They waited until after midnight to return.
Ronan didn't want to go back to the old science lab.
Calla definitely shouldn't have gone — she looked pale, shaky, like her bones were filled with smoke — but she insisted. Said she couldn't sleep anyway. Said she'd rather die doing something than rot in her bed like some horror movie final girl.
He didn't argue.
Not this time.
"Smart girl," the wolf muttered. "Stupid, too. My favorite mix."
The door was still unlocked.
Same creak. Same dark hallway that felt like it wasn't just a hallway.
The air inside smelled worse now — like burnt dust and old rain.
Calla wore a flashlight clipped to her hoodie string. Ronan carried a baseball bat. Not because it would help. Just because it felt better to hold something.
"We're not alone," the wolf whispered. "It's sleeping. But it knows we're here."
The lab was exactly how they'd left it. Half-cleaned symbols on the floor. Burn marks on the tiles. Cold.
Too cold.
Calla knelt at the edge of the ritual circle. "I don't think this was a school project."
"No," Ronan said. "It was something older. Or illegal. Or both."
She pulled a folded notebook from her hoodie pocket — a page full of scribbled notes and weird diagrams. "Look at this."
Ronan crouched beside her.
"Those symbols," she said. "They're mirrored glyphs. From old occult texts. They don't summon something… they anchor it."
"Anchor?"
"Think of it like—trapping a ghost under glass. Except the glass cracked."
"And the thing inside slipped out," the wolf added. "And now it wants blood."
Ronan looked at the floor again. At the burned circle.
And something… shifted.
Just a blink.
But it wasn't the room.
It was him.
A vision hit him — hard, fast — like memory, but not his.
He saw hands — trembling, ink-stained — drawing the last glyph.
Heard the voice of someone muttering under their breath in a language too old for names.
And then—
A scream.
Bright white light.
Chains made of shadow.
And something breaking.
Ronan staggered back, gasping.
Calla caught him. "Hey. Hey, what just happened?"
"I saw it," he breathed. "Someone summoned it. But it wasn't part of the plan. It got out."
Calla looked down at the circle. "Then it's not feeding on me because I found it."
"No," Ronan said. "It's feeding on you because it thinks you're the one who broke the seal."
Her lips parted. "But I didn't."
"I know."
They both looked at the half-cleaned floor again.
"What happens if it finds out it got the wrong person?" she asked.
"It'll find the right one," the wolf said. "And tear them out from the inside."
They left the lab quietly.
The wind had picked up outside. The campus felt wrong. Too empty.
Halfway back to Calla's dorm, she stopped walking.
"You feel that?"
Ronan nodded. "Yeah."
"We're being watched," the wolf whispered. "Not by it. By something else."
Calla turned toward the tree line.
And for a split second — just before the clouds shifted — they both saw it:
A shape.
Tall.
Still.
Wrapped in a long coat.
Face hidden in shadow.
Watching.
Then gone.