The House That Watches

Cassian Pov

Control is a habit.

It lives in the spine, in the breath, in the way you learn to make silence obey.

Mine used to obey.

Not tonight.

Since the girl arrived, the house hummed differently. The sensors, the cameras, even the damn walls felt restless like something ancient had been dragged inside and refused to sleep.

I stood in the surveillance room, screens flickering in a cold blue glow. Every camera showed the same thing: stillness. The guards at their posts. The empty corridors. The third floor her floor unchanged.

And yet, every time I looked away, the image distorted for half a second.

Like static.

Like something breathing where there shouldn’t be air.

I rewound the feed. Frame by frame.

Nothing.

Just her. Sitting on the bed. Eyes open.

Looking directly into the camera.

No movement. No sound.

Just that unblinking stare as if she knew where the lens was.

The feed crackled.

For a heartbeat, her pupils went completely black.

Then the static vanished.

I blinked.

The screen showed her normal again if you could call that face normal.

I straightened slowly.

“Marco.”

He appeared in the doorway, half-dressed, half-irritated. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Check the east wing’s power grid,” I said. “Something’s off.”

He yawned. “Define off.”

“The house is breathing.”

That woke him up. “Come again?”

“Just do it,” I said.

He left without arguing this time.

I watched the screen again. The Mark on her shoulder pulsed once beneath the fabric faint red glow leaking through cotton. My skin remembered that same heat.

I touched the burn on my palm.

Still there. Still wrong.

The last time I felt power I couldn’t control, I was ten.

And my father was still alive.

He used to sit in his study, whispering to himself after the whiskey took hold.

“We bargain with the dark,” he’d say, glass shaking in his hand.

“Not because we worship it… but because it remembers us.”

I thought he’d gone mad.

Now I wasn’t sure.

The elevator chimed softly behind me.

I turned.

Rian stepped out, coffee in hand, eyes bleary. “Boss. You’re still up.”

“So are you,” I said.

He shrugged. “The house keeps making the dogs bark. Feels like an earthquake trying to crawl under the floor.”

Not an earthquake.

The Mark.

The air thickened, just enough to make my ears ring.

“She’s awake,” I said.

“How the hell do you know?”

I didn’t answer. I just knew.

I left the room, footsteps echoing sharp against the marble. The corridor lights flickered once, twice, then steadied — reacting like a heartbeat to something invisible.

By the time I reached her door, the hum in my blood was unbearable.

I didn’t knock.

The door opened with a hiss of air pressure, like the house itself had been holding its breath.

She was standing by the window this time, not sitting. The moonlight caught the edge of her face — pale, sharp, not soft at all.

The Mark glowed faintly through the thin fabric of her shirt.

“You shouldn’t be awake,” I said.

“I could say the same to you,” she murmured without turning.

Her reflection in the glass looked like someone else entirely — older, colder, haloed in that faint red light.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It just… reacts.”

“To what?”

She looked over her shoulder.

“To you.”

The words landed like a blade between my ribs.

I stepped closer. “You mean the Mark reacts to proximity?”

“I mean it listens when you breathe,” she said. “Like it remembers you.”

“Impossible.”

“Is it?”

The house groaned softly — wood shifting, glass trembling in the frame.

Neither of us moved.

For the first time, I realized how small the room was. How the air between us felt charged, unclean, electric.

“You don’t believe in gods,” she whispered. “But something in you keeps pretending to be one.”

“Careful,” I said.

Her gaze didn’t waver.

“Maybe that’s why it burned you.”

I didn’t think. I crossed the space between us in two steps and grabbed her wrist — not hard, but enough to make her eyes flash.

The Mark on her shoulder flared bright, searing red.

A sharp, invisible pulse burst between us.

Lights flickered. The power cut for half a second.

Every system in the house screamed static through the walls — alarms flickering on, sensors tripping, cameras freezing.

She gasped. I felt it too — heat crawling under my skin, whispering in a language older than fear.

Then it stopped.

Silence again.

I let go slowly. My hand smoked faintly, skin hot but unburned.

Her pulse thundered beneath my fingers before I released her completely.

We just stared at each other — two people caught in a gravity neither of us had chosen.

“You see?” she whispered. “Whatever it is… it doesn’t belong to me.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Her breathing steadied first. Mine didn’t.

I stepped back, forcing my control to settle.

“Get some sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow changes everything.”

“And what happens then?” she asked.

I hesitated at the door. “Then we find out if the Mark wants a master…”

I glanced at my palm, faint smoke curling upward.

“…or if it’s looking for a match.”

The door closed.

The house exhaled.

And for the first time since I’d built my empire, I realized I might have invited something inside that could burn me alive—

and I wouldn’t stop it.