I couldn't sleep. The house seemed to hum with a restless energy, and I was too tangled in thoughts of Sage, the diary, and the mysterious curse to get any rest. Every creak of the floorboards, every whisper of wind outside felt like it carried a message—one I wasn't ready to hear.
It was around 3 a.m. when it happened. The darkness of the room was absolute, a thick blanket of night pressing down on me. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the impossible things I had uncovered. The silence felt suffocating, and the shadows seemed to pulse in the corners, almost as if they were alive.
That's when I heard it.
A whisper. Soft at first, just a breeze brushing against my ear. But then it grew louder—so clear, so familiar, that my heart skipped a beat.
"Jemima."
I froze. The voice was unmistakable. It was his voice. Sage's.
I sat up in bed, my pulse racing. "Sage?" I whispered, barely able to breathe. But the room was still, eerily still. No shadows moved, no doors creaked. Nothing.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him.
He appeared suddenly, like he had materialized from thin air. Sage, standing in the doorway of the room, bathed in a pale light that seemed to come from nowhere. His figure was transparent, flickering in and out, but it was unmistakably him. His features were faint, his face sad, his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that made my breath catch in my throat.
"Jemima…" he whispered again, his voice carrying an almost desperate tone. "You have to listen to me. The curse…it's still here. It never left."
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. My mind was a whirlwind of disbelief and fear. "Sage? Is that really you?" The words felt absurd as they left my mouth, but I had to ask.
He nodded slowly, but his gaze didn't soften. He looked terrified, his face drawn and strained, as if he'd been through hell—and maybe, in a way, he had been.
"You have to protect them, Jemima," he said, his voice trembling with urgency. "Kaius... Amari... the curse—it's reaching for them. You must stop it before it's too late. The Vancourts... they don't know everything. They think they control it, but they don't. It's beyond them. And it's coming for you... coming for them."
I stood up, my legs shaking, trying to take a step toward him. "Sage, please, I don't understand. What should I do? How do I stop it?"
But he didn't answer. Instead, he reached out a hand, his fingers trembling as though he were struggling to hold on to something—to me. The moment his hand moved, the air grew colder, the temperature in the room dropping as if the very essence of life was slipping away.
I stepped forward again, my heart hammering, but before I could reach him, he vanished. Just like that. One moment he was there, his eyes filled with such sorrow and warning, and the next... nothing. The room was empty. The light was gone. The air was thick with the weight of his absence.
I stood frozen, unable to move, as the silence enveloped me once more. But it wasn't the same silence as before. It felt colder, more oppressive. Sage had been here. And now, I was left with nothing but questions—and a bone-deep chill that refused to leave.
I took a few shaky breaths, still processing what had just happened. My heart was still racing, my pulse too loud in my ears. Was I dreaming? Had I imagined it? The logical part of my brain tried to convince me that it was just a hallucination, but deep down, I knew it was real. I had felt him. And he had warned me.
I didn't sleep at all that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sage's face, heard his voice, felt the coldness of his touch. It haunted me. But what terrified me the most wasn't the vision itself—it was the warning he had given me. The curse. It was still here. And somehow, I was already too late.
The next morning, things felt off. It was like the house was pressing in even harder. And then, when I went to check on Kaius and Amari, I found something I wasn't prepared for.
Kaius was sitting at the small desk in the corner of the room, his head bent low, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper. At first, I thought he was just drawing, the way kids do, but when I looked closer, my stomach dropped.
The images he was drawing... they weren't normal. There were figures, human-shaped, with hollow eyes. Empty, lifeless eyes that stared out of the paper, cold and unblinking. It was like something out of a nightmare.
"Kaius?" I said, my voice cracking with a mix of concern and fear. "What are you drawing, honey?"
He didn't look up, didn't even seem to hear me. His hand moved mechanically, as if he were in a trance, sketching one figure after another, their hollow eyes staring at him, at me. My blood ran cold.
"Kaius!" I stepped forward, grabbing his shoulders, forcing him to look up. His eyes were wide, glassy, but not entirely focused on me. He blinked, like he was coming out of a daze, and for a moment, I saw a flicker of recognition.
"Mom?" His voice was soft, distant. "What... what did I draw?" He looked down at the paper in confusion, his brow furrowing. "I don't remember."
I swallowed hard, trying to push the panic down. I couldn't let him see how scared I was. But in my heart, I knew. This wasn't just a coincidence. Whatever had haunted Sage, whatever had reached out to him... it was now reaching out to Kaius.
The curse had already begun its grip on him, and I was powerless to stop it.
"Everything's fine," I said, forcing a smile, though it felt like a lie slipping out of my mouth. "Let's just get some breakfast, okay? We'll talk later."
But as I walked out of the room, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were already too far gone. The curse wasn't just in the walls of this house—it was in my family now. And no matter how hard I tried to fight it, it was going to take everything from us.
And I was terrified I couldn't stop it.