I sat slumped against the basement wall, my back aching from another sleepless night. The air was heavy down here, and too quiet except for the soft hum of the fluorescent lights. Autumn lay on the workbench beneath a sheet that had started to stiffen, her outline too small, too still. I’d stopped trying to talk to her. I’d stopped pretending she’d wake up. I just stared at her.

  Alex was pacing again. Same as last night… same as all day. Back and forth across the cement floor, her boots scuffing, her eyes fixed on the shape under the sheet. She wouldn’t say what was eating at her, but I could feel it. Something was worrying her. She’d flinch every time I looked at her, like she was holding her breath for something… or maybe she just felt like I did… that she had failed.

  When I asked if she wanted to go upstairs, she didn’t answer. Just kept staring, and never left. Her hands trembled once when she got close to the sheet I had covered my daughter’s body with. She couldn’t look at her... she was… going through something.

  The sun was going down again. Light spilled through the tiny basement window that barely peeked above the ground. It was filled with an orange glow of the setting sun, barely hinting at the time of day.

  I wanted to tell her to stop pacing, that she was making it worse, but I couldn’t bring myself to raise my voice. I didn’t have the strength for that anymore. I just wanted silence.

  Almost everyone had left. Once it was over, and the curse had broken itself, they collected themselves, and everyone went to grieve. The Wicklows took Patrick. They had to perform certain rites that were specific to their family. My cousins all went with them.

  My immediate family had all left after a few hours. They didn’t want to leave, but no one could deny the truth. It was over. They all needed rest after the last month of living like ghosts, constantly treading the wire's edge as the rituals ran non-stop. I couldn’t blame them… I was too lost in my own head to care, anyway.

  Eleanor had gone upstairs after a while, too hurt to stay near the body. Allen and Eloise came… but they didn’t stay long in the basement. Allen couldn’t bear to see his little sister like that; he couldn’t bear to think he hadn’t been there. I knew he had so many things raging inside of him: anger, regret, his own curse, too many things to try and understand. They left after a few hours, spending most of the time on the main floor with Eleanor. Allen had stopped talking altogether before they left, but Eloise was taking care of him. I was thankful for her.

  I just sat there, feeling the slow drag of another day die out, and watched Alex watch my daughter’s body. Martin was there too, like a shadow in the corner of the room. However, I got the feeling he was there more to watch Alex.

  Whatever was in her head, I could tell it wasn’t good. But the way she looked at Autumn… it wasn’t grief. It was fear. A kind I didn’t understand, but Martin had a look on his face like he was catching on to something.

  The last of the light bled out of the basement window, and I was left sitting in the half-dark, half-dreaming. The air had gone still again, and I fell back into the silence of the basement. I didn’t notice Alex at first until I heard the scrape of metal, the shuffle of her boots, the sudden clatter of chains.

  When I looked up, she was moving fast… too fast. Her green eyes were wild, her breath coming sharp and uneven. It didn’t suit her normal mentality. She was worried… panicking.

  “Alex… what are you doing?” I asked, my voice cracking on the last word.

  She didn’t answer. She rushed to the table, her hands trembling as she gripped the edge. “We have to put her back,” she muttered under her breath. “We have to lock her up!”

  “What are you talking about?” I got to my feet, heart pounding, and before I could reach her, she’d already scooped Autumn’s body into her arms like she weighed nothing.

  “Alex!” I shouted. “Don’t touch her!”

  She flinched but didn’t stop. She carried Autumn across the basement, sheet and all, heading for the silver cell in the corner; the one meant for keeping monsters prisoner… Autumn’s home for the last few weeks.

  Martin was there in a flash, stepping between her and the door. “Alex, stop. Put her down. She’s gone. Let her rest.”

  But Alex shoved past him like he wasn’t even there, tossing him to the side with so much force that he caved in a metal cabinet that stored our tactical gear. The metal twisted and sheared as his mass impacted the cabinet, but Alex kept moving.

