66. Past
Everything stopped.
Not slowly — not like fading electricity.
But instantly.
Every flicker, every hum, every unnatural echo the entity had been stirring…
shut down.
The air froze.
The house fell into a silence so absolute it felt physical.
Chloe felt the hairs on her neck rise.
Aiden instinctively stepped behind Max.
Kyron's breath caught in the middle of his throat.
Maximilian stood in the center of the foyer, eyes narrowing.
This wasn't calm.
This was the eye of a storm.
A deliberate silence.
A thinking silence.
A silence that meant the entity had stopped its taunting and had started planning.
Max's heart didn't race — it clenched.
Not from fear.
From memory.
Something deep inside him — a locked, sealed box — cracked open.
He rushed through thoughts he had buried for years…
pieces falling into place with horrifying clarity.
This mansion.
This entity.
This silence.
He had heard it before.
Max's jaw tightened as another piece slammed into place.
His father.
His father's death.
Everyone had said it was a heart attack.
A sudden collapse.
A tragic accident in the mansion.
But even as a child…
even at that tiny age…
Max remembered.
Not everything.
Not the details.
Not the whole scene.
But the feeling.
The same dead silence.
The same pressure in the air.
The same darkness at the end of the hallway.
He was little, but he remembered the trembling of his father's hands as he grabbed him, shielded him, pushed him back—
He remembered his father shouting something he couldn't understand.
He remembered a shadow in the corner of the room.
He remembered cold.
And then—
His father falling.
Max had tried to tell people.
Tried to tell his mother.
But Eleanor broke after her husband's death — shattered so deep she couldn't hear anything except grief.
And so everyone told Max the same lie:
"You imagined it. Trauma plays tricks on children."
But his father's last breath…
his body shielding Max…
That wasn't imagination.
It was war.
A war his father lost.
Max inhaled sharply.
Uncle Adrian's warning echoed:
"Your mother was attacked before you were born, Max. Something wanted her gone. Something ancient. Something that didn't want your family expanding."
At that time, Adrian looked terrified — not of madness, but of truth.
He once whispered:
"Your father knew. He fought it. Eleanor survived only because he kept it away."
Max had dismissed it.
He had buried it.
Because the alternative was unbearable.
But now…
Now with the entity crawling through his home, targeting Eleanor again, touching Chloe, shadowing Aiden—
Everything connected.
Everything snapped into place.
This entity took his father.
It tried to take his mother before he was born.
It is trying again.
It wants the family line it couldn't erase.
And Max was next.
Not because he was weak.
But because he was the one who survived its first attempt.
---
The silence in the mansion deepened, thick as tar.
Chloe whispered, voice trembling, "Max… what's happening?"
He didn't look at her.
He was staring at the hallway where his father died.
Where the entity first revealed itself to him.
Aiden swallowed loudly. "Bro… you look like you're remembering something."
Max finally spoke.
His voice was calm.
Scarily calm.
The type of calm that came before a man burned the world down.
"It killed my father."
Chloe gasped.
Aiden froze.
Kyron shook violently.
Max continued:
"He died protecting me from it. He didn't have a heart attack. He fought something no one else could see… and it took him when he weakened."
His eyes grew colder.
"And my mother—"
His breath shook once, the only crack in his armor.
"—was attacked by the same entity before I was born. Adrian tried to warn me. I refused to listen."
Chloe covered her mouth, tears filling her eyes.
Aiden whispered, "Then it's been after your family for… forever…"
Max nodded once.
"It took my father.
It broke my mother.
Now it wants her again."
His fists tightened until his knuckles turned white.
"It wants to finish what it started."
The silence around them seemed to pulse — like the entity was listening.
Max didn't look afraid.
He looked furious.
A cold, ancestral fury.
"If it thinks it will touch my mother again…"
his voice dropped into a whisper sharper than steel—
"it's wrong."
---
Max stepped forward, the dead silence folding around him like darkness making room for something more dangerous.
"I survived its first attempt. Barely."
He lifted his chin.
"But I'm not a child anymore."
The air crackled — faint, electric — as if the entity itself felt the shift in him.
"I'm not weak.
I'm not unprepared.
And I'm not alone."
He glanced at Chloe, Aiden, then Kyron.
"My father sacrificed himself for me."
His voice broke — once — then turned to steel again.
"I won't let his death be in vain."
He stared into the dead hallway where the cold originated.
"This time… I finish what he couldn't.
And I will tear this thing out of my house with my own hands if I have to."
The silence didn't break.
It tightened — like a warning.
Max smirked.
"Good.
Let it listen."
---