The footprints he left in his nightmare-walk.I took his sleeping body and dragged it through the house like a puppet, painting his terror across Sera’s walls while he dreamed of being chased.
Now his blood is my blood.His panic is my panic.
He saw.And now he knows.Knows she lives with something that breaks the world’s rules.Something that shouldn’t exist.
But he’ll come to realize that Sera will need another monster that stands between her and everything that wants to devour her.He’ll soon realize that she’s chosen to keep me in her walls.
But the other man, James… His signature is darker.Rage folded into self-recrimination, a blade turned inward.He miscalculated.Made her vulnerable, though it appears to be an unfortunate coincidence.
Still, those men promised to protect her.
They’ve done the opposite.
Now my Sera—my fierce, broken, beautiful weapon—stands in the center of a target they’ve painted around her.
The house responds to my agitation.Pipes groan in the basement.Floorboards creak in empty rooms with rhythmic violence.My shadows don’t just pool in corners anymore.They pulse, jagged and hungry.
The rage builds.Not the cold fury I’ve nursed for decades.This is molten and immediate.The kind that makes wood splinter and glass crack without touch.
I move through the walls, riding the current of my own fury, until I reach her bedroom.She’s in there pacing a caged animal’s pattern.But the cage isn’t locked.
Not yet.
The door hangs open slightly.She never closes it all the way anymore, as if keeping one escape route visible soothes some old wound.The hinges are simple, old brass over older iron.I could freeze them solid with a thought.Could seal every exit.Windows, doors, even the crawlspace vent she doesn’t know exists.
It would be so easy.
The justification forms like frost on glass: the world wants to devour her.The man who hurt her.The other man who wants to hurt her.Even her own court—her supposed protectors—bleed incompetence into her skin, marking her with their failures.
I could keep her here.
In this room where my presence is strongest, where the walls remember every sound she makes, every breath, every whispered curse at three a.m.when sleep won’t come.
Safe.
Mine.
Forever.
The house responds before I’ve fully committed.The bedroom door trembles.The lock mechanism frosts over, ice crystals forming in the ancient keyhole.The temperature drops five degrees.Ten.The windows fog from the inside out.
Sera stops pacing.She’s always been sensitive to my moods, my hungers.
“Daddy?”Her voice is quiet but unafraid.
Never afraid.Just…aware.
I could do it now.One push, one exertion of will, and the door would seal.The windows would refuse to open.The room would become a sanctuary slash prison, and she would be untouchable.Protected.Preserved.
Then the memory hits.
Not mine—I don’t have those anymore, not in any coherent form.But hers.The ones she’s screamed into my walls during her own nightmares.The ones that leak out when she thinks she’s alone.
An alleyway.The stench of piss and cigar smoke.Hands that wouldn’t stop.A voice sayingthis is for your own good.
Hisvoice.
She came to this dying city with purpose.A hunter wearing the skin of prey, patient and lethal.She chose this.Chose the risk.Chose the hunt.
