The night was sharp with silence when Officer Reynolds knocked on Margaret Hale's door.
Margaret answered slowly, her hand trembling on the knob. Her eyes flicked at the badge on his chest, then at his face, as though already bracing herself.
"Mrs. Hale," Reynolds said, tone even. "I need to ask about your husband. Nathan Hale."
Her mouth tightened. "That was… a long time ago."
"Ten years," Reynolds replied. "The report says his car went off the bridge into Lake Crest. The wreckage was found. His body wasn't. The file lists him as deceased, but…" He let the pause hang, his eyes narrowing. "…something doesn't add up."
Margaret hesitated. Her hands twisted against her apron. "We had an argument that night. Family matters. He got furious, left the house in a rage. I tried to call him—his phone was off. Hours later, they said his car went into the lake. After that, nothing. He never came back."
Her words were clipped, rehearsed, as though she'd spoken them a thousand times to herself. But she never met his eyes.
Reynolds leaned forward slightly. "And you never saw him again? Never heard from him?"
Her lips pressed into a line."No."
Reynolds studied her carefully. His gut said she wasn't lying—not entirely. But there was more she wasn't saying. Much more.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hale," he said at last. "If I need more information, I'll be in touch."
He left.
The door closed. The house fell into stillness. Margaret sagged against the wall, her breath shaking. Her hand drifted to the cross around her neck, fingers squeezing it until her knuckles whitened.
But no prayer came. Because she knew it would not be heard.
He had no need of sleep. Chains don't dream. They remember.
The Watcher stirred in the dark.
From the corner of Margaret's living room, unseen, he leaned into the shadow, a grin pulling at his half-seen jaw. His hands twitched against the invisible bonds that wrapped his wrists, chains forged from bloodline and curse.
Margaret's words still echoed. "He never came back."
Lie. He had never left.
He had always kept an eye on the girl.
He remembered the attic. She was five, maybe six, playing hide-and-seek. She squeezed herself into the iron chest that had been locked for generations. Her skin scraped a splinter of metal. One drop of blood, nothing more, fell onto the diary's leather skin.
The book drank it greedily.
But it had been starved for too long. Locked in silence. Starved of names. Of death. Of debt.
It took time for the blood to wake it again. Years before the whispers sharpened, before the diary breathed.
And in that silence, he waited. Watching her.
He remembered his own fall—the night of his fury. Margaret's voice telling him the book was cursed. His rage at her fear. The slam of the attic door. The chains breaking as he wrenched the iron chest open. His hand on the cover.
The shock of emptiness when the diary did not yield to him.
Not of the bloodline. Not worthy.
The curse had mocked him, rejected him, but it had not let him go. It chained him instead, binding him to the shadows, making him its debtor.
And when the girl's blood touched the cover, he found his door. His vessel.
Emily.
He had been there from the beginning.
In the courtyard when Jake Harper fell from the rooftop, his shadow stretching long against the brick.
In the street where Evelyn Carter's ribs shattered under an unseen weight, his grin flickering in the glass of a passing car.
In the cafeteria when Rick spat venom, watching with patient hunger until his skull cracked open hours later.
On the roadside where Daniel Kross's body was painted across the asphalt, his chains whispering as he leaned close to the wreckage.
By the scaffolding when the construction worker screamed, dust and blood thick in the air.
Always there. Always watching.
The shadows the students whispered about, the figure caught on grainy rooftop footage—
It was him.
Now he watched Emily laugh at the book's whispers, the same laugh that once split his throat when he first felt its power. She was feeding it well. The deaths had begun to ripple.
Reynolds was sniffing too close. Margaret was stirring up memories best left buried. But none of that mattered.
Emily was listening now. Emily was laughing.
And soon, she would be his.
He leaned back into the dark, his grin stretching wider, the chains rattling faintly as if they too were eager.
A few days, he thought. That's all I need. A few days, and the bloodline ends. The debt is paid. And I will walk free.
The shadows swallowed his grin whole.
And for the first time, the darkness dared to speak his name.
Nathan Hale Carter.
(Fade to black.)