  The cell door creaked open, and she laid Autumn down inside, still wrapped in the sheet. The sound of the lock snapping shut was sharp and final after she stepped back outside the cell.

  I could barely breathe. “Alex,” I said quietly as I slowly stepped toward her, “give me the key.”

  She backed away from the cell, hand gripping the key ring tight. Her other hand was shaking, her whole body trembling as if she were fighting something inside. It wasn't physically affecting her; it was something in her head. I could tell by the way her human green eyes were shaking with fear… not of something happening externally, but of something that… she felt… or did, maybe.

  “Alex,” Martin said as he climbed out of the cratered metal cabinet. “The key.”

  “Stay back,” she snapped, her voice breaking. “Don’t… don’t come any closer.”

  Two days ago… I wouldn’t have recognized the look in her eyes. It wasn’t defiance. It was terror. Real, gut-deep terror.

  “Why?” Martin asked. “Why lock her up? What do you think’s going to happen?”

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  Alex didn’t answer. Her eyes flicked to the cell, then to me. She looked like she wanted to say something… something terrible, but couldn’t force it out. Her chest rose and fell quickly, her lips parting as though the words hurt to keep in.

  Then Martin’s face went pale. He looked at the covered body, then at Alex. Something clicked in his mind that I didn’t see. His voice dropped to a whisper.

  “…How?”

  That one word hung in the air like a death sentence.

  Alex didn’t speak. She just lowered her head, breathing hard, and clutched the key tighter. The only sound left was the low hum of the lights again… and something else, faint, from inside the cell. Something that made my blood run cold.

  But then…

  The floor trembled. Just a whisper at first. A shudder that ran up through the soles of my boots and into my bones. I thought it was my imagination until the tools on the workbench began to rattle. Then the trembling deepened into a violent, rolling quake. The walls groaned, dust rained down from the ceiling, and all the weapons hanging on the racks shook like they were alive, some falling and bouncing across the concrete. The lights above us swung wildly, throwing the room into a strobe of movement and shadows.

  Earthquake!? I thought, reaching for the support post beside me, but before the word even finished leaving my mouth, I saw the look on Martin and Alex’s faces… and I knew it wasn’t just an earthquake.

  Her pupils dilated wide, her nostrils flaring. “This isn’t natural,” she hissed, clutching her head as though something inside was clawing at her skull. “It’s wrong… It’s not right…”

  Martin stumbled, bracing himself against the concrete wall. “I feel it!”

  The shaking grew into a roar, a deep, thunderous growl from beneath the earth itself. The entire basement bucked like it was trying to throw us off. Shelves toppled, glass shattered, and the furnace pipe snapped loose, scraping against the wall.

  And then, beneath the chaos, came a sound that cut through everything… sharp, piercing, inhuman. A shrieking inhale of breath ripped out from the silver cell, ragged, hungry for air. It wasn’t air being drawn into lungs… it was something tearing its way back into existence.

  Before I could even react, the world erupted. The center of the cell exploded outward with a deafening crack; concrete bursting apart like brittle bone, the silver bars twisting into jagged spirals that were stretched or sheared completely. The air heaved as force slammed into us, throwing me backward into the chaos of shaking tools and weapons.

  My ears rang with a high-pitched whine as dust and fragments filled the air. There was also another sound, distinct and absolute, that permeated the air for just a split second. It was a rising hiss that grew so loud and sharp that I could feel it inside my mind. Like a white-hot knife was slowly pushing its way into my brain, the longer I heard the unique sound. Thankfully, it disappeared as quickly as the explosion of force settled.

  Then… silence.

  The tremors faded, leaving only the sound of falling debris and our own ragged breathing. The air smelled of dust and blood. My chest burned from the adrenaline pumping, and the heartache of everything from before.

