The sound coming from beneath the bed wasn't just a noise; it was a vibration that Marcus felt in his very marrow. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. The rhythmic dragging of something sharp against the hardwood floor—a sound like a butcher's knife being honed on a whetstone.
Marcus sat paralyzed on the edge of his mattress, his breath coming in short, ragged hitches. The phone in his hand was slick with sweat, the cryptic text message still glowing on the screen like a neon warning sign. Do not look under the bed.
Common sense told him to run. Logic told him to scream for Michael and Elena. But a deeper, darker instinct—one that had been growing like a tumor inside his chest since the classroom massacre—whispered that running was useless. If he ran, the thing beneath him would simply snatch his ankles and drag him into the void.
Slowly, agonizingly, Marcus stood up. Every muscle in his legs felt like it was made of dry glass, ready to shatter. He didn't look down. He didn't even dare to breathe heavily. He moved toward the door, his eyes fixed on the hallway light leaking through the crack of the dresser he had pushed against the entrance.
But as he moved, the sting returned.
The three claw marks on his chest began to pulse with a sickly, violet heat. It felt as though someone had poured molten lead into his veins. A thick, black liquid—not quite blood, but darker and more viscous—began to seep through his shirt, staining the grey fabric.
"Bathroom," he hissed to himself, the word sounding like a prayer. "I need to... I need to clean it. I need to see."
He shoved the dresser aside with a strength he didn't know he possessed. The heavy wood groaned against the floorboards, but Marcus didn't care about the noise anymore. He burst into the hallway and scrambled into the small, cramped bathroom, slamming the door and locking it with a frantic click.
He leaned over the porcelain sink, gasping for air. The bathroom was cold, the air smelling of lavender soap and the faint, metallic tang of his own blood. He fumbled for the light switch, flicking it on. The fluorescent bulb buzzed and flickered—just like the lights in Halloway's classroom—before settling into a harsh, clinical glare.
Marcus gripped the edges of the sink, his knuckles turning a ghostly white. He stared down at the drain, watching a single drop of the black ichor fall from his shirt and vanish into the pipes.
It's a hallucination, he lied to himself again. You're having a prolonged psychotic break. You'll wake up in a hospital soon, and this will all be over.
He reached for the buttons of his shirt. His fingers were clumsy, numb with shock. He managed to undo the fabric and pulled it back, baring his chest to the air.
He gasped.
The three gashes were deeper than they had appeared in the bedroom. They weren't just wounds; they were tears in the fabric of his body. Through the gaps in the skin, Marcus could see more than just muscle and bone.
He saw a swirling, nebulous darkness that seemed to have no bottom. It was as if his chest were a window into a starless night.
"What am I?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "What did he do to me?"
He reached for the faucet, turning the cold water on full blast. He needed to wash away the blackness. He needed to feel the sting of real, physical water to remind himself that he was still human. He cupped his hands, letting the water fill them, and splashed it onto his chest.
The water didn't help. As soon as it touched the wounds, it didn't run off; it was absorbed. The blackness inside him drank the water, and in response, the violet heat flared into a burning agony.
Marcus let out a strangled cry and looked up, staring into the mirror above the sink.
At first, everything seemed normal. He saw his own face—pale, sunken eyes, a smear of dirt on his forehead. But as he stared, his blood went cold.
Marcus moved his right hand to wipe his eyes.
In the mirror, the reflection of Marcus Miller didn't move.
Marcus froze, his hand still halfway to his face. He watched his reflection. For a full half-second, the "Mirror-Marcus" remained perfectly still, staring back at him with a blank, hollow expression.
Then, with a terrifying, mechanical slowness, the reflection caught up. It raised its hand and wiped its eyes, mimicking Marcus's movements with a slight, unnatural delay.
Marcus's heart felt like it was going to burst through his ribs. "No... no, no, no."
He moved again. He leaned back.
The reflection stayed forward.
Marcus stumbled back against the bathroom door, his breath coming in terrified gulps. In the mirror, the reflection stood its ground. It didn't follow him. It stayed leaned over the sink, its hands still gripping the edges of the porcelain.
Then, the reflection did something Marcus hadn't done.
It smiled.
It wasn't a human smile. It was a jagged, predatory widening of the mouth that reached almost to the ears. The teeth were no longer the dull, flat teeth of a sixteen-year-old boy; they were translucent, needle-thin shards of bone.
The reflection leaned further forward, its face pressing against the surface of the glass from the inside. The mirror didn't fog from its breath. Marcus watched as the reflection's eyes began to change. The pupils didn't dilate; they expanded, swallowing the iris and the whites until the reflection's eyes were nothing but pits of endless, swirling night.
"They've found us, little prince," the reflection whispered.
The voice didn't come from the mirror. It came from the air itself. It was Marcus's voice, but layered with a thousand other screams—a choir of the damned singing in unison.
"Stay away from me!" Marcus screamed, grabbing a bottle of heavy cologne and hurling it at the glass.
The bottle shattered against the mirror, but the glass didn't break. The liquid splashed harmlessly against a surface that felt as hard as diamond. The reflection didn't even flinch. It reached up and touched the glass with a long, blackened finger.
