The creature moved toward me, its form undulating like ink in water. No distinct features, just darkness—pure, concentrated darkness with those glowing red eyes fixed on me.
Memories flooded back—fragments I'd buried deep in my mind. The screams. The blood. A flash of those same red eyes in my childhood bedroom.
"You," I whispered, my voice foreign to my own ears.
My heart hammered against my ribs so violently I thought it might burst. I tried to scramble backward, my injured leg dragging uselessly behind me, but my back hit the tree trunk. Trapped.
The specter extended what might have been an arm, tendrils of darkness reaching for me. A voice—not spoken aloud but somehow inside my head—whispered with chilling delight.
*At last... the last Selenia.*
The word meant nothing to me, but the malice behind it froze my blood.
*Your parents' protection dies with you.*
