The morning sunlight crept through Emily's curtains, weak and watery, as if it didn't quite belong to this world anymore. It should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like a spotlight exposing every raw nerve in her body. Her phone still lay cracked on the nightstand, its black screen reflecting her face in broken pieces. The faint metallic tang of rust clung to the air, as if the night itself had branded her lungs.
She dragged herself into the kitchen, hair unbrushed, eyes hollow. Her mother stopped mid-stir at the stove, her brows pulling together.
"You're not sick again, are you? You've been… different lately."
Emily forced a smile that felt brittle. "I'm fine."
Her father tried to cut the tension, cracking a joke about traffic and the toast he had managed to burn again. Emily barely heard him. She muttered something about needing to get to school early and slipped out, leaving them worried but clueless, locked in their safe little bubble where monsters didn't exist.
At school, whispers trailed her down every hallway.
"Probably suicide."
"She was acting weird anyway."
"Did you see Emily? She looks guilty."
Each word sliced into her, sharper than a blade. Emily hugged her books against her chest, fingers trembling. Only she knew the truth. Only she saw what hunted her.
Her phone buzzed. A name flashed across the screen: Aunt Margaret.
Emily hesitated before answering. "Hello?"
The voice on the other end was low, gravelly, thick with something that felt older than words.
"Strange things run in our family, Emily. Stay away from what doesn't belong to you."
Emily froze. "What do you—"
The line cut dead.
She stared at her phone, her breath shallow, sweat prickling at her skin.
After school, Lily wouldn't let her retreat into silence. She hooked her arm through Emily's and dragged her into a diner booth, shoving a basket of fries across the table.
"You're eating," Lily ordered with a grin. "Doctor's orders."
Emily almost laughed. Almost. For a flickering second, she felt normal.
Then it hit.
The vision struck like lightning.
A pale woman in Victorian London slipping the diary beneath her cloak.
Soldiers in a muddy trench, fighting over it as shells ripped the sky apart.
A nurse in a 1970s hospital scribbling in it furiously before her head dropped forward, lifeless.
Blood seeped into the pages, steady and unending.
Emily gasped, jerking upright.
"Hey." Lily frowned. "You okay?"
Emily nodded too fast. "Just tired."
Last period dragged like a nightmare. The chalkboard stood clean for one moment. Then letters gouged themselves across it, deep and jagged as though cut by invisible knives:
DEBT. DEBT. DEBT.
Her pulse thrashed. She turned in her seat—
Her classmates' eyes were gone. Black voids filled their sockets, endless and silent. Dozens of hollow faces stared directly at her, their stillness heavier than screams.
Outside the window stood a figure. Jake Harper. Rain slid down his body in glistening streams. He didn't move. He only watched.
Emily screamed.
The classroom snapped into motion—normal faces, normal eyes, confusion etched across them all. The chalkboard was clean.
Only she carried the terror.
Her father picked her up, insisting she shouldn't walk home alone in the rain. He hummed along with the radio, tapping his fingers against the wheel, blissfully unaware.
Emily pressed her forehead to the glass.
That was when she saw him.
The hooded figure. Walking alongside the car. Step for step.
Only in the reflection.
Its faceless head tilted toward her, watching.
Her throat locked. "Dad—"
He glanced over. "What?"
Emily swallowed the truth, the words splintering in her throat. "Nothing."
Relief shattered the instant she stepped inside the house.
The diary was back. Sitting neatly on top of her books in her backpack, as though it had never left.
Its pages fluttered open, jagged sketches unfurling like wounds: hooded figures, a ritual circle, a temple collapsing in flames.
Words scratched themselves into the paper, each stroke shrieking like tearing flesh:
The debt began in the dark. You carry what they began.
Her hands shook so violently she could barely hold the desk. Was her family tied to this? Was she trapped in something older than she could comprehend?
The visions surged.
Corpses dangling from trench walls, lips blue and swollen.
A Victorian woman clawing her own throat until her nails broke.
A child on cellar stone, drawing endless circles in blood.
The whispers swelled around her, suffocating.
"Write. Obey. Pay the debt."
Her fingers betrayed her. She picked up the pen. She wrote a name. Just one name.
The page pulsed like living skin. Words bled upward, dripping with weight:
A name given is a life taken. Do you choose?
Emily dropped the pen with a gasp.
Chanting filled her skull—hooded figures in unison:
We write, and the world obeys.
The diary slammed shut with a violent crack, rattling her desk.
Night came heavy and thick. Emily lay rigid in bed, the diary resting beside her like a predator waiting for her to fall asleep.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number. One message:
He is watching you.
Her breath caught. She crept to the window, heart battering her ribs.
Under the streetlamp, drowned in shadow, the hooded figure stood. Perfectly still. His gaze locked on her.
She blinked—he was gone.
The phone buzzed again. This time, the message came from her mom:
Don't stay out too late. Your father swears he saw someone outside the house last night.
Emily clutched the diary to her chest, though it felt like holding a blade to her heart.
It wasn't trapped in the book anymore.
It was here.
Watching.
Waiting.