Silver heard his heartbeat before anything else.
It was so loud it didn't feel like it belonged inside him. Each pulse pressed against his skull, tightening his vision until the world narrowed down to the thing in front of him while everything else faded into something distant and unimportant.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't even tell if he was breathing properly.
The eye remained fixed on him, unblinking, unmoving, and yet closer than before—not in distance, but in presence, as if it had settled into reality more firmly than anything else in the room.
The door burst open.
"Silver—!"
His mom reached him first, pulling him into her instantly, wrapping her arms around him and pressing his face into her shoulder. She didn't look properly, didn't stop to understand—she just shielded him, her body turning instinctively between him and whatever stood in the room.
His dad moved forward at the same time.
Straight past them.
Putting himself in between.
Then he saw it.
Everything in him stopped.
Not hesitation.
Not fear.
Something deeper.
For a brief second, he stood there, staring.
Then instinct kicked in.
He grabbed the nearest thing—a chair—his hand tightening around it as he stepped forward and raised it, his body turning with the motion, ready to swing—
And froze.
Mid-swing.
The chair stayed lifted, his arms locked in place, the motion cut off as if something had reached inside him and stopped everything at once.
Silver could see it from over his mom's shoulder.
Just a narrow angle.
Just enough.
His dad's body lifted.
His feet dragged across the floor for a fraction of a second before leaving it completely, his weight pulled upward by something that wasn't there.
Then it tightened.
His arm snapped outward first, bending too far with a sharp crack as bone gave way under a force that had no visible source. The chair slipped from his hand as his body jerked violently, every movement no longer his own.
His chest compressed next, ribs folding inward as if something invisible was pressing in from all directions. His mouth opened, but no scream came out—only a broken, silent struggle that never became sound.
Then it escalated.
Everything twisted.
Limbs bending past their limits. Spine arching unnaturally. His entire body folding inward like something was forcing it into a shape it wasn't meant to take.
And then—
it stopped.
His body dropped.
The impact hit the room like a shock.
A heavy, solid thud that didn't fade or soften, loud enough to cut through everything, loud enough to feel like it landed inside Silver's chest instead of on the floor.
For a moment, it was the only thing that existed.
And then the silence swallowed it.
Silver didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't react.
His mom pulled him in tighter, pressing him harder into her shoulder, her voice breaking as it rushed out too fast to control.
"I've got you—it's okay, it's okay, don't look, don't look, I'm here, I'm right here, nothing's going to happen to you—"
She kept talking, the words uneven, overlapping, desperate, like if she stopped even for a second something worse would happen.
Silver didn't respond.
Didn't move.
But his eyes didn't close.
He was still looking.
Still catching fragments past her shoulder.
Still trying to understand something his mind refused to accept.
His mom shifted.
Just slightly.
She turned.
And the moment she faced it—
It was already there.
Right in front of her.
So close there was no space left between them for anything else to exist.
Her voice stopped mid-sentence.
Her body went completely still.
For a single second, nothing happened.
Then her neck snapped backward.
A sharp crack broke through the silence as her head bent at an impossible angle, her spine giving way instantly under a force that came without warning.
Her eyes stayed open.
Facing forward.
Toward him.
Blood welled from them immediately, spilling down her face in thin, dark streams as her expression froze before it could fully become fear.
She remained standing for just a moment longer.
Long enough for him to see it.
Then her body collapsed.
Her arms loosened.
Her weight fell away from him.
And nothing stood between Silver and it anymore.
The eye shifted.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Until it was focused entirely on him.
Silver didn't move.
Didn't react.
Didn't feel anything clearly anymore.
Because something inside him had already gone too far.
Then it changed.
The surface of the eye distorted, stretching in a way that didn't follow any shape his mind could hold. The center split—not physically, but enough for something else to form.
A smile.
Too wide.
Far too wide.
Lined with teeth that didn't belong to anything real. Long, uneven, packed together like they had been forced into place without space to exist.
The smile widened further, not gradually, not naturally—just more, until looking at it felt wrong in a way that went beyond fear.
It held his gaze.
Unblinking.
Unmoving.
Then it stepped back.
Not like something walking.
Not like anything with weight.
Just further away.
Still staring.
Still smiling.
The distance between them increased without motion, like reality itself was shifting to place it somewhere else.
Then it was gone.
Not fading.
Not disappearing.
Simply no longer there.
Silver remained where he was, his eyes fixed on the empty space as if looking away might bring it back differently.
His mother's body lay at his feet, her face still turned toward him, the thin trails of blood unmoving. Further ahead, his dad's body remained where it had fallen, broken in a way that didn't feel real no matter how long he stared.