Chapter 4

In the days following their expedition to Baldel, an uneasy hush settled over the house, wrapping the household in a fragile illusion of normality.

Victor had kept the dagger a secret, hiding it beneath the wooden slats of his bed frame. He was almost certain his parents had uncovered something else after he had excused himself to wait in the car; it had taken them an unusually long time to rejoin him. When they finally slid back into the vehicle, both Timothy and Elizabeth had remained utterly tight-lipped about whatever they had seen, and Victor hadn't pressed them. He was, after all, carrying a quiet secret of his own.

Whenever he found himself alone in his room, he would slide the weapon out from its hiding place to examine it under the pale light of his desk lamp.

The dagger was unlike anything he had ever seen, surpassing even the sleek, deadly design of high-end military tactical gear. Intricate, geometric symbols were etched deep into the dark metal, running seamlessly from the base of the pommel all the way to the needle-sharp tip. The weight of the hilt sat in his palm with a terrifying, natural balance—as if his hand had been measured for it long before.

What fascinated him most, however, was the blade's asymmetric guard. One side flared out in the stylized shape of a sweeping wing—half of it decorated with wicked, razor-sharp serrations, while the other half tapered into a deadly, smooth edge. The opposite side curve formed a wicked, crescent blade that gleaned with a dull, cold light. It was sharper than anything Victor had ever encountered, effortlessly slicing through the air with a quiet, whisper-soft hum.

He was in the middle of one of his private examination sessions, absently flipping the dagger between his fingers, when his door suddenly burst open.

Isaac strolled into the room, mid-sentence, having spent the better part of the week badgering Victor about their trip to the cathedral. He took two steps inside, froze instantly, and his jaw dropped in utter shock as his eyes locked onto the gleaming black blade in Victor's hand.

In a terrifying flash of movement—moving with a speed that startled even himself—Victor surged off the bed, closed the distance to the doorway, and slammed the door shut before Isaac could even blink.

"Keep your mouth shut!" Victor hissed, gripping Isaac’s shoulder as he saw his brother's chest heave to let out a scream.

"What was that noise?" Elizabeth’s voice echoed sharply from somewhere in the house.

"It’s nothing, Mum!" Victor yelled back, keeping his voice as steady as humanly possible. "Just dropped a heavy book!"

He spun back to face Isaac, pressing a firm index finger over his lips to command absolute silence. The gesture, predictably, did little to quiet his younger brother.

"What in Mum and Dad’s sacred names is that?" Isaac demanded, his voice dropping into a urgent, panicked whisper. Stressing the word ‘that’

"I said keep quiet!" Victor whisper-yelled, delivering a swift, sharp knock to the top of Isaac’s head.

"Ouch! Hey!" Isaac hissed, rubbing his scalp. "Keep quiet? After I just walked in on you casually twirling a potential murder weapon?" He gestured frantically at the black steel Victor was trying to conceal behind his thigh. "Put yourself in my shoes for a second! Imagine walking into my room and finding me tossing a demonic dagger in the air!"

"Fair point," Victor muttered, yielding slightly. "I wouldn't have kept quiet either. But listen to me—I’m going to need you to keep another secret for me. You have to." He turned around, crouched down, and slid the weapon back into its hiding spot beneath the bed frame.

"Erm, excuse me, but that pushes my total to two massive family secrets," Isaac replied, rolling onto Victor’s bed and stretching out across the mattress. "That is way past my threshold for personal discretion. Plus, I don't get why you feel the need to hide a literal weapon from the two people who are currently trying to figure out why we're all dreaming about weird stuff."

Victor stood up, brushing off his knees, his expression softening into a desperate plea. "I get it, Isaac. But you have to trust me on this. Just for a little while."

Isaac sat up, rubbing his chin as if thoughtfully stroking an imaginary mustache. "Well... things always sound a lot more manageable when they're transactional, don't you think?"

"I have a vague idea of where this is going, and I already know I'm going to hate it," Victor sighed. He rubbed his temples, realizing that arguing would only waste precious time and energy. He sank onto the edge of the mattress beside his brother. "Fine. What do you want?"

“Calm down, relax," Isaac said smoothly, patting the space beside him. He cleared his throat with a loud, dramatic cough. "In return for my ironclad silence regarding your secret assassin blade, you are going to fill me in on every single detail of what you and our parents found in Baldel. Let's round our secrets up to a nice, even number of three."

"I knew it!" Victor let out an exasperated sigh, flopping backward onto his pillow with his arms folded beneath his head. "Whatever happened to the part where you trust your older brother?"

"Oh, I trust you, bro," Isaac replied in that infuriatingly sarcastic tone that never failed to test Victor's patience. "But I'm pretty sure trust is supposed to be a two-way street, isn't it?"

"It is, but—"

"'Buts are terrible for conversations that have trust as its topic," Isaac cut in smoothly, flashing a grin.

Victor weighed his options in his head. He could spend the next hour trying to reason with Isaac, or he could simply give him the basic facts—especially since the trip to the cathedral had yielded far more questions than actual answers anyway. After a brief silence, he gave in and recounted the entire afternoon: the hidden floorboards, the unreadable journal tucked inside the altar, the strange whispers he had heard, and the exact moment he had pulled the dagger from the chair.

Isaac listened intently, processing the information. "So... strange whispers, an old book full of ancient gibberish that you guys just left behind, a locked basement door, and a wicked dagger?" he summarized, checking the points off on his fingers.

"Pretty much," Victor confirmed.

"I still don't get why you're keeping the knife a secret from Dad," Isaac said, leaning back against the wall. "It doesn't seem like that big of a deal given the circumstances."

