"Don't worry, help will be here soon," Tony said to his children.

  The doorbell rang just as he finished speaking. He spun around and hurried down the stairs to open the front door.

  "Martin ... Huh?”

  He saw no one.

  “Which little punk thinks it’s funny to play ding dong ditch at this hour?" Tony swore.

  When he shut the door and turned back around, he almost jumped out of his skin. Two boys were already standing in the living room as if they had been there all along.

  One of them was a tall and broad-shouldered blonde boy. Even though Aaron stood over six feet, his youthful face betrayed his age.

  The other boy was bundled up in thick clothing. He wore an oversized coat, a knitted beanie pulled low, and a scarf wrapped around his lower face, so that only his eyes were visible.

  At Acher’s advice, Luther used the Veil of Lies to create an illusion that slightly altered the appearance of both of them.

  "Who are you? How did you even get inside?" Tony asked.

  "Hello, we’re here to deal with the monsters that were haunting your family," the taller boy said with a bright smile.

  …

  About thirty minutes earlier.

  Standing in front of the two-story house with a red-tiled roof, Aaron and Luther were trying to figure out how to investigate their latest task.

  "There’s energy. Inside the house. Darkness. And something else. Mixed in," Luther said.

  "But how do we get in?" Aaron tried turning the doorknob, and it was locked. "What, are we supposed to break into the house?"

  "Acher can get in," Luther replied.

  The raven took flight, slipping straight through the front door as if it were thin air. After a short while, he returned and said:

  "There are three people in this house. One guy and two kids, all of them were asleep. But the ones lying in bed are only their bodies. Their souls have been pulled away to another place. Oh, they just woke up."

  Aaron decided to take the most straightforward approach.

  He reached out and pressed the doorbell. A minute later, a middle-aged man with blond hair and dark rings under his eyes opened the door. The two boys took the chance and slipped inside using the cloak of ambiguity.

  …

  "Demon-hunting? Are you the ones Martin called in to help?" Tony asked.

  "I have no idea who Martin is. We are... the Brotherhood of Dawn, specialists in exorcisms, purging evil spirits, and dealing with supernatural incidents," Aaron introduced. "We just happened to be passing by and sensed the presence of a powerful demon inside this house. Is there anything you need us to take care of?"

  "Don’t joke about things like that, kids. This isn’t funny! Get out of here before I call the police," Tony said, his tone edged with real irritation.

  Many people in the neighborhood already knew about the "serious illness" affecting his family. Some even whispered rumors that the Tony household suffered from collective delusions. Tony was fairly certain that these two boys were just a couple of rude kids trying to stir up trouble.

  "We’re a hundred percent serious," Aaron said.

  Tony clenched his fist, ready to scold them further, but his jaw dropped when he saw the boy with brown hair begin to glow. An almost transparent suit of armor, wrapped in golden flames, appeared around him.

  At that moment, Aaron looked as if he had stepped right out of a storybook or a fantasy movie.

  "You… you…" Tony stammered.

  His heart was at war with his mind.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Ask them for help! They can help!

  No, what if these kids end up getting hurt because of us, just like Josh? How would their parents bear that pain? I must stop dragging innocent people into this mess.

  In the end, Tony’s voice broke with urgency.

  "Please… please, I’m begging you, save Derek and Vivian. You don’t need to worry about me. All I want is for you to help my children. They’re still so young." He bit down hard on his lip. "If things become too dangerous, you can leave us behind and save yourselves. I don’t want anyone else dying because of my family."

  The horrific screams of Josh still haunted him every single moment of the day.

  "First of all, could you tell us what’s happened?" Aaron asked.

  Tony began to recount everything that had happened to his family over the past twelve days.

  "It’s a creature from the dream realm. Strange … the Flow doesn’t usually concern itself with this sort of matter. Perhaps they have some link to the Underworld," Acher spoke up. "Some nightmare predators like to drag their prey into the Realm of the Delusional and torment them until they are ‘ripe.’"

  "Ripe? What do you mean by that?" Aaron asked.

  "To them, the more terrified, hopeless, grief-stricken, and resentful someone becomes, the more delicious their nightmares and souls taste,” Acher explained. “And hatred as well, hatred is one of the strongest forces that can drive a mind. It can change a heart, twist a soul, blind your eyes with darkness … and still keep you going forward through the most horrific torment imaginable, clenching your teeth and refusing to fall until vengeance is done.”