"The King is coming home," the reflection murmured, its voice dripping with a sickening, oily satisfaction. "And he's brought the hounds."
Suddenly, the temperature in the bathroom plummeted. Marcus could see his breath frosting in the air. The smell of the open grave returned, stronger than ever, filling his nostrils until he wanted to gag.
CRACK.
Marcus spun around toward the small, frosted window above the toilet.
The glass didn't just break; it imploded.
The shards didn't fall to the floor; they hung in the air for a heartbeat, suspended by an unseen force, before flying toward Marcus like a swarm of glass hornets. He ducked, shielding his face with his arms, feeling the sharp stings as the fragments sliced through his skin.
Then, out of the darkness of the night outside, something entered.
It wasn't a creature, at least not a physical one. It was a hand—a massive, clawed hand made of pure, solidified shadow. It was the color of a void where light goes to die, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic violet glow.
The hand was too large to fit through the window, yet it squeezed through as if the wooden frame were made of liquid. It moved with a terrifying, predatory grace, darting across the small room like a striking cobra.
Before Marcus could even draw breath to scream, the shadow-hand reached him.
It didn't grab his arm. It didn't strike his chest.
It lunged for his head.
Marcus felt the fingers—cold as dry ice and hard as iron—wrap around his hair. The force was immense, jerking his head back with a sickening snap of his neck. He was lifted off his feet, his toes dangling inches above the tile floor.
"Let go!" he shrieked, clawing at the shadow, but his fingers passed through the wrist of the hand as if it were made of cold smoke. There was nothing to grip, nothing to fight.
The hand began to pull.
It dragged Marcus toward the shattered window. The jagged, razor-sharp shards of glass still clinging to the frame glistened in the moonlight like shark's teeth.
The shadow-hand was moving with brutal intent, pulling Marcus's face directly toward the sharpest point of the broken pane.
"FEED THE VOID," a voice roared from outside—a voice so loud it shattered the remaining lightbulb in the bathroom, plunging the room into absolute darkness.
Marcus kicked and thrashed, his hands searching for anything to hold onto.
He gripped the edge of the sink, but the shadow-hand jerked him harder, ripping his fingers away and cracking the porcelain.
He was inches from the glass. He could feel the cold wind of the night on his skin. He could see the jagged edge of the window frame aimed directly at his right eye.
Is this it? he thought, a strange, calm clarity washing over him. I'm going to die in a bathroom, killed by a ghost.
"NOT TODAY MARCUS." The voice coiled through his thoughts, vast and ancient. "I WILL GRANTS YOU A FRACTION OF MY POWER... JUST THIS ONCE," the Entity inside him answered.
For the first time, Marcus felt a surge of heat that didn't hurt. It was a white-hot explosion of power that started in the claw marks on his chest and raced down his arms. His skin began to smoke, and a faint, black aura began to radiate from his fingertips.
But before he could act, a new sound cut through the chaos.
Whist—THWACK.
A thin, silver blade—shining with a light that felt like pure starlight—pierced through the bathroom door, burying itself deep into the shadow-hand's wrist.
The hand let out a silent, vibrating shriek. The grip on Marcus's hair loosened for a fraction of a second.
"Get down, kid!"
The bathroom door was kicked off its hinges. The dresser Marcus had used to block his bedroom door was sliced in half as if it were made of paper.
Standing in the doorway was the man in the leather coat. His demon-weeping mask was back on, the silver eye-slits glowing with a fierce, protective light. He held a second blade in his hand—a shorter, curved dagger that hummed with a low-frequency power.
The shadow-hand hissed, recoiling back toward the window, but the Mentor was faster.
He lunged across the bathroom, his boots clicking on the tiles, and brought the shorter dagger down in a brutal, vertical arc.
The shadow-hand was severed. It fell to the floor, dissolving into a pool of black, stinking sludge that began to eat through the linoleum.
Marcus collapsed onto the floor, gasping for air, his hands clutching his throat. He looked up at the Mentor, his vision swimming.
"You..." Marcus wheezed. "You followed me."
The Mentor didn't answer. He stepped over Marcus and stood before the shattered window, his blades held in a defensive stance. Outside, in the darkness of the suburban backyard, dozens of pairs of glowing, violet eyes began to open in the trees.
"I didn't follow you, Marcus," the Mentor said, his voice muffled by the mask. "I never left. And it's a good thing, too. The Hounds of Citrus don't like to go home empty-handed."
He turned slightly, looking down at Marcus. Even through the mask, Marcus could feel the weight of his gaze.
"The mirror spoke to you, didn't it?"
Marcus nodded slowly, his heart still racing.
"That wasn't your reflection," the Mentor said, turning back to the window as the first of the Hounds began to leap toward the house.
"That was a glimpse of what's coming. Now, stand up. If you want to keep your soul, you're going to have to learn how to bleed."
From outside, a howl erupted—a sound that was half-wolf, half-machine—and the first of the violet-eyed creatures crashed through the window.