Chapter 15 - Vigil

Emma had fallen asleep, her breathing steady despite the weight of everything they had uncovered. Across the dimly lit room, Holloway sat with the book open in his hands, his fingers tracing its worn edges.

Holloway: "This book… it's strange. No scientific knowledge, no structured beginning, no credited author. It almost reads like a relic rather than a text."

Kath sat by the window, awake despite the late hour.

Kath: "Yes, and parts of it are lost to time. Some pages are damaged, faded, unreadable."

Holloway: "Where did you even find this?"

Kath: "In the old man's house."

Holloway looked up, his expression sharpening.

Holloway: "Old man?"

Kath: "Yeah, he was an old man who lived in the missing boy's apartment complex. We thought he might have answers, but…" She hesitated. "He was found murdered. The book was hidden."

A heavy silence settled between them.

Holloway flipped through its brittle pages, his eyes landing on a passage.

"The eye is not watching you. It is watching for you."

He read the words aloud, his voice quiet but weighted.

Holloway: "I never understood what this meant. If the eye isn't watching us… then what is it watching? Is it trying to protect us? If so, from what?"

Kath: "i don't know. Right now, none of this makes sense. But if this book has survived all these years, someone must have wanted its message to be found. Maybe time will reveal its meaning."

Holloway's fingers stopped on a symbol, an eye, but different from the others they had seen before. This one had a single tear trailing down from it.

Holloway: "Even the eye… it's crying in this version."

He exhaled, leaning back.

Holloway: "Is this a cult?"

Kath: "It's possible. And if it is, they're dangerous. They don't just manipulate people. They use children."

Holloway's grip on the book tightened.

Holloway: "Yeah… They use the pillars of society, the innocent, the ones who should be protected, to instill fear. Because nothing shatters the human spirit more than seeing what should be pure turned into a weapon."

Kath: "And the worst part? It works. People can ignore wars, corruption, and crime, but when children become tools of destruction, it breaks something fundamental in them. It makes them feel powerless… and fear breeds control."

Holloway: "Maybe that's the goal. To hollow people out, make them believe there's no saving the world. A broken world is easier to rule."

Kath: "Or maybe it's worse than that. Maybe they don't care about ruling at all. Maybe they just want to prove that nothing is sacred, that even the most innocent can be turned into monsters."

Holloway fell silent, staring at the crying eye. The ink, aged and faded, almost looked like real tears bleeding into the page.

Kath exhaled, arms crossed as she stared at the book in Holloway's hands. The dim light cast shadows across the room, stretching their figures against the walls like ghosts of the past.

Holloway: "A lot of people must be involved in this."

Kath: "has to be it. If not, then…" She hesitated. "Then we'd be dealing with something supernatural. And that's not logical."

A sharp cry shattered the silence.

Emma: "Alex… Alex, no… No, no, no… Aleeex!"

She didn't wake, just kept whimpering, trapped in whatever nightmare had claimed her.

Holloway glanced at her, his expression unreadable.

Holloway: "Sleep can be exhausting instead of restful… when dreams turn to nightmares."

Kath watched Emma shift, her fingers curling into the fabric of the couch as if trying to hold onto something or someone who wasn't there.

Holloway turned his gaze back to the book, flipping to another page. His jaw tightened.

Holloway: "A cult or a demon, I don't care. I'll make them pay for what they've done."