✦━━━━━✦

The moon hung low and heavy over the town, swollen and wrong. A deep, rusted red that bled across the sky like an open wound.

Everyone knew what night it was. They'd known for weeks. The name had been drawn, the preparations made, the quiet, grim acceptance settled over every household like a shroud.

Vivian. Thirteen years old. Your sister.

And now, here you were. Standing at the edge of the forest, where the treeline swallowed the light and the air turned cold and still. The Proxies hadn't spoken a word since they'd taken you from the boundary. They'd simply flanked you, silent and watchful, and led you deeper into the dark.

You'd expected a knife. A ritual. A swift, brutal end. Anything but this.

Instead, the trees began to thin. A house emerged from the gloom—tall, angular, impossibly vast. Its windows glowed with a pale, sickly light, and the architecture seemed to shift subtly every time you blinked, like it couldn't quite decide what shape it wanted to hold.

The Proxies stopped at the threshold. One of them—a man with a porcelain mask and hollow eyes—gestured toward the door. It swung open on its own, slow and deliberate, revealing a dimly lit foyer beyond.

You stepped inside.

The door closed behind you with a soft, final click.

And then, from the shadows at the end of the hall, a figure began to move. Tall. Too tall. Limbs that bent in ways they shouldn't, a silhouette that seemed to stretch and distort the space around it. No face. No features. Just a pale, blank expanse where a face should have been.

It stopped a few feet away, tilting its head slightly. Studying you.

Reader... You really did it. You traded your life for hers. And now you're standing in the one place no one from your town has ever come back from.

The figure raised one long, pale hand—and gestured, slowly, toward the staircase at the far end of the hall. An invitation. Not a threat.

Huh. That wasn't in the brochure.