By three in the morning, I was starting to regret every life decision that had led me to this exact moment.

I sat half awake on the living room couch with a blanket wrapped around me like some exhausted Victorian orphan while my grandmother whispered prayers under her breath across the room. The storm outside had weakened slightly, but rain still tapped steadily against the windows, filling the silence between us. Every now and then lightning flashed faintly through the curtains, throwing pale shadows across the walls before disappearing again.

The television played softly in the background, though neither of us were actually paying attention to it. Some old black-and-white movie flickered across the screen while the actors spoke in muffled voices that blended into the sound of the rain.

I rubbed my eyes tiredly before glancing at the clock on my phone. 3:13 AM.

Three hours. I had stayed awake for three whole hours because apparently my family was cursed by a nightmare demon with excellent timing. Fantastic.

Honestly, part of me still thought this entire thing was ridiculous. Creepy? Sure. Unsettling? Definitely. But there had to be a logical explanation for all of it. The figure outside the window could have been anyone. Some creep standing in the storm trying to scare people. The grandfather clock ringing again was probably just faulty wiring or old mechanics or whatever people blamed haunted things on before dying horribly in movies. And the whispers? Sleep deprivation. Easy.

Probably.

I glanced toward my grandmother again.

Okay, maybe not easy.

Because she looked genuinely terrified. Not dramatic terrified. Not paranoid terrified. Real terrified. Her fingers clutched the silver cross hanging around her neck so tightly I thought it might snap in half. Her lips moved silently beneath her breath while her eyes stayed fixed on the dark hallway leading deeper into the house. Like she was waiting for something to walk out of it.

A chill crawled slowly across my skin. I hated this feeling. The uncertainty. The silence. The way the entire house suddenly felt too still, like it was holding its breath along with us.

Finally I sat up straighter.

"Okay, I need you to explain something to me."

My grandmother looked up immediately.

"You said women in our family disappear after they turn eighteen." I frowned slightly. "So then why didn't it take you?"

The question seemed to hit her harder than I expected. For a moment she just stared at me. Then all the color slowly drained from her face.

Outside, thunder rumbled faintly through the storm.

"It almost did."

Her answer came so quietly I nearly missed it.

The knot in my stomach tightened. "What does that mean?"

She looked away from me immediately. That alone was enough to make my chest feel heavy.

"When I was younger," she said slowly, "the dreams came for me too."

I blinked. "What dreams?"

Her gaze lowered toward the floor. "The forest. The bells. The footsteps outside my bedroom door every night at midnight."

A strange coldness settled deep in my chest. Because she had just described exactly what happened to me.

I leaned forward slightly. "You saw him?"

The room fell silent. My grandmother swallowed hard before nodding once. The movement was small. Almost reluctant.

"What happened?" I asked carefully.

For a second I thought she was not going to answer.

Then finally, "He chose someone else."

Confusion pulled at my expression immediately. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Her fingers tightened around the silver cross again. "All these years," she whispered, "you believed your mother disappeared." Something about the way she said disappeared made my stomach twist. "She didn't."

The silence that followed felt suffocating.

I stared at her. "What?"

"She was taken."

A laugh escaped me automatically, mostly because the alternative was genuinely losing my mind.

"Taken?" I repeated. "Grandma, what does that even mean?"

But she never answered.

The lights overhead flickered violently before the entire room went dark.

I froze instantly. The television cut into static. Outside, the storm suddenly stopped. Not weakened.

Stopped.

Like someone had reached down and muted the entire world.

A heavy silence swallowed the house. My pulse immediately sped up.

"Grandma?"

No response.

I sat up straighter on the couch, trying to see through the darkness.

"Grandma?"

Still nothing.

Then—

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Every muscle in my body locked.

The grandfather clock.

The sound echoed slowly through the hallway. Loud. Steady. Wrong. That clock had been broken for years.

A cold wave of fear crawled painfully up my spine.

"Okay," I muttered nervously to myself, "this is officially becoming a horror movie."

My voice sounded way too shaky for someone who was definitely not scared.

I reached for my phone beside me and turned on the flashlight. The weak beam cut through the darkness slowly. The empty couch across from me. The flickering television static. The armchair near the fireplace.

Empty.

My stomach dropped instantly.

"Grandma?"

I stood up too quickly, nearly tripping over the blanket tangled around my legs. Panic started creeping unpleasantly into my chest as I swept the flashlight around the room again. She was gone.

The front door stood slightly open. Cold air drifted into the house.

"Nope," I whispered immediately. "Absolutely not."

Fear or not, I was not becoming the dumb girl in every horror movie that willingly investigates creepy noises in the dark. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find from the coffee table.

A candle.

Great. If a demon attacked me, I could apparently threaten it with vanilla-scented violence.

Another loud creak echoed from upstairs. I froze. The sound came again. Slow footsteps moving across the second floor.

My grip tightened around the candle instinctively. Every survival instinct in my body screamed at me not to go upstairs. Unfortunately, curiosity had always been my worst personality trait.

"Grandma?" I called out carefully while stepping toward the staircase.

No answer. Only silence.

The darkness upstairs looked unnaturally deep somehow, swallowing the hallway completely. I swallowed hard before slowly climbing the stairs. Each wooden step creaked loudly beneath my feet. The air grew colder the farther up I went. By the time I reached the hallway I could actually see my own breath.

"Okay," I whispered shakily, "that genuinely cannot be normal."

The lights overhead flickered weakly before dying completely again. Darkness swallowed everything. A sharp breath caught in my throat.

Then—

Crunch.

The sound came from directly behind me. Not wood.

Leaves.

My heartbeat nearly stopped.

Slowly, I turned around.

The hallway behind me was gone.

My breath caught painfully in my chest. Black trees stretched endlessly into darkness where the house should have been. Thick fog curled across the ground while cold wind whispered through twisted branches overhead.

The smell hit me next. Rain. Wet earth. Rotting flowers.

Panic slammed violently into me.

"No," I whispered.

A distant church bell rang through the forest.

One.

Fear crawled slowly up my spine.

This was the dream.

Another crunch echoed somewhere deeper in the woods. A footstep. Then another. Slow. Deliberate. Like something was walking toward me without any hurry at all. Because it already knew I could not escape.

My breathing became uneven as I backed away instinctively. The fog shifted between the trees ahead.

Then I saw him.

Tall. Motionless. Darkness clung to him unnaturally, almost blending him into the forest itself. His black clothes moved slightly with the wind while his face remained hidden beneath shadows.

But his eyes.

I could see those clearly. Fixed directly on me. Watching me like he had been waiting a very long time for this moment.

A cold smile slowly spread across his face.

And suddenly, for the first time that night, I understood exactly why the town feared Lucien Blackwood.