Chapter 002
1055 Words
The last lecture bell rang across Crown University, and students spilled through the gates in noisy clusters.
A black Mercedes glided to a stop beneath the old sycamores, its paint gleaming under the pale spring sunlight.
From the crowd, Rosie Winters stepped out—pretty, proud, dressed in lavender.
Her smile brightened the air, until she saw the man waiting by the car.
“Ethan Blake?” Her tone instantly cooled. “Why are you here? Where’s my sister?”
The man by the car only lowered his gaze. He typed something quickly on his phone and turned the screen toward her:
Lillian got called to a meeting. She asked me to come instead.
Rosie’s lips tightened. “Of course she did,” she muttered, glancing around. Students were still everywhere.
The last thing she needed was for people to see her mute brother-in-law picking her up.
She slammed the door and snapped through the open window,
“Drive.”
Ethan obeyed without a word, his expression unreadable as the car slid away from the gate, leaving the laughter behind.
The ride home was silent but for the low hum of the engine.
Rosie scrolled her phone with quick, angry swipes before dialing her sister.
“Lillian, didn’t you say you’d pick me up? Why did you send him?”
“Something came up? You could’ve just told me—I could’ve taken a cab!”
She hung up and stared at the back of Ethan’s headrest, her irritation sharpening.
“Ethan, why don’t you just end it? Divorce her. Take the compensation and disappear. At least you’d stop being the family joke.”
Silence.
She snorted softly. “Oh right. You can’t even answer.”
Ethan’s hands tightened on the wheel. He’d heard the same words countless times over four long years.
Each repetition cut less like insult, more like a dull blade grinding into bone.
They arrived at the Winters villa compound as dusk fell. Rosie leapt out the instant the car stopped.
Ethan parked carefully, switched off the ignition, and sat still for a moment before going upstairs to his room.
The house was warm and bright, laughter echoing faintly from downstairs. Yet for him, every corner felt colder than the night outside.
He passed by Lillian’s room—empty. His wife had been absent all week.
They had shared a roof for four years, yet never once a conversation that mattered. To her, he was less husband than superstition—a charm that had once “cured” her mysterious illness.
Tonight, however, something inside him was stirring again.
A sharp pulse flared behind his eyes.
He went to his desk, crossed out the day’s date—March 30—and whispered voicelessly: Three years.
From the night of that storm, from the injection that stole his speech, he had counted every hour.
If that old man hadn’t lied, this silence would end tonight.
He sat cross-legged on the bed, stripped off his shirt, and waited.
The veins under his skin throbbed faintly blue.
Downstairs, voices mingled with the scent of freshly brewed tea.
Victoria Hayes, Lillian’s mother, had a guest—a young man in a sleek gray suit, exuding easy confidence.
“Julian, you should have told me sooner you were back in Crown City,” Victoria said with warmth. “Your mother keeps saying how brilliant you’ve become.”
Julian Hart smiled modestly. “Just finished my degree abroad, Aunt Victoria. I wanted to surprise you—and Lillian.”
He offered her a small box. Inside lay a jade bracelet glowing softly under the chandelier.
“You shouldn’t have!” Victoria laughed, but her eyes shone with pleasure. “Your mother raised you well.”
As they chatted, she couldn’t help comparing him to the man upstairs—mute, plain, invisible.
Julian was everything she had dreamed for her daughter: polished, ambitious, born to their world.
Ethan Blake, in her eyes, was a mistake extended by politeness.
“Julian,” she said sweetly, “you must stay for dinner. Lillian will be back by ten.”
“I’d love to,” he replied, glancing around. “I heard she’s married now. Is her husband here?”
Victoria’s face hardened. “Upstairs somewhere. Doing God knows what.”
Julian’s smile didn’t falter. “I’d like to meet him.”
“Ethan Blake!” Victoria called toward the staircase. “We have a guest. Are you too ashamed to come down?”
No reply. Only the ticking of the clock.
Julian leaned back on the sofa, voice mild but edged. “I suppose rumors were true, then.”
“Rosie!” Victoria barked. “Go get him. Don’t make Julian think our family has no manners.”
Rosie appeared at the landing, hair still damp from her shower. “He’s probably sleeping. Can’t this wait?”
“Do as I say!” her mother snapped.
Rosie sighed, muttering under her breath, and climbed to the second floor.
She didn’t like Julian either; his politeness felt rehearsed, his eyes too calculating. But defying her mother only worsened things.
At the end of the corridor, light seeped under Ethan’s door.
She hesitated a second before knocking.
“Ethan, Mom wants you downstairs.”
No answer.
She frowned, reached for the handle—
—and froze as a sound ripped through the room.
It wasn’t a scream, not exactly; more like a hundred voices overlapping in pain, rising and collapsing in a single breath.
“God…” she whispered, pushing the door open.
The smell hit her first—metal, ozone, something burning.
Ethan was on the bed, body convulsing, skin glistening dark as tar. Black fluid seeped from his pores, hissing where it touched the sheets.
His eyes snapped open—black, alive, terrifying.
Rosie screamed and stumbled backward, crashing into the hallway wall before bolting downstairs.
“Mom! He—he’s dying! Something’s wrong with him!”
Ethan’s entire body was slick with black residue, his breath ragged but strong. The air shimmered faintly, the light bending around him like heat waves.
Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions stopped. His chest rose once, twice—then stillness.
And from his throat, after three years of silence, came the faintest whisper of a voice—
“Three years… are over.”
- Writer