  I forced myself up, coughing, wiping the grit from my eyes. The light above us flickered weakly, revealing the damage. The cell was basically gone. Where the reinforced silver cage once stood was now a gaping, silver-spiked hole torn through the wall and into the foundation beyond; jagged, blackened, like something had punched through solid stone. The floor was fractured. The air still shimmered faintly with something that looked like heat haze.

  Alex stood frozen before it, her hands trembling, eyes wide with disbelief.

  The sheet… the one that had covered my daughter was crumpled in the center of the cell’s remains. Blood soaked through the fabric, still fresh, still warm, but now caked in falling concrete dust. But there wasn't a body.

  Martin took a slow, unsteady step closer, his voice barely above a whisper. “She’s… she’s gone.”

  “No,” I said automatically, shaking my head, though I knew. “No, she… she couldn’t have…”

  Alex turned toward me, her face pale and hollow. She didn’t need to say it. The fear in her eyes said everything.

  Somehow, impossibly, Autumn had moved. She was alive. But… how?

  Eleanor’s voice came before she even reached the basement, echoing through the floorboards; high, trembling, desperate.

  “Carter! What happened?! Was that an earthquake?” Elanor’s voice came out scared and practical, but still laced with the emotion from before.

  The wooden stairs creaked under her frantic steps. When she reached the bottom, she froze mid-breath. Her eyes darted across the wreckage: the shattered concrete, the twisted metal bars, the bloodied sheet lying on the floor where our daughter had been. She kept scanning the room, looking for Autumn, but she never found her.

  “Oh my God…” she whispered. “Where’s Autumn?” Her head whipped back and forth across the chaos and debris that now littered the basement. “Where is she?” she choked out.

  None of us answered. We just stood there, staring into the jagged hole ripped clean through the wall. The faint moonlight seeped in through it, faint and white, dust swirling in the air like smoke. A cold wind pressed into the room, carrying the faint scent of blood and soil.

  Eleanor stumbled closer to me, her voice breaking apart. “Carter… where is she?” Her brown eyes swelled with pain and frustration as she demanded to know what happened to her daughter.

  I couldn’t look at her. My mind couldn’t catch up to what I’d just seen. I just shook my head and whispered, “She’s gone.” I stared through the ragged hole.

  Martin took a step forward, staring at the cell. “No… no, that doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. “She died… she died a human… how is she…” his questions were more internal, but they told me that he knew something. He sensed something about her in that moment before the earthquake. He stopped short. His eyes flicked toward Alex.

  She stood motionless near the far wall, dust clinging to her clothes, her face caught half in shadow. Her chest rose and fell too quickly, and her gaze never left the empty space where Autumn had been.

  “Alex?” Martin said carefully, stepping closer. “What did you do?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Alex,” I said, my voice low, shaking. “Talk to us.” I watched her carefully after Martin’s question. It all registered quickly, but he thought Alex had a hand in whatever had happened to Autumn… but how? That didn’t make any sense.

  Still nothing. Her eyes were wide, locked on the hole in the wall as if she could still see something there the rest of us couldn’t.

  Eleanor clutched my arm tighter. “Carter, what’s happening?!”

  I wanted to tell her I knew. I wanted to tell her anything. But Alex’s silence was answer enough.

  Martin took another step forward, a note of command in his voice now. “If you know something, say it.”

  But before we could reach her, Alex moved too fast to follow. One heartbeat, she was standing still; the next, a blur of motion rushed past us. The air cracked like thunder as she vanished through the hole, out into the darkening world beyond.

  “Alex!” Martin shouted, sprinting a few steps toward the opening. “Damn it… Alex!”

  She was already gone.

  Eleanor turned to me, her face pale and wet with tears. “Carter… what is happening? Where is Autumn?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t, because I didn’t know a fucking thing. My mind was a blur.

  The basement was silent again except for the wind moaning through the hole and the faint creak of the house above us settling after the quake. I just stood there, staring out into the darkness where Autumn, then Alex, had disappeared. My heart pounded, my throat burned, and all I could think was… Autumn was alive.

  And whatever had happened, it terrified Alex…