Malem’s POV
I thought the message would be the worst of it. I had no idea how wrong I was.
It began with a soft clink beneath the floorboards as I set a mug on my desk. I froze, listening. The city hummed outside my window — distant horns, a dog barking two streets over — but the sound under my feet felt wrong: deliberate, like someone moving through a house that was supposed to be mine alone. I told myself it was nothing. An old building settling. I went back to my laptop and tried to work, but my hands hovered over the keys as if the words might become visible evidence.
At noon, during a rare pocket of quiet, I rose to fetch lunch and noticed the smoke detector in the living room looked different. The casing sat slightly off-center, a hairline gap I had never seen before. There was a
