The night was gone.

Gabriel’s body ached, his ribs pulsing with pain as he slowly stirred, his mind struggling to bridge the gap between memory and reality. He was lying on something cold, damp,.stone.

His eyes fluttered open.

And what he saw made his stomach lurch.

The house,.Evelyn’s house,.was gone.

Not destroyed.

Not burned to the ground.

Gone.

He was no longer inside the dimly lit room, no longer surrounded by bleeding walls and whispering shadows. He was outside, sprawled against cracked pavement beneath the sickly glow of a dying street lamp.

The lot where the house had stood was now a skeletal ruin, its remains crumbling under the weight of time. The windows were shattered, their frames blackened. The front steps, where Isabelle had led him inside just hours ago, were splintered, overtaken by ivy.

Gabriel’s pulse pounded against his skull.

He pushed himself upright, biting back a wince as his ribs protested. His breath came slow and controlled, though his mind was anything but.

How?

His last memory was inside. Evelyn levitating. Shadows stretching. His body being hurled.

Now, he was here.

Outside a house that had been abandoned for years.

The wind picked up, whistling through the ruins, rattling the brittle remains of wooden beams. The entire street felt empty. Too empty.

Then, his phone rang.

Gabriel tensed. **The sound shouldn’t have existed in this silence.**A shrill, invasive cry against the stillness.

He reached into his coat pocket, pulling out the old, battered phone. No caller ID.

His thumb hovered over the screen.

Then, it answered itself.

A breath hissed through the speaker.

Cold. Measured. Waiting.

Then, a whisper.

"Run, Gabriel."

The line went dead.

And behind him, something moved inside the ruins of the house.

The Vatican’s Warning, The First Signs of Madness

The phone in Gabriel’s hand was cold. Not like plastic or metal, but like something left in a grave.

The whisper still echoed in his mind.

"Run, Gabriel."

The call had ended, but the silence it left behind felt louder. Thicker.

A gust of wind slithered through the ruins behind him, shifting the debris. The house,.or what was left of it,.stood hollow and broken, its skeletal frame groaning as if something inside was breathing.

Gabriel turned toward it slowly.

And then, a flicker.

For a heartbeat, the house wasn’t abandoned.

The windows glowed with candlelight. The door was whole. The scent of incense and burnt wax curled through the air, the same scent from inside Evelyn’s room.

A shadow moved past the upstairs window.

Gabriel’s fingers tensed around the phone.

Then, it was gone.

The ruin returned. Charred wood. Hollow windows. The stench of rain on rot.

His breathing was slow. Controlled.

But inside his chest, his heart was hammering.

The Vatican’s Warning

A vibration rattled in his palm. His phone, another call.

Gabriel glanced down.

This time, there was a caller ID.

UNKNOWN.

His pulse slowed.

No one should have this number.

Not anymore.

Against better judgment, he answered.

A pause.

A breath.

Then,a voice he hadn’t heard in ten years.

"You never should have gone back there, Gabriel."

Gabriel’s jaw clenched. His blood went cold.

The voice belonged to Cardinal Dario Bellucci.

His former mentor. The one who had abandoned him.

The one who had helped erase him from the Vatican archives.

"Tell me what’s happening," Gabriel said, his voice low.

"You already know," Bellucci answered. "You were meant to die that night. The Vatican buried you because you interfered with something that was never yours to stop."

The Cardinal’s voice sharpened.

"That house was abandoned years ago, Gabriel. There was never a family."

Gabriel’s stomach twisted.

"That’s not true."

"Isn’t it?" Bellucci said darkly.

Something moved behind Gabriel.

A slow shuffle of feet across stone.

He turned fast, too fast. The world tilted for a moment, the shadows stretching, shifting, the ruins warping at the edges.

But there was nothing there.

Just the wind.

Bellucci’s voice was a whisper now.

"You saw what it wanted you to see. The girl. The mother. The house. None of it was real."

Gabriel’s breath slowed.

A tight, sinking feeling coiled in his chest.

"Then what the hell did I exorcise?"

Silence.

Then, the Cardinal’s final words.

"You need to leave before it finishes what it started."

The call cut off.

But before the silence could settle, before Gabriel could even process the words

A voice rasped behind him.

"You’re already too late."

The First Signs of Madness

Gabriel spun, his hand reaching for the dagger at his waist.

No one was there.

Only his own shadow cast against the ruins.

The wind howled through the empty street, but it wasn’t just wind anymore.

There were whispers in it.

"You were never meant to survive, Gabriel."

"You saw what it wanted you to see."

"Run."

The world tilted again.

The ruins blurred at the edges, twisting

For a flicker of a moment, Gabriel wasn’t in Rome anymore.

He was somewhere else. Somewhere old. Somewhere buried.

And in the distance, a cathedral loomed.

He blinked,and it was gone.

But the nausea lingered.

His pulse hammered against his ribs, his vision adjusting too slow, his body aching like something had been pulling him from the inside out.

Gabriel ran a hand down his face. His skin felt too warm, his breath coming sharp.

Was it the demon? Was it him?

A slow, creeping thought slithered into his mind.

What if this wasn’t just possession?

What if the Vatican had erased him not because of what he had done

but because of what had been done to him?

The streetlights flickered violently.

And somewhere in the distance

Something laughed.