He dared a glance over his shoulder.
Nothing but twisting trees and swirling mist.
Yet the weight remained, crushing, unyielding.
"You are lost. Alone. Broken."
His legs screamed for relief, his chest burned, but the voice gnawed on him, relentless and cruel.
"You'll fall. You always do."
He stumbled but forced himself onward, driven by desperation and the fading hope that somewhere, anywhere, escape might still be possible.
His breaths came ragged, shallow gasps swallowed by the cold night air. The road beneath his feet had disappeared, replaced by tangled roots and wet moss that clawed at his ankles, threatening to pull him down. Every muscle screamed in protest, his vision blurred, and his legs felt like lead.
But the crushing weight at his neck remained, cold, unyielding, as if claws gripped beneath his skin, squeezing, dragging him deeper into the suffocating dark.
"Give in," the voice hissed, silk wrapped around steel. "You are nothing but a broken boy in a broken world. Let me take you."
Something inside Aiden finally snapped, a dam bursting after years of silence, resentment flooding free with a raw, desperate force.
"Understand this," he growled, voice trembling with pent-up fury, "my mother never acted like one. She never cared. Never took care of me. The only time I heard from her was when she remembered she had a son, and even then, it was just to send a few bucks. She wasn't my mother. She was just a womb donor. That's all she ever was."
Steve blinked, caught off guard by the sudden eruption of pain and bitterness.
"No. And if I did hear from her, that fucking whore" Aiden's voice cracked like thunder, " she doesn't deserve to be called my mother. Did you know she left me when I was five? Alone. With some random crackhead she called a babysitter. Just walked out like I didn't exist. So no, I don't know where she is, I don't care, and I never fucking will. Fuck her."
His chest heaved, years of suffocated rage spilling out in a torrent that left him trembling in the heavy silence that followed.
Steve's voice was low, steady, trying to hold space for the storm raging inside the young man. "I understand what you've been through, but she's still your mother, and you've got to have some"
"If you understood," Aiden cut him off sharply, eyes blazing like embers, "maybe you would've been there. Instead of playing cop up here in the woods."
Steve looked struck, words dissolving into the stale cabin air of the cruiser. The rest of the drive passed in strained silence, the weight of unspoken things pressing between them like fog.
Eventually, they arrived at a large metal gate, its cold iron bars swallowing the pale moonlight. Steve pressed a button, and the gate slid open with a mechanical hum, revealing a winding path flanked by ancient evergreens that seemed to lean in, watching.
The cruiser rolled forward toward a house that looked like it had been carved from steel and glass, an architectural anomaly amidst the wild, dense woods.
Three stories high, it spread wide like an open book, its surfaces sleek and smooth, betraying no front door, until Steve tapped a concealed panel. A section of the facade slid aside silently, revealing a garage door that lifted with whispering grace.
Inside, the garage gleamed under bright LEDs. Tools lined the walls with precise order, each hanging perfectly aligned. Rows of motorcycles, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Honda, and others unfamiliar to Aiden, shimmered under the lights. One bike lay disassembled behind glass, its twin fully assembled and polished, standing proud like a beast tamed.
"Like motorcycles?" Steve asked, a flicker of pride in his tone.
Aiden's guard softened, a flicker of a smile brushing his lips. "I always wanted one," he admitted quietly. "Got my license. Just never had the chance."
Steve nodded, pressing a button on the wall. A smooth elevator door slid open at the back of the garage. Five options glowed softly on the control panel: Garage, Basement, Level 1, Level 2, Penthouse.
"Bit of a trick house," Steve said with a dry chuckle. "Garage and basement down low. Level 1's the kitchen, living room, your bedroom, and the guest room. Level 2 is the fun stuff, library, game room, indoor pool. I live up top, penthouse."
The elevator hummed upward, stopping at Level 1. Doors slid open to a softly lit hallway. Aiden stepped out and turned to Steve, voice quieter now.
"Mr. Steve… I'm sorry," he said, the edge of vulnerability slipping through. "I don't blame you for what happened to me. You didn't know I existed. That must've been a shock. I didn't mean what I said back there. I am sorry."
Steve nodded wordlessly, the weight of his own thoughts unreadable. Aiden didn't wait for a reply. He picked up his bag and walked down the hallway, the motion sensors casting pools of soft light as he descended a wooden staircase.
