It takes nearly a full week for all the deliveries to trickle in.

  Seven days of staring from behind curtains, watching the empty street like it might peel open again and suck him back into the hellscape waiting just beyond the property line. Seven days of that slow, gnawing truth chewing at him: something is out there. Something still wants him. And for once, it isn’t a debt collector, a faux-shaman drug lord, or a cop who hates being told no.

  It’s worse. They watch.

  Hellhounds, prowling just beyond where the protective field ends, invisible unless the mask of reality happens to slip. He feels their hunger in the air like a draft, just waiting for the next flicker, the next glitch in the simulation that’s keeping him safe.

  But the deliveries come. Piece by piece.

  Then the building begins.

  Three days of pure torment. Three days of deciphering directions that read like a terrorist’s diary entry dictated through a Pink Floyd album. Three days of assembling a machine that sidles way too close to the word ritual.

  Aster wipes his hands on his pants, exhaling hard through his nose as he steps back to survey the mess he’s spent the last several days assembling.

  The electrolysis tank sits dead centre, humming faintly, a Frankenstein’s monster of wires, cracked crystals, and tarnished brass fittings. It looks like something a conspiracy theorist built in a fever dream, right before swearing they’d cracked time travel.

  And yet… it’s working.

  A soft, flickering blue glow pulses from the tank, lighting up the dim room in uneven breaths.

  He drags a hand through his hair, strands sticking to his damp forehead, and tries not to overthink it.

  Because when he does?

  His brain lurches sideways.

  Hours spent following cryptic, half-mad instructions—part chemistry, part spiritualist word salad—all stitched together with just enough consistency to keep him hooked. He double-checks everything. Triple-checks. The emulsification steps, the exact pulse frequencies for the crystals, even the stupid chanting part that makes him feel like a divorced cultist trying to magic his wife back.

  And now here it is. Humming. Glowing. Alive.

  He casts a wary eye at the tank.

  Dassie fur, reduced to ash and mixed in. Seashells, ground down. Psychedelics, carefully extracted. All blended in the tank’s bath. He half expects the water to stay its gross yellow-brown, but no—once he adds the dassie fur ash, it shifts. To a vivid, electric blue.

  And he knows enough chemistry to be bothered by that.

  Because that reaction? Not something he recognizes.

  And that colour? Not normal. And why does it glow??

  His gaze flicks to the brass wire running through the centre of the tank, wrapped in coils, now bathing in the electromagnetic pulse generated by the four crystals he positioned just right. That much, at least, is crystal clear (pun fully intended) in the instructions: the elixir will crystallize on the wire over the next twelve hours.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  What happens after that?

  No clue. None. Zip.

  But here he is anyway, standing in a dim, flickering room with a homemade machine that feels just a little too alive, wondering if this is the moment he officially crosses the line from “desperate but sane” to “headlining next week’s front page.”

  Aster rubs at his jaw, the stubble rough against his palm.

  His mind chews on it all, gnawing like a rat in a cage.

  The key is exactly where Mr. Slap-Happy said it’d be.

  The house in his name.

  The list feeling like a prank until every item reacts in ways he can’t begin to explain.

  The tank, insane as it looks, hasn’t exploded yet. Everything is connected. And he can’t escape that truth no matter how hard he tries to stay sceptical.

  Some cosmic joke is unfolding.

  Or his brain has finally yeeted him into a new flavour of madness—and is now leaving physical evidence behind just to be spiteful.

  Either way, he’s in.

  And that terrifies him more than any hallucinated hellbeast ever could.

  It’s too much. Too neat. Too pointed. Like some cosmic joke—or worse, some elaborate con. A hallucination. A trick from a brain that’s been fraying at the edges for years and has finally gone fully off-script, Fight Club-style.

  He grunts and shakes his head, trying to dislodge the spiral before it picks up speed.

  Not now. Not tonight.

  Everything is set. He follows the damn recipe, down to the chanting that still makes him want to look for hidden cameras so he can be absolutely sure that no one ever needs to see him do that.

  It’s running.

  It’ll take twelve hours.

  No use pacing like an idiot.

  He double-checks the wires, the vents, the crystals, the ridiculous chalk glyphs at his feet—because why not, sure, let’s throw some necromancy in while we’re at it. Satisfied, or as satisfied as a man can be while standing over a suspicious bioluminescent tank, he gives a sharp nod, flicks off the lights, and pulls the door closed.

  Out in the living room, he drops onto the couch like a puppet with its strings cut. His shoulders sag, every muscle in his body protesting at once. The weight of exhaustion hits him all at once—not the jittery kind, but the deep, bone-deep version that makes you feel like you might dissolve into the cushions and never reassemble.

  The last few nights have been a blur of stress and insomnia. But now? Now he can finally stop. At least for twelve hours.

  He flicks on the TV, grabbing the most brain-dead thing he can find, just to drown out the static in his head.

  The soft flicker of the screen casts a dim, shifting glow across the room. Aster’s eyes slip shut, the tension in his chest loosening by painful inches.

  And before he can fight it, sleep starts to pull him under.

  The TV hums quietly. His breathing slows. His fingers go slack.

  And in the room next door, the tank keeps working.

  Unseen, the air around the crystals begins to crackle—faint at first, like static building between invisible wires. The hum deepens by degrees, just under the threshold of hearing.

  The vibrations start subtle. Barely there. The kind of thing you’d only notice if you’re already on edge, which, thankfully, Aster isn’t right now.

  He’s out cold.

  And while he sleeps, the transformation unfolds—slow, quiet, inexorable.

  The liquid in the tank shimmers. The blue deepens. Crystals pulse in time with some unseen beat, a rhythm not meant for human ears.

  The night passes, and the thing in the tank grows.

  Alive, in its own way.

  Becoming.

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