  "That’s disgusting," Aaron muttered.

  "Creatures of the dream realm often hide away and sleep during the day, only emerging to hunt at midnight. Can you sense where it’s hiding?" Acher asked.

  "I can feel some sort of dark magic, but it’s hard to pinpoint where it’s coming from," Aaron admitted.

  Luther shook his head as well.

  "Seems like we’ll just have to wait until midnight when it shows itself again. That’s fine, there’s just less than half an hour left," Acher said.

  Aaron repeated his words to Tony. Hope flickered in the man’s exhausted eyes because these kids seemed to understand the kind of thing his family was dealing with.

  "Are you sure you can handle it?" he asked.

  "Pfft, easy as pie. We’re only talking about some fierce-rank monster here; we’ll take it down for sure," Aaron said with a confident tone.

  Tony led them upstairs to the bedroom, where the two children were still curled up together on the bed.

  Derek’s tired eyes showed a faint trace of doubt and curiosity as they fell on Aaron in his glowing armor, but fear, pain, and numbness still dominated his face.

  Tony said, "Oh, right, Mr. Martin, a psychic we asked for help, gave us these as well. I’m not sure if they’ll be of any use to you."

  He pointed toward several items placed on the headboard. One was a stick of white chalk, another was a silver nail, and the last was a small, round glass vial, about the size of two fingers, filled with a shimmering, transparent liquid.

  Acher turned his gaze through the wall toward a teenage boy pacing in anxiety along the side of the house. He clicked his tongue and said:

  "A burning chalk, an anti-demon nail, and purified water prepared by an apprentice mage. The boy tries his best. And choosing not to participate directly was the smartest choice. If he’d gotten involved with his current level of skill, there wouldn’t have been enough left of him to bury. You two should take that as a lesson.”

  "Perfect, these things will be useful," Aaron said, more to put Tony at ease than out of genuine understanding. In truth, he had no clue what those items could do. "Now we just wait until midnight."

  And so, while Tony paced back and forth, nerves stretched thin, the clock’s hands finally inched toward the twelve.

  When the hour hand struck midnight, the air thickened as if the whole room was being smothered, and the eyelids of the father and his two children grew heavy. Within seconds, all three collapsed onto the bed.

  "It’s here. Oh … it’s trying to mess with me," Aaron said.

  His noon armor blazed with golden light, driving back the nameless curse in an instant.

  "Do you feel anything?" he asked.

  Luther shook his head.

  "I can sense them now," Acher said, his tone shifting into something closer to a lecture. "These ones are half of the darkness type. If you are their natural enemy, then Luther is their king, their lord, their god. The idea of a little curse affecting him is what’s truly laughable."

  "Wow! Luther is the coolest in the whole world!" Aaron declared.

  The black-haired boy’s expression remained flat, but his wings cringed, and his ears turned pink.

  What on earth is he talking about? Does he even know what embarrassment is?

  Aaron bit back a laugh.

  Man, teasing him is way too much fun. Hahaha.

  “Here you are.”

  Both boys and the raven lifted their heads toward the ceiling in usion.

  A jagged black crack appeared out of thin air, widening in a heartbeat into a big rift. From within, a head pushed its way out and began to “look” around. Or rather, sense the surroundings, because the creature had neither eyes nor a nose. All it possessed was a gaping red mouth stretching from one side of its head to the other.

  Its neck was made of dozens of thick, pulsing strands of flesh, each twisting and coiling back toward the hidden body beyond the rift. The head turned toward Aaron, shrieked with an ear-piercing scream, and started to retreat.

  But it was already too late.

  Aaron shot upward at a speed too quick for the naked eye to follow, materializing a blazing sword from the air and bringing it down in a single decisive slash. The fleshy tendrils were severed cleanly, and the monster’s head thudded to the floor, rolling across the room.

  Tony and his children woke up in just a few seconds after the monster was taken down.

  With its head cut away by the fire sword, the monster finally became visible to the mortal family. Tony’s eyes burned with bloodshot rage. This was the thing that had killed his wife and his best friend. Every inch of him screamed to tear it apart with his bare hands.

  The spider still wasn’t dead yet. Its mouth moved, muttering something Aaron and Luther couldn’t understand.

  "~~~~~~~"

  "That’s dream-mutter language. It’s calling for help," Acher warned. "Don’t let your guard down; this is just the start."