Page 178 of Wolf Dad Energy

A home. A family. A future. Outside, the town prepares for Halloween. Lights glow.

Music plays. Children laugh. The world keeps turning. And I don't feel like I'm waiting for something to go wrong. I feel like I finally arrived somewhere. I make a promise.

Not to fight. Not to destroy. Not to survive. To stay. Because the monster is gone. The Hollow is quiet. And now…

I get to be here.

CARYS

OCTOBER 28 ~ 3 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

Waking up without fear feels strangely unfamiliar. I wake up expecting something.

Not consciously. Not because I believe the entity survived. Because my body spent 15 years learning how to live with unanswered questions. And then, for the last several days, it learned something new.

Danger. Every creak. Every flicker of light. Every unexplained sound. A warning.

Now there is nothing. Just sunlight. Actual sunlight. It spills across my bedroom floor through the cracked window where the storm damaged the frame, turning the dust floating in the air into tiny golden specks.

I simply lie there. Listening. The house is quiet. No whispers. No strange pressure against the walls. No feeling that something is waiting just beyond the edge of my awareness. Just a house. My house. A house that needs repairs. A house that survived.

I sit up slowly. Then I realize something. I can’t say what day it is. Not in the vague way everyone loses track of time. In the way someone who has lived in crisis forgets that calendars exist.

I reach for my phone. The screen lights up. October 28. Three days until Halloween. Three days.

The town is still counting down to its biggest celebration of the year. And somehow…

I am too. Not because of the ghosts. Not because of the legends. Because this Halloween will be the first one where I know exactly what I have. A family.

The thought still feels impossible. Not wrong. Impossible. 15 years ago, I thought I lost my child. Two days ago, I watched my child stand beside me and help destroy the thing that tried to keep him trapped. Life has a strange sense of humor.

I get dressed and walk downstairs. The smell of coffee reaches me before I reach the kitchen. I stop. Because I didn't make it. Rhett stands at the counter. A mug in one hand. A pan on the stove. Sayer sits at the table, scrolling through his phone. The scene is so normal it almost hurts.

"Morning."

Rhett looks over.