48 - Intruder

Ruin

A sudden noise jolts me awake from a deep sleep. My instincts, honed over centuries, immediately kick in. I sit up, scanning the room, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. There, in the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains, I see Chloe Jane sitting up in bed, her body rigid in that all-too-familiar spinning position.

Quietly, I slide out of bed, careful not to disturb her. Something doesn’t feel right. As I step into the living room, a figure catches my eye—Caleb, or at least, someone who looks like him, is lurking there.

But there’s something off about him, a sense of wrongness that sets off alarm bells in my head. Uncanny fucking Valley, be damned.

I approach cautiously, my senses on high alert. “Caleb? What the fuck are you doing here at this hour?”

The figure turns, but the posture, the energy, it’s all wrong; a slow, deliberate movement that’s uncharacteristically stiff for him. “Just checking in,” he replies, his voice lacking its usual warmth.

As I step closer, so