"Maybe it isn't," Victor admitted, staring up at the ceiling. "I just have this weird, heavy feeling about it."

"Well, as someone who watches way too many movies," Isaac said, a cheeky grin spreading across his face as he prepared to bolt, "I'd like to give you a gentle reminder that 'weird, heavy feelings' are usually the exact thing that gets the main character killed in chapter six."

"Get out of my room," Victor barked, swatting at his brother's shoulder.

Isaac scrambled off the bed, darted toward the door, and yanked it open. Before stepping out, he poked his head back into the room, grinning foolishly. "Just a friendly heads-up, soldier!" he wheezed, before ducking out and slamming the door behind him.

Victor let out a long sigh, blowing a breath of air up toward his bangs as he dropped back down onto the bed. He let his thoughts wander into the absurd, imagining ridiculous scenarios where his parents turned out to be retired secret agents—picturing his mother pulling off wall-flips in tactical leather pants. He caught himself, chuckled weakly at his own ridiculous imagination, and closed his eyes.

Later that evening, as the terrible heat of the afternoon began to break, Victor decided to go for a walk.

His newfound post-graduation freedom was still a strange concept to navigate. Growing up, Timothy and Elizabeth had enforced a strict, non-negotiable policy regarding their sons' whereabouts: no wandering, no lingering on street corners, and no aimless socializing. The neighborhood kids had enjoyed absolute freedom, but the brothers had always been kept on a tight leash.

However, since Victor had graduated secondary school three months ago, his father had officially declared him "of age," granting him an open pass to leave the house whenever he pleased. Ironically, Victor was a natural homebody, so as interesting as it sounded, it didn’t feel like the gift his parents and Isaac thought it was.

On days like this, when the suffocating weight of his thoughts became too loud to manage within four walls, he would put on his favorite black hoodie, shove his hands deep into the front pocket, plug his earphones in at maximum volume, and just walk.

He was a chronic overthinker by nature—a trait that had amplified dangerously over the past few weeks. As the oldest son, Victor felt an instinctual, heavy obligation to fix things, to shoulder the worries of his family before they could crush his younger brothers or wear down his parents. He was a problem solver. He liked logic, clean solutions, and predictable outcomes. Yet now, he was staring down an unfolding supernatural puzzle that directly targeted his family, and for the first time in his life, he was completely powerless. They had no answers. They had only terrifying nightmares, a locked basement, an unreadable ancient book, and a dagger that seemed to hum with a life of its own. None of it brought them a single inch closer to understanding the force that was slowly pulling their lives apart.

He had been walking for nearly twenty minutes, lost in the rhythmic beat of the music pumping through his ears. The sky above was shifting into a deep, bruised violet, painted with the golden, dying tint of the setting sun.

As he approached a quiet residential turn near the edge of the district, an unexpected flicker of movement caught the edge of his vision. Something shadow-like had darted around the corner of a high concrete perimeter wall, vanishing into an alleyway.

Instinct snapped him out of his daze. Victor pulled off his hood with one hand and yanked his earbuds out with the other, his heart giving a sudden, violent thud against his ribs.

He approached the corner slowly, trying to regulate his breathing so he wouldn't look like a lunatic if he bumped into a neighbor. Just as he reached the edge of the wall, he pulled back slightly, smoothing down his shirt as an older, middle-aged man turned out from the same alleyway.

The man stopped, eyeing Victor’s tense posture and wide, alert eyes with deep suspicion.

"Good evening, sir," Victor greeted, forcing a polite nod.

"Hmm," the man grunted, his gaze lingering on Victor's chest before he took a step past him.

"Sorry to bother you, sir," Victor called out quickly, unable to suppress his burning curiosity. "Did you... did you just see something pass by you in the alley?"

The man turned, giving him an even weirder look, squinting through the gloom. "Yeah. A dog. A big, ugly stray." Without waiting for a response, the man shook his head and hurried down the street, clearly wanting no part of whatever Victor was selling.

Victor watched him go, his jaw tight. ‘That was no dog,’ he thought. The speed of the movement he had caught out of the corner of his eye had been far too fluid, far too unnatural.

Steeling his nerves, Victor took a quiet, measured step around the concrete corner and stepped into the shadowy alleyway.

The moment his foot touched the gravel, every muscle in his body went dead rigid.

Staring back at him from less than ten yards away was a creature that defied every law of nature he understood.

It was roughly the size of a large hound, but its body was utterly grotesque. Its skin was a slick, hairless charcoal-black, stretched tight over thick, bulging muscle. Its head was horribly malformed, asymmetrical and cracked like broken obsidian, with a thick, viscous black substance dripping continuously from a maw filled with rows of needle-thin, jagged teeth. Its front limbs were unnaturally long, terminating in broad, hand-like paws with elongated claws that dug deep into the dirt. Behind it, a long, thick tail whipped side to side in a rhythmic, serpent-like motion.

Victor stood frozen in absolute terror, his breath caught squarely in his throat. He couldn't scream; he couldn't even draw air into his lungs.

The creature didn't attack. It remained pinned to the spot, its massive, solid-black eyes locked onto Victor's face, unblinking and dead. It seemed to be observing him, scrutinizing his posture, smelling the air between them as if evaluating for something it recognized.

For three agonizing seconds, the silence between them was deafening.Then, with a sickening, effortless grace that should have been impossible for a beast of its size, the creature coiled its powerful hind legs, leaped fifteen feet straight up into the air over the concrete boundary wall, and vanished into the night without making a single sound.