At the bottom, two large double doors stood closed like silent sentinels. Aiden paused, then turned left, sliding open the first door and stepping inside.
His room swallowed him whole.
It was unreal. A full-sized bedroom with muted tones and sleek modern furniture. A spacious walk-in closet yawned open beside a side office lined with shelves. Beyond the glass door, a small patio waited, mist curling in its corners. A pristine bathroom gleamed with chrome and stone.
Aiden dropped his things by the door and began a slow, deliberate lap around the space. The luxury was almost suffocating, a silent reminder that this wasn't the life he'd known.
"We ain't in Philly no more, are we, Will?" he murmured to himself, a faint smirk tracing his lips despite the storm in his chest.
And then, the whisper came.
"Oooh, oooh…Fancy place, not really"
Not from outside, but inside his mind, curling around his thoughts like smoke.
"They build their prisons grand, don't they? The ones who hide behind walls and lights, believing comfort can bury the rot beneath."
A shiver traced Aiden's spine, despite the warmth of the room.
The walls watch. Floors remember every footstep, every secret carried in and out.
His breath caught as the voice wrapped tighter.
"Steve's house… a gilded cage, and you, boy, are the new prisoner."
The steady rhythm of his heartbeat pounded against the dark words.
"Sleep won't save you. Hope won't save you."
The fog outside, thick and suffocating, wasn't just in the air, it seeped into the soul of this place. It hung heavy, hungry.
Aiden swallowed hard, the weight of the entity's cold presence settling like ice in his veins. Shadows flickered at the edges of his vision, dark shapes that breathed and whispered with the night.
The mist is patient. It waits. It feeds.
His mind flickered, visions of the woman in the mist, her wild curls tangled like seaweed, her eyes glowing with ancient hunger. The growl. The hiss. The cold grip at the nape of his neck.
The penthouse no longer felt like refuge. It was a stage. A waiting room. The opening act of a nightmare yet to come.
He closed his eyes and whispered to the darkness inside him, "Maybe Forks won't be so bad after all."
The voice didn't leave.
"Don't fool yourself. Not here. Not ever."
Aiden lay back against the cool sheets, eyes heavy but unwilling to close fully. The room felt too still, too perfect, like the calm before a storm.
"You think this is a sanctuary?" the voice curled in his mind, a slow, sinister caress. "A cage wrapped in satin and steel."
His heart stuttered.
Remember the nights alone. The cold. The silence was so loud it screamed.
Images flickered behind his eyelids the cracked linoleum floor of the shelter where he slept. The empty fridge, humming like a ghost. The nights when hunger gnawed sharp enough to bite.
They call this place 'home' now. But home forgot you. Just like she did.
Aiden clenched his jaw, fighting the tide of despair the voice summoned.
She never wanted you. And neither do they.
The voice grew darker, weaving itself deeper.
"Steve's house, shining like a beacon, a fortress built to hide more than just people. Secrets buried in concrete. Lies folded into the beams. A mask for something rotten beneath."
Images twisted, steel walls bleeding shadows, a silent watcher lurking behind glass. The disassembled motorcycle, a machine stripped down, waiting to be rebuilt or destroyed.
"You are the next to be taken apart. To be remade. Or broken."
A flicker of cold fire danced in Aiden's chest.
"Do you remember what you ran from? The power you had, the will? The fate that promised death?"
His breath hitched as the memories clawed at the edges of his mind, the cold grip of a gun in his hands, the cold glare of his eyes.
"She is waiting. looking. Patient."
And so does he.
Aiden's eyelids fluttered, the room tilting like the fog outside, blurring, bending, swallowing light.
"Don't fall asleep. Not yet."
"Because the dark is hungry, and it will feast."
His muscles tensed, every nerve sharp beneath his skin. The quiet room no longer felt like a refuge. It was a trap.
He fought to hold onto the thread of hope, fragile and thin.
Hope is a lie.
But the night? The night is true.
The whispered voice faded, leaving a cold residue behind, a shadow on his soul as the last flicker of light slipped beneath his eyelids.
Aiden drifted into restless sleep, haunted by dreams stitched from fog and shadow, the dark entity waiting patiently for dawn's weak light to break.