The fall ended with no impact—only pressure.
Thick, smothering pressure.
Ethan's lungs screamed as he plunged through air that felt too heavy to breathe, like he was sinking inside a nightmare ocean. When he finally slammed against something solid, it wasn't ground at all—it was soft, pulsing, alive.
The surface beat beneath him. Thump… thump… thump.
"Okay," he rasped, coughing, "I've officially fallen into someone's cardiovascular system."
He pushed himself up. His palms came away slick with something warm and red—not quite blood, not quite anything else. It shimmered faintly, like liquid light. The space around him stretched into a massive chamber shaped like an inverted heart, its walls translucent and trembling with every pulse. Veins of light crawled up toward a single thing floating in the middle.
The Eye.
It hung suspended in the air, as large as a car, veins dangling like roots. Its pupil expanded and contracted, reacting to every sound, every breath. Around it, bone fragments drifted like satellites.
Ethan stared at it, dizzy. "Oh yeah, that's definitely cursed. Big, glowy, throbbing eyeball—nothing screams 'run for your life' quite like it."
A groan behind him snapped his focus. The ninja lay sprawled a few feet away, clutching her leg. Her mask was cracked, a line running down its side, revealing one brown eye glinting through the break.
"You okay?" he asked.
She hissed in pain but nodded once. "Where are we?"
Ethan looked around. "Inside the world's worst biology exhibit."
The Eye turned toward them. No sound—just that wet motion, followed by a low vibration crawling through the floor. The air thickened, and a voice—not one voice, but hundreds layered—spoke directly inside his skull.
You fed me, Ethan.
He froze. "Oh, great. Telepathic demon eyeballs. My life's complete."
The ninja's hand found her sword, though it trembled. "It's speaking to you?"
"Apparently I'm the main course," he muttered.
You gave blood. You built the path. You opened the heart.
The walls pulsed faster now, every beat echoing through their bones. The ninja staggered up, glaring at the Eye. "How do we get out?"
Ethan forced a laugh. "Ask the sentient organ politely?"
But the Eye was still staring at him—no, into him. Images began to flicker behind his eyes: the house, the church, the corridor. Every moment where he'd bled, cursed, screamed. All replaying like a film looped by something cruel.
He saw the ghost, kneeling by his couch. Her fingers tracing his face as he slept. Her whisper: Stay.
Ethan's stomach twisted. "She's here," he whispered.
The ninja stiffened. "Who?"
Before he could answer, the temperature plummeted. Frost spread along the red walls, freezing the glowing veins in place. The heartbeat slowed—thump… thump…—and then stopped entirely.
She appeared behind him.
The ghost floated inches from the ground, her hair spreading like smoke in water. The faint light turned her skin the color of ash. Her knife was gone; she didn't need it anymore. Her eyes alone could kill.
Ethan backed away. "Hey… long time no haunt. Miss me?"
Her voice came like a sigh. "You were supposed to stay with me."
"I tried," he said. "But your interior design's a little murdery."
She looked past him at the ninja. "You brought her here. You don't need her."
The ninja raised her sword. "Touch me and—"
The ghost vanished and reappeared right in front of her. One cold hand wrapped around the blade. Frost crawled down the metal, and the ninja screamed as the hilt burned her palm. She dropped the sword, stumbling back.
Ethan's instincts screamed to run, but something held him still. The ghost turned her face toward him fully for the first time. Her skin was cracked porcelain, stitched by faint veins of red light. Her mouth moved, but the words bloomed directly in his head.
You are mine. You woke the heart. It only obeys you because of me.
Ethan swallowed hard. "That's… romantic. In a horrifying, possession-y way."
Don't leave again.
The Eye above them pulsed brighter, as if echoing her will. The chamber began to close, the walls folding inward, ribs of bone sprouting from the floor. A cage. The exit, a thin fissure of light high above, was sealing.
The ninja limped to Ethan's side. "If that closes, we're dead."
Ethan clenched his jaw. His thoughts were chaos—fear, guilt, exhaustion—but one voice cut through: You brought this here. You fed it. You fix it.
He turned to the ghost. "If you wanted a roommate, you could've just asked for a lease agreement!"
Her expression didn't change. "You promised to stay."
"I didn't promise—"
She lifted a hand, and pain seared across his chest. His skin burned with a mark that glowed through his shirt—the same sigil from the welcome mat.
The Eye roared.
The ninja shouted over the noise. "Ethan! The veins on the wall—they lead to it! If we break them, it might collapse!"
"Define might!" he yelled back.
"Just do it!"
He didn't argue. Grabbing a loose shard of bone from the floor, Ethan slammed it into one of the glowing veins. The wall screamed—actually screamed—and burst open, spraying red light. The Eye convulsed, spinning wildly.
The ghost shrieked. "Stop!"
"Sorry, already committed to bad ideas today!"
He tore another vein open. The chamber shook violently. The fissure of light widened—an opening. The ninja hobbled toward it, dragging herself up the sloped floor.
The ghost appeared in front of Ethan again, clutching his arm. Her touch froze him in place. "Please," she whispered. "You don't understand. If you leave, it will die. And when it dies… you die."
He stared at her. For a second, the fury drained, replaced by a flicker of sadness. "Then maybe that's the price."
Her eyes widened. "No—"
He slammed the bone shard into the vein nearest her. The entire chamber erupted. The Eye burst in a storm of crimson light, and the floor ripped apart beneath them. The ghost screamed—not anger this time, but grief—as Ethan was thrown backward.
The ninja reached down from the collapsing fissure, shouting, "Grab my hand!"
He did. Their fingers locked, slick with blood and light. The world tore apart below them—walls folding like paper, the ghost's silhouette vanishing into the brightness.
"Don't—leave—me—" her voice cried, fading.
Then they were out.
The two of them tumbled onto cold dirt. Real dirt. The night air slapped Ethan's face, stinging, beautiful, alive. He gasped, staring up at a sky untouched by red light. The house was gone. No ruins, no walls—just an empty field under a pale moon.
The ninja lay beside him, panting, clutching her leg. "We… actually made it."
Ethan coughed, laughed, then coughed again. "Yeah… we escaped a homicidal architecture demon. Totally normal Tuesday."
She glanced at him. "She's gone?"
He stared up at the sky. For a long moment, silence. Then, faintly, the wind shifted—and he swore he heard a whisper carried with it.
Stay.
His smile faded. "Maybe not."
The ninja closed her eyes. "Then we keep running."
Ethan nodded, though his chest still burned where the mark glowed faintly beneath his shirt. He didn't say anything about that.
Not yet.
Above them, the moon seemed to blink—just once—before the clouds swallowed it whole.