Finnian was ripped from sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder with desperate urgency.
"Finn, wake up. Now."
His eyes snapped open to find his mother leaning over him, her face pale and drawn in the dim light filtering through his curtains. But this wasn't the gentle, concerned expression he was used to seeing. This was the face of someone who had seen danger approaching and was already three steps ahead of it.
"Mom? What—"
"Shh!" She pressed a finger to his lips, her eyes darting toward his bedroom door. "We don't have much time."
Finnian sat up, his mind still foggy with sleep. Something was wrong—terribly wrong. His mother's auburn hair was disheveled, and she was wearing dark clothes he'd never seen before, practical and form-fitting in a way that suggested they weren't just for comfort.
"What's going on?" he whispered, but she was already pulling him to his feet.
"Listen to me very carefully," she breathed, her voice barely audible. "They've found us. We need to—"
*Thud.*
The sound came from downstairs—a heavy footstep on the hardwood floor of their entryway.
Mrs. Ravenswood went rigid, her grip on Finnian's arm tightening to the point of pain. In the silence that followed, they could hear it clearly: the deliberate, measured sound of someone climbing their stairs.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
"Mom, what—"
"Quiet," she hissed, pulling him toward the corner of his room farthest from the door. Her movements were fluid and controlled, nothing like the gentle mother who made him pancakes every morning.
The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and paused. Then, a voice that made Finnian's blood turn to ice drifted through the house.
"Come out, come out..." Kieran's voice was sing-song, playful, but there was something fundamentally wrong with it now. It echoed strangely, as if coming from multiple directions at once. "You can't hide from me in this little hellhole, you know. I can smell your fear from here."
Finnian stumbled backward, his legs hitting his desk chair. The chair toppled over with a crash that seemed to echo through the house like a gunshot.
His mother spun toward him, her eyes wide with something that might have been terror or fury—or both. But before she could speak, before she could move, the wall behind Finnian exploded inward.
Chunks of drywall and plaster rained down as a figure burst through like the wall was made of paper. But this wasn't pale student from school.
This was the monster from his nightmares made flesh.
Kieran stood in the wreckage of the wall, but he was no longer even attempting to maintain his human disguise. His skin was chalk-white and stretched taut over a frame that was too tall, too angular, too wrong. His limbs had lengthened into spider-like appendages that ended in claws like black knives. His spine curved in an unnatural hunch that made him look like a praying mantis, and his face—
His face was a nightmare of sharp angles and predatory features. His mouth stretched too wide, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth that gleamed in the dim light. His eyes had become black pools that reflected light like an animal's, and they were fixed on Finnian with an intensity that spoke of hunger.
"There you are," Kieran said, his voice now a rasping hiss that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest. "I was starting to think you'd learned to be boring."
Finnian couldn't move, couldn't breathe. This was it—the creature he'd seen at the dojo, the monster that had been stalking him. But seeing it now, in all its horrific glory, was nothing like those brief glimpses. This was real. This was standing in his bedroom, grinning at him with those impossible teeth.
Kieran laughed—a sound like breaking glass and screaming wind. "Look at that beautiful terror," he crooned, taking a step forward. His claws clicked against the hardwood floor. "Finally, no more pretending. No more hiding behind human masks. Just you, me, and the truth."
The creature's gaze was fixed entirely on Finnian, drinking in his fear like wine. It didn't even seem to notice Mrs. Ravenswood standing frozen in the corner.
That was its first mistake.
And it's last.
Mrs. Ravenswood moved.
She didn't run or scream or freeze like any normal person confronted with a monster. Instead, she flowed into motion with a speed and grace that seemed to defy physics. One moment she was pressed against the wall, the next she was behind Kieran, her fist connecting with the base of his elongated neck in a precise strike that sent him stumbling forward.
Kieran's triumphant laughter cut off abruptly, replaced by a grunt of pain and surprise as he turned around to face her.
"You made a critical error," Mrs. Ravenswood said, her voice completely transformed. Gone was the gentle mother's tone, replaced by something cold and authoritative. "You never should have threatened my son."
Kieran spun around with inhuman speed, his claws slashing toward her face. But she was already gone, ducking low and sweeping his legs out from under him in one fluid motion. He crashed to the floor but rolled away before her follow-up kick could connect.
Finnian watched in stunned disbelief as his mother—his ordinary, pancake-making, homework-checking mother—engaged in battle with a literal monster. And she wasn't just holding her own.
She was winning.
Every movement she made was perfect, economical, deadly. When Kieran lunged with his razor-sharp claws, she caught his wrist, redirected his momentum, and used his own force to slam him into the wall. When he tried to use his unnatural speed, she was somehow always one step ahead, blocking his strikes and countering with devastating precision.
"Impossible," Kieran hissed, dark blood trickling from his split lip where her elbow had caught him. "You're just a Guardian. You shouldn't be this strong."
"I'm not just a Guardian," Mrs. Ravenswood replied, settling into a fighting stance. "I'm a mother."
She moved again, faster than Finnian's eyes could follow. Her knee drove up into Kieran's solar plexus, doubling him over, and her clasped hands came down on the back of his neck, sending him crashing to the floor. The floorboards splintered under the impact.
The creature pulled himself up, shaking his head to clear it, but he was clearly hurt. His movements were no longer fluid and predatory—they were desperate, wounded. One of his arms hung at an odd angle, and he favored his left leg.
"This isn't over," Kieran snarled, wiping dark ichor from his mouth.
"We'll see about that," Mrs. Ravenswood said, advancing on him with deadly purpose.
Kieran tried to back toward the window, but she was faster. Her hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat, her fingers finding pressure points that made him convulse. "You want to threaten my son? You want to drag him into your war?"
"Wait—" Kieran gasped, his eyes widening as shadows began to gather around him, trying to pull him into their embrace.
But Mrs. Ravenswood's grip was iron. With her free hand, she struck a precise blow to his temple, then another to his chest. The shadows flickered and died as his concentration shattered.
Her final strike was swift and efficient—a sharp upward thrust to the base of his skull that severed his spinal cord. Kieran's eyes went wide with shock, then vacant. His monstrous form crumpled to the floor, twitching once before going completely still.
Mrs. Ravenswood stood over the body for a moment, breathing hard, her clothes splattered with dark ichor. Then she turned to Finnian, and for just an instant, he saw something cold and terrible in her eyes before they softened back into the warm brown he remembered.
The acrid smell of sulfur began to fade, leaving behind only silence and the sound of Finnian's ragged breathing.