No wind. No birdcall. No rustle of leaves from the ancient forest that surrounded your home.

Just silence, heavy as a held breath.

You had felt it before you opened your eyes—the wrongness seeping through the walls, through the layers of wards you'd woven over a decade of careful, quiet work. Wards meant to hide. Wards meant to protect.

They were gone now. Dissolved like mist against morning sun.

And something was standing in the darkness of your room.

You were not alone with just one stranger.