Marcus barely recognized the woman who lay in the bed before him. Sophie's face was pale, her lips cracked, her eyes rimmed with shadows. Yet beneath her exhaustion, there was a tension that never left her body, as if Ethan's invisible hands were wound around her bones, pulling her taut.
He had bound her wounds from the struggle the night before, but every time he looked at the scratches on his arm, his stomach twisted. They were shallow. They would heal. But the memory of her striking him was carved deeper than the flesh.
And Ethan knew it.
All morning, the whispers gnawed at Marcus's ears, slithering from the corners of the house. She will do it again. She liked it. She liked watching you bleed.
Marcus pressed his palms against his temples until his skull ached. "Shut up. Shut the hell up."
But the whispers only grew louder.
When Sophie stirred awake, her first words cut through him. "Did I hurt you?"
Marcus forced a smile, though his jaw throbbed. "No. Not really."
She looked at his bandaged arm, her expression crumpling. "I can't tell if it was me. Or him. What if I wanted to do it?"
Marcus sat on the edge of the bed, taking her trembling hand in his. "You didn't. You never would."
But even as he said it, he felt Ethan's grin stretching inside his skull.
That night, Sophie refused to sleep beside him. She curled up by the fireplace instead, clutching the torn remnants of the notebook. No matter how many times Marcus tried to take it from her, she clung tighter, her eyes wild.
"If I don't hold it," she said hoarsely, "he'll crawl into something else. The mirror. The walls. Me. At least if I hold it, I know where he is."
Marcus wanted to argue, but he saw the terror in her eyes. She wasn't wrong. The notebook seemed to throb in her hands, its pages bleeding ink that dried into strange patterns across her palms.
By the second night, Marcus woke to find Sophie standing over him with the blade in her hand.
His body froze.
She stared down at him, her face blank, her eyes half-lidded. "He told me to end it," she murmured. "To cut your throat and watch the promise shatter."
Marcus slowly sat up, his pulse hammering. "But you didn't."
Her grip on the blade tightened. "Not yet."
His chest clenched. "Sophie, listen to me. That's not you. That's him twisting your hands."
But her eyes flickered with something he had never seen before: doubt. Not in Ethan. In herself.
"What if I want to?" she whispered.
The words sliced through him more deeply than any blade.
He reached for her, but she stepped back, the knife still trembling in her grasp. "I don't know if I can trust myself anymore. And if I can't trust me… how can you?"
Marcus's throat closed. He had no answer.
And Ethan's laughter filled the silence, a roar that shook the house to its foundations.
Marcus didn't move as Sophie stood there with the blade hovering between them. His breath came slow, measured, though every instinct screamed to rip the knife from her trembling hand. One wrong move, one slip, and the house would run red.
Her voice cracked. "He says you're the chain around my neck. That you'll never let me go. That my freedom comes only when your blood spills."
Marcus swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving hers. "And do you believe him?"
Sophie's lips trembled, her tears shining in the firelight. "I don't know. I don't know what's me anymore. But when I hold this—" she glanced at the blade, her knuckles white—"it feels… quiet. Like maybe I could silence him if I just…"
She trailed off, pressing the knife closer to her own chest.
"No!" Marcus lunged forward, gripping her wrist. The blade scraped against her skin, drawing a thin line of red. She gasped, eyes wide, frozen between terror and relief.
Ethan's laughter oozed from the corners of the room. "Yes. That's it. Spill it. One cut and I'll be everything she needs. One cut and she'll be free."
Marcus wrenched the blade from her grasp, tossing it across the room. It clattered against the floorboards, sparking shadows that slithered like snakes.
Sophie collapsed against him, sobbing. "I can't do this, Marcus. I can't fight him anymore. He's in everything. He's in me. Maybe I should let him win."
Marcus clutched her tighter, his own tears burning. "No. Don't you dare give up. That's what he wants. That's the only way he wins."
But Sophie pulled back, her face twisted with anguish. "And what if I want it? What if part of me wants to stop fighting?"
Marcus stared at her, horror rooting him in place. He saw the fracture Ethan had carved into her—no longer just fear, but temptation. Surrender dressed as mercy.
"Sophie…" he whispered. "That's not you speaking."
Her hands trembled as she covered her face. "Then who am I?"
The notebook pulsed where it lay on the floor, black ink seeping through the cracks between the boards. Marcus thought of burning the house to the ground, of watching the cursed pages shrivel into ash—but deep down he knew Ethan would survive the fire. He was already inside them, woven into their marrow.
That night, Marcus stayed awake, blade in hand, watching Sophie sleep. Every twitch of her body made his chest clench. Every shadow on the wall looked like Ethan reaching through her.
At some point, Sophie stirred, her eyes opening halfway. She didn't look at him. She looked past him, into the dark.
"You can't save me," she murmured.
Marcus leaned forward, whispering fiercely. "I will. I don't care what it takes."
Her eyes shifted to him then, but they weren't hers. Ethan's smirk cut across her face. "Good. Because when you fail, she'll know. She'll hate you for it. And when she hates you enough, she'll beg me to stay."
Marcus gripped the blade tighter, rage and despair battling in his veins. "I'll never let you have her."
Ethan's laughter rumbled through Sophie's chest as she drifted back into sleep.
And Marcus, sitting in the silence, realized the truth that chilled him more than the shadows ever could: Ethan didn't need to kill Sophie. He just needed to break the love between them.
And he was winning.