she said, the words a vow.
Elias just shook his head, a slow, pendulum swing of despair. "No exit. Only doors that lead deeper in. The house… it's a lung. It breathes you in. It doesn't exhale."
"The key," Lane said. "The iron key. I used it to get in. There must be a way to use it to get out."
For the first time, a spark of true awareness flashed in his sunken eyes. "The Godkey," he breathed, the word full of a terrified reverence. "You have it? You brought it back?"
"It was sent to me."
He let out a moan of pure anguish. "No. No, no, no. It's the final step. The invitation is one thing. The return of the key… that's the acceptance. The ceremony is beginning." He began to rock back and forth. "It's almost over. It's almost time."
"Time for what?" Lane demanded, grabbing his thin shoulder. He felt like a bundle of twigs under the rags. "Elias, talk to me! What ceremony?"
He looked at her, his eyes clearing for a moment, seeing her not as a hallucination or a trick, but as his niece. The pity in his gaze was unbearable. "The putting on," he whispered. "It's been preparing for decades. Gathering strength. Learning us. It needs a vessel that can walk in the sun. A permanent skin. It's been trying with me… but I'm too broken. Too used up. I'm practice." His eyes traced her face, her strong hands, her unbroken spirit. "You… you are fresh. You are whole. You are the final draft."
The hook in her ribs wasn't just a compulsion. It was a homing beacon. She had been called here to be consumed, to be worn.
The thought should have paralyzed her. Instead, it ignited a cold fury. It had reduced her uncle to this trembling wretch. It had tormented her family for generations. It saw her life, her body, as a suit to be put on.
"No," she said, the word flat and absolute. "It's not getting anything."
A sudden, violent shudder ran through the cellar. Dust rained from the ceiling. The junk piled around them shifted and clattered. From somewhere above, deep within the body of the house, came a sound like a great stone slab grinding against another.
Elias whimpered, covering his head with his arms. "It's angry. You're defiant. It doesn't like that. It's changing the plan."
"Good," Lane spat, getting to her feet. The candle flame danced wildly. She looked at the pathetic figure of her uncle. She couldn't leave him here. He was a victim, not a enemy.
"Come on," she said, offering him her hand. "We're not staying in its basement."
He stared at her hand as if it were a venomous snake. "I can't. The light… it's too much out there. The things it shows me…"
"It showed me you powering a machine," Lane said, her voice harsh. "It was a lie. This," she gestured around the dank cellar, "is the truth. And it's still a cage. Now, get up."
The command in her voice, so long absent from his world, seemed to jolt him. Slowly, painfully, he unfolded himself and took her hand. His grip was shockingly weak. She pulled him to his feet; he was light as a child.
She led him to the wooden cellar door, the one that had been disguised as an impenetrable vault. She pushed it open.
The hallway beyond was not the maroon-and-gold passage she had left. It was different. Again.
The walls were now covered in a deep, navy blue velvet, worn thin in places. The floor was a dark, polished wood that reflected their candlelight. Framed photographs lined the walls—faded pictures of stern-looking men and women in old-fashioned dress. Her ancestors. The air smelled of beeswax and, faintly, of rot.
It had built a new wing. A family gallery.
"It's showing you your history," Elias whispered, his voice trembling. "It wants you to know your place in the lineage. The food chain."
Lane ignored him, her eyes scanning the photographs. They were all strangers. Until one wasn't.
She stopped. The photograph was newer, in color. It showed a man and a woman standing on a sunny porch, smiling. The woman was her mother, decades younger, her face unlined and happy. The man had his arm around her, his smile easy and familiar. It was the same man from the photograph she'd found in the school desk. Her father. The one who had walked out when she was five and was never heard from again.
Her heart clenched. This was a deeper cut. A happier memory, weaponized.
"It found that in your mind," Elias murmured, watching her face. "It likes the happy ones. They make the despair so much richer."
Lane forced herself to look away. She had to keep moving. She had to find a way out.
They continued down the gallery. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, a tunnel of dead faces judging her. The air grew colder. At the end of the hall, a new door stood open, spilling a warm, golden light into the gloom.
The light was inviting. It felt like afternoon sun. It smelled of baking bread and fresh-cut grass.
From within the room, a man's voice called out, warm and deep and heartbreakingly familiar.
"Lane? Sweetheart? Is that you? I've been waiting so long."
Lane froze. Elias let out a small, terrified cry and tried to pull back, but she held his hand fast.
She knew that voice. It was the voice from the photograph. It was the voice from her earliest, happiest memories.
It was her father's voice.
"Don't," Elias begged, his eyes wide with horror. "Lane, don't look. It's not him. It's never him."
But the hook was in her heart now, pulling her toward the light, toward the voice she had ached to hear for twenty years.
"Come in, honey," the voice called, gentle and loving. "Don't be afraid. I've finally come home."
Tears welled in Lane's eyes, blurring the gallery of dead faces. She took a step toward the open door.
Elias pulled back harder, a desperate strength in his frail body. "It's the skin!" he hissed, his voice cracking. "It's practicing! Don't give it your love! That's the last thing it needs!"
But Lane wasn't listening. She was five years old again, and her daddy was calling her home. She took another step, pulling her terrified uncle with her toward the threshold.