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He yanked me forward, his other hand bruising my wrist, and I stumbled, legs refusing to cooperate.

Down the hall, past the stairs, past the old water stains on the concrete, past the place where I’d once heard a girl screaming. Or maybe it was just the wind. Maybe it was me, screaming in the future, echoing backward into my own ears. Maybe the house itself screamed.

The locked door loomed at the end. Dead black, metal scars running the length of it, six locks—paranoid, obsessive, each one an extra layer of ritual. Malakar stopped, keys jangling, his shoulders heaving with breath, barely in control, trembling all over.

He fumbled the keys, dropped them, cursed, picked them up again. His knuckles were white; his eyes kept skidding back to mine as if he half-expected me to vanish into mist.

The locks clicked open. With every turn, my heart battered harder against my ribs, trying to find a way out. The last lock, slowest of all. He hesitated, just for a second, his eyes going glassy. Then he wrenched the door open and shoved me through.

The air inside hit immediately. Lathered with old blood and a rot so deep it felt alive. I gagged, almost fell. My shoulder smacked into metal shelving, and I caught myself, palms scraping against something cold and sticky.

He followed me in, shut the door with a casual flick. The single bulb overhead flickered to life. For a second, everything was just shadows, shifting and melting. Then the light steadied, and the room snapped into awful focus.

Bones were everywhere. A geometry of horror.

Skulls lined the upper shelves, some stacked in neat rows, others knocked sideways, grinning at nothing. Some had hair still clinging in clumps, dark or pale, drenched in grease, mummified to yellowed scalps. Teeth missing, jaws unhinged, eye sockets wide, impossibly black. Some skulls were too small, jawbones sharp and delicate, barely adult.

Everything in me squeezed in on itself, a pressure so tight I thought my ribs would snap.

Femurs and ribs arranged below, sorted by size. Vertebrae laid out in strings, like someone tried to build a necklace out of spines. Some bones were carved, names etched into the surface, dates, crude faces scratched in rough lines.

I saw a rib with “Anna” dug deep and dark, black marker faded to gray.

My mouth went dry. My throat closed. I pressed my knuckles against my teeth, bit down hard, tried not to retch.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” Malakar whispered, standing behind me. His shadow swallowed half the room. “Every one of them wanted to leave. The ones who learned to love the cage, they got to stay a little longer. The ones who tried to fly…well. The dark eats them.”

He moved past me, boots scraping old stains. At the back of the room, a workbench crowded with glass jars. Some were old canning jars, some pickle jars, all fogged with condensation, fingerprints, grime.

Each one held a heart. Some were dark and wrinkled, shrunken by time, veins pressed against glass like the webbing on bat wings. The fluid around them was thick yellow or pinkish-white, clouded with bits.

Some jars had labels—names, dates, lines of jagged writing blurred by moisture. Others had nothing at all, just a heart bobbing quietly, slowly turning with each shudder of the floor.

I backed up until the shelf pressed into my spine.

“Every one of them loved me,” he whispered. “Or tried to. Or said they did. But the dark knows when you’re lying.” He brushed his hand over a skull, lingering gentle as a lover. “You wouldn’t lie, would you, bluebird?”

I shook my head. Couldn’t speak. Not here. Not with all these eyes on me, empty orbits that saw too much.

He picked up a femur—small, narrow, worn smooth at the ends. He cradled it, stroking the length of the bone. “This one was special. She fought, right to the end. Like you.” He pressed the bone to my arm, dragging it down from my shoulder to elbow, then back up. “You feel that? That’s love. That’s what’s left when you’re gone.”

I jerked away, but he only grinned. “The cage is love, Starla. You want to live, you learn to love the cage. You want to leave—” He gestured to the shelves, the jars. “Then you live forever. Like this.”

Something inside me snapped, a brittle sound in my head. My vision went hazy. The room felt too small, the air so dense I couldn’t suck it in.

I pressed my back harder into the shelf, felt something cold and round jab into my spine. A skull, grinning into the nape of my neck.

Malakar crouched, his face inches from mine. “I need you to think, Starla. Think about what you are. About what you want to be. Because if you’re not mine, you’re nothing. The dark eats nothing.”His eyes flickered. “I want you to be good. I want you to stay. I don’t want to make you into a trophy.”

He stood, voice trailing off, already elsewhere. He walked to the door, the femur still in his hand, and looked back only once—eyes wild, haunted, empty. “I’m not a bad man, Starla. I was once a boy with dreams and hopes of love. I was. But the dark took that away. I’m trying to save you from myself by showing you this.”

The door slammed. Locks scraped, one by one, the sound echoing inside my skull.

I was alone.

All the air left the room. My knees buckled, and I slid down the wall until I sat on the concrete, legs splayed, arms limp.

My breath hitched. Sobs rose up but stuck in my chest, refusing to come out, as if my lungs were frozen. I pressed the heel of my hand to my mouth, stifling the sound, shaking so hard my teeth chattered.