Chapter 2: Marked
Zuru ran.
She didn’t know when her legs had begun moving — only that they carried her away from the room where her father had been consumed, away from the lifeless eyes of her brothers, away from the thing that had turned her home into a silent battlefield.
The hallway walls blurred past her. Family portraits seemed to watch with judgmental eyes, each face frozen in a time before everything had shattered. The once-familiar scent of home had turned rancid, clinging to her skin like smoke from a cursed fire.
She didn’t stop until she reached the security room. Slamming the door shut, she collapsed against it, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her ears rang with silence. Her hands trembled violently.
Then came the footsteps.
Slow. Measured. Echoing down the corridor with unnatural calm. Whoever — whatever — was approaching was in no rush. The house creaked around it, the floorboards groaning under an unfamiliar weight.
Zuru held her breath.
The doorknob twitched.
Her entire body locked. No prayers came to mind. No plan. Just instinct — to survive.
But the door didn’t open.
Instead, a voice pierced the stillness — the same voice that had come from her father, thick with age and venom.
“You cannot run from your blood.”
Zuru’s heart pounded like a drum in her chest. Her body screamed for escape, but her mind was spiraling, clawing for understanding. What was this spirit? Why her family?
Her questions only multiplied when she peeked through the small crack in the wall. What she saw made her blood freeze.
Her brothers — once playful, protective, full of life — stood at the end of the hallway. Their eyes were voids now, empty of anything human. The glow from the marks on their necks pulsed in sync, like a single entity inhabiting two bodies.
Between them stood her youngest sister.
No older than twenty
Zuru’s mouth parted in disbelief.
The girl looked untouched. Clean. Innocent, even. But as she turned slowly to face the guest room, her lips curled into a slight, knowing smile. Then, without breaking eye contact, she tilted her head to the side — revealing the unmistakable burn of a newly formed mark beneath her ear.
It was done. The spirit had found its youngest vessel.
Zuru recoiled, heart splintering. Not her. Not the youngest.
Suddenly, the space around her darkened. The air grew dense. The lightbulb above her flickered once, then blew out. In the suffocating dark, the voice returned — not from beyond the door, but from within her own mind.
“Bloodline is invitation.”
Zuru pressed her hands to her ears, desperate to block it out, but it was too late. The spirit’s presence was already searching her, testing her defenses. The coldness reached inside her chest like a hand curling around her heart.
Then it spoke again.
“You are the last.”
The weight of those words hit her harder than anything else had.
She had watched them fall — one by one. Her father. Her brothers. Her baby sister. Whatever this thing was, it didn’t want revenge. It wanted inheritance. It wasn’t feeding on random victims. It was claiming a legacy.
Zuru burst from the room, driven by a primal need to survive. She flew down the stairs, her feet barely touching the ground, dodging shadows and flickering lights. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t.
The front door was ajar.
A trap?
Maybe.
But she didn’t care.
She sprinted through it, into the dying light of evening, where the normal world still existed — unaware, untouched.
She ran until her lungs burned. Until the house was a distant silhouette behind her. Until she reached the first place that seemed public, safe — a roadside beer parlour just beyond the next street.
She stumbled inside, drawing glances from the people seated under the humming fluorescent lights. No one said a word. They simply stared.
Zuru sank into a chair in the corner, heart still thundering, her skin clammy and pale. She was alive. She was out. But her soul hadn’t escaped.
A toddler waddled past her table, clutching a half-empty bottle of malt. He stopped suddenly, turned, and looked straight into her eyes.
And there — right in the center of his forehead — was a faint, unfamiliar mark.
Not the same as her father’s. Not the same as her siblings’.
This one was cleaner. Simpler. A circle with a sharp diagonal line running through it — like a seal unbroken.
The child smiled.
Zuru’s body went cold.
Maybe she hadn’t outrun it.
Maybe the spirit wasn’t finished.
Maybe…
…it was just beginning...
