In a small town where true monsters don't hide under the bed, five adopted siblings watch as the fragile balance of their family crumbles after the sudden disappearance of their parents. As they search for answers, what once seemed like mere rare he...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The smoke still clung to the air, thick and suffocating, burning my throat with every breath. I glanced at the burning room, the fire crawling up the walls as if it were alive, pulsing with a silent rage. My eyes stung, and I felt like I was choking, but that wasn't the worst of it. What really terrified me was the silence. A heavy, suffocating silence that filled the entire house, impossible to ignore. There was no sign of them.
Our parents were gone.
That thought kept pounding in my head, a truth I couldn't accept or understand. The smell of burning, the oppressive heat of the flames... but there were no bodies. No clues about where they could've gone, as if they had just vanished into thin air. I stood frozen at the door, while the others tried to make sense of it all. The muffled voices of Ethan and Vincent came from a distance, as if the fire had swallowed up the sounds too.
And then, amidst the confusion and the stifling heat, something cut through my mind: a memory of Lyra. Not of now, not of this moment, but from before. Something I had almost forgotten, buried deep in my mind until the chaos brought it back. A flash. I saw her—not as she was now, but from one of those strange days that seemed so normal until you really thought about it.
I always knew something was off with Lyra. It was like she was caught between two worlds—hers and ours—never fully belonging to either. One day in particular came rushing back, and suddenly, it all clicked. She was sitting at the edge of the pool—not that she liked it, of course. Lyra hated water, and I never understood why until that day. We were all together, swimming and having fun.
I watched her, perched on the edge of the pool, her legs folded awkwardly, holding herself tightly as if even the slightest touch of water was a threat. Her skin was always covered in rashes, red and irritated, but that day it seemed worse. She shot me a quick glance, like she knew I was there but didn't want to call me over. I should've gone to her, said something... but I didn't. And then it happened.
She slipped. Just a small movement, enough for a single drop—just one drop of water—to touch her skin. And it was like she'd been hit with acid. Lyra let out a piercing scream, her skin immediately blistering and bubbling as if the water was boiling on contact. I'll never forget that sound, or the terror on her face.
In that moment, her allergy became something far more than unusual. It was a monster. And she knew it, even if she never said so.
What scares me to this day is that no one else seemed to realize how serious it was. My parents treated it like it was rare, sure, but "manageable." I knew Lyra hated water like nothing else. And the truth is, even back then, I knew she was hiding something deeper, a connection with water no one understood. And honestly, I didn't want to ask.
— Lucas! — Ethan's voice snapped me back to the present, and suddenly the smoke felt more real. I blinked, shaking the memory of Lyra away.
I turned to face Ethan, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a sense of urgency that went beyond the fire in our parents' room. I knew he was struggling not to panic, not to lose control—something that happened more often than he liked to admit.
