Chapter : 5

Ethan didn’t remember falling asleep. One moment he was sitting on the basement floor beside Luca, and the next—his eyes snapped open to darkness.

Not silence.

Breathing.

Slow… deep… rhythmic.

Not human.

He tried to sit up, but his head throbbed as though someone had pressed fingers into his temples. The air felt too heavy, thick like wet cloth. When he inhaled, it tasted like earth… and something sweeter. Rot.

“Luca…?” he whispered.

A hand touched his cheek.

Ethan jerked away—until he recognized the warmth, the trembling fingers. Luca knelt beside him, moonlight from the single basement window washing over his face. He looked exhausted, haunted, but alive.

“You blacked out,” Luca murmured. “It was the house… I think it wanted us unconscious.”

Ethan swallowed. “Why?”

A low groan vibrated through the floorboards, like an old wooden whale exhaling beneath them. Dust trickled from the ceiling.

Ethan’s skin crawled.

“We need to get out,” Luca said softly, in the way someone speaks when they don’t want to wake the monster in the room.

They stood. The basement stairs stretched upward, impossibly dark—darker than they should be. As if the shadows had weight. As if something waited inside them.

Luca grabbed Ethan’s hand.

As they climbed, the house’s breathing grew louder. Faster. Hungry. Ethan could feel it in the walls, in the floor, in his bones. The air pulsed like the inside of a living lung.

Halfway up the stairs, they heard footsteps above them.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Too heavy to be human.

Ethan squeezed Luca’s hand.

Luca squeezed back.

The footsteps stopped just beyond the basement door.

A rasping, wet sound scraped the wood… like claws dragging across it.

Then—

A voice.

Distorted.

Layered.

Wrong.

It sounded like Luca.

But Luca was right beside him.

“Ethan…” the voice crooned through the door.

“Let me in.”

Ethan felt his stomach drop. The real Luca pulled him closer, shaking.

The thing scratched again. “Ethan, please… you opened the door for me before. Do it again.”

Ethan’s breath hitched.

“Don’t listen,” Luca whispered. “It wants a place inside you. And once you open yourself… it doesn’t leave.”

Suddenly the basement door handle rattled—violently.

The house inhaled deeply, as though preparing to scream.

Ethan grabbed Luca’s arm. “We can’t go that way.”

Luca nodded. “Then we make another way.”

He yanked Ethan toward the far wall. A set of old metal shelves stood there—rusted, but tall. Luca shoved them aside, revealing bricks behind them… cracked bricks.

“W-What are you doing?” Ethan whispered.

“Breaking us out.”

Before Ethan could protest, Luca slammed his shoulder into the wall. The bricks shook. Dust exploded into the air.

The house groaned in fury.

Behind them, the basement door creaked—slowly opening.

They didn’t look back.

Couldn’t.

Ethan joined Luca, ramming the wall again and again until a brick fell loose. A sliver of the cold night showed through.

Footsteps descended the stairs.

Closer.

Ethan shoved his arm through the broken bricks, making a wider hole, skin scraping open. Blood smeared the wall. Luca grabbed another brick and smashed it, widening the gap until it could fit a body.

“Go,” Luca hissed.

“No—together!”

The footsteps reached the bottom step.

Ethan climbed through first, landing hard on the frozen grass outside. He turned back just as Luca pushed himself through.

The moment Luca stepped out—

The breathing stopped.

The house fell silent.

And the basement door slammed shut with a force that shook the ground.

The night outside felt painfully cold, but clean… empty of the entity’s presence. Ethan collapsed against Luca, shaking.

Luca held him tightly. “We’re out. It can’t follow.”

Ethan wasn’t sure.

Because as he looked up at the house’s lone basement window, he saw a face pressed against the glass.