Max barely slept. Every night, without fail, he jolted awake at *3:13 a.m.* The time never changed. The air around him felt frozen, his skin prickled with invisible frost, and a *cold wind* whispered into his ears—yet the windows were sealed shut, the curtains unmoved.
At first, he thought it was coincidence. But now… it felt like ritual. Something *was waiting*.
***
Starr's mirror cracked—*from the inside*. The cracks deepened each night, spreading like veins. And each time she stared too long, her reflection... blurred.
Instead of herself, she saw a shadow behind her. *Someone watching.* A face with hollow eyes and a grin that stretched *too wide*. Frozen. Waiting.
But when she turned—nothing. The room was always empty. Always silent. But the mirror would fog up… with breath.
***
Vivian started hearing laughter. Not just any laughter—*children's* laughter. High-pitched. Playful. Echoing through the halls when she was alone.
She tried to record it once, heart pounding as the giggles circled her in the dark. But when she played the voice note back… there was no laughter.
Only a *low, guttural growl*. As if something *deep below* had answered instead.
***
Tari stopped speaking. Not because he chose to—but because he *couldn't*.
Each time he opened his mouth, a voice spilled out. *Not his own.*
The voice was wrong. Ancient. Cold. It spoke in fragments—languages none of them recognized, yet all of them *understood* in their bones. Words that felt like they'd been buried for centuries.
Max once asked him, "Who's speaking through you?"
Tari wrote on a page with shaking hands:
*"The one who woke up first."*
***
And then… came *Zee*.
The only one who could read the symbols without bleeding.
The only one who could stare into the shadows and not blink.
The one who said:
*"We're already inside the hunt."*
She hadn't spoken much since yesterday. But she had been watching—closely. Quietly. Tracing the signs the others missed.
When she finally spoke, her voice was low, like something ancient had been stirred awake within her. She pulled out one of the journals—*aged, brittle, and stained*. Inside were *drawings*—crude but unmistakable. Symbols that pulsed with something… wrong.
"I've seen these before," she said. "*Years ago*, in my grandmother's attic."
The room fell still.
She continued, "They were carved into pages… hidden in books sealed with *teeth*. Real teeth."
*"We were chosen,"* Zee whispered, her eyes distant. *"Not to die. But to witness. To survive. And to carry it forward."*
Each death wasn't random—it was ritual.
With every soul taken, the truth began to unravel… revealing something deeper. Older. *Hungrier.*
It wasn't just a demon.
It was *a curse*.
A *game* older than memory.
A hunt buried for centuries beneath bloodlines, ink, and silence—
—and now, it had awakened.
And it remembered their names.
***
They gathered at *Maxwell's house* — the only place that didn't echo with phantom footsteps or hum with voices through the walls. At least, not yet.
The air was heavy, still. Even the clocks seemed to tick slower.
Max sat at the edge of the couch, head throbbing like a second heartbeat in his skull. Starr paced in tight, restless loops, her eyes flitting toward every shadow. Vivian chewed at her fingernail, not out of nerves — but to remind herself that she was *still flesh, still here*.
Then Zee opened the book again — not the journal, but something older. *Ancient*. The *manuscript*. Bound in cracked leather that reeked of old blood and iron. Pages yellowed, stiff, and marked with symbols that *shifted* when you stared too long.
*"It's called The Hunt Rite,"* Zee said quietly, voice almost swallowed by the silence.
*"A cleansing ritual… at least it was. But something went wrong. Or maybe it was always wrong. It began as a game — between spirits and men. But over the years, it's warped. Now…"* she hesitated.
*"…now it's not a game."*
*"It's a purge."*
Max flinched. Something in that word… *purge*… tasted like ash in his mouth.
Zee turned the page slowly. The parchment crackled like dried skin.
The symbol — *the one that had begun appearing on their bodies* — stared back at them, etched in something that looked like dried blood. Or worse.
*"It marks the 'witnesses',"* Zee said, voice flat. *"We carry the curse forward… but not all of us are meant to survive."*
Tari finally spoke — *his own voice* this time, not the ancient one that had haunted his throat for weeks.
*"Then what's the point?"* His voice cracked. *"If we're only going to die?"*
Zee didn't blink. *"The game doesn't care about death."*
She leaned closer. Her shadow stretched unnaturally across the room.
*"It cares about fear. It feeds on it. Grows. And when it's starving… it kills."*
A heavy silence fell.
Then Tari stood, fists clenched. *"We should go back. To the excavation site. End it where it started. If it wants to be seen, it'll show itself there."*
Max nodded, jaw tight. *"At least then, we won't just be waiting to be picked off. This… this crawling dread — it's worse than death."*
"Vivian," Starr called out, voice sharp.
*"Go get the car ready."*
"Right away," Vivian replied, already halfway out the door, the screen slamming shut behind her.
Inside, Starr and Zee scrambled, stuffing the old journals, the crumbling pages, and the cursed symbols into bags. Every relic, every note they thought might matter. Starr's parents had left a talisman earlier that morning—an odd little thing made of bone and copper wire. Maybe that's why the house had felt calm… until now.
Then—
a sound.
*Not from inside.*
From the street.
Screams.
High-pitched. Warped. And wrong.
They all froze.
The air dropped ten degrees in a breath.
The group ran to the window—
Max's voice broke first.
*"My car…"*
It was on fire.
But the flames weren't red.
They were *blue*—pale, flickering unnaturally like gaslight in a windless room. The fire didn't consume. It *possessed.*
And through the shimmer of the flames, they saw—
Vivian.
Sitting in the driver's seat.
Motionless.
Staring straight ahead.
Her mouth was open.
But she wasn't screaming.
She was *smiling*.
Even as the fire licks her skin—
Even as her flesh begins to curl and blacken—
She *smiles*. Wide. Empty. *Wrong*.
Burning.
No screams. No struggle.
Just that grin.
Like she's *welcoming* it.
Zee's voice is barely audible behind them, as if torn from a memory:
*"She was alone…"*