CHAPTER 15
The house isn’t gone.
It never was.
The ruins pull us back like gravity.
Jack stands in the ashes, jaw set.
“This is where it ends,” he says.
“For who?” I ask.
He looks at me like that answer hurts.
The air thickens. The familiar pressure returns.
Voices rise. Overlapping. Hungry.
Jack takes my hands. Solid. Warm.
“If I stay,” he says, “I won’t be me anymore.”
“And if you go?”
“I die,” he says. “For real.”
The house whispers my name.
Choice again.
Always me.
I step forward.
“No,” I say. “I do.”
The ground cracks.
Something ancient screams.
And the house listens.
