WHY?!

Robert stormed in, his anger unrestrained, his voice cutting through the air.
“I’m exhausted,” he snapped. “How could my ears catch the sound of my daughter screaming?”

Lara’s body trembled instinctively. She rushed toward him, panic flooding her movements. Her hands pressed to his chest, stroking it in hurried, pleading motions.
“Please, Robert,” she said, her voice breaking yet controlled. “She had a vile nightmare—nothing more. Please… if you wish to punish her, imagine that I am her. Punish me instead. Please.”

Her hands moved restlessly—at times caressing his chest, at others pressing against it with sudden force, as if some part of her wished him harm without her consent. The intention was not conscious; it simply surfaced, unbidden, through her touch.

Then she caught the scent—his cologne, heavy and familiar, tangled with the sharp bitterness of alcohol. It clung to him, suffocating.

Suzy stirred.
She woke up.

Lara’s lips trembled like a leaf caught in a bitter northern gale. Robert had ascended to a level of depravity that transcended mere human anger; he was a vessel for something demonic. With a roar of mindless fury, he kicked a heavy wooden chair, sending it crashing through the window. The glass didn’t just break—it shrieked, shattering into a thousand jagged diamonds that scattered across the stone floor.

Through the haze of terror, Lara turned toward her daughter. Her voice was a broken rasp, a desperate plea from the depths of her soul: "Suzanne… get out! Go to the cellar… Now!!"

But little Suzanne, with a heart too loyal for her own safety, did not flee. She lunged forward, her tiny fists bunched in her nightgown, sobbing with a heat that scorched her cheeks: "Papa, stop! Please… leave Mama alone!"

Robert was deaf—blinded by the cheap wine and the black bile of his own rage. His calloused hand lunged forward, burying his fingers into Lara’s hair with a sickening yank. With barbaric force, he began to slam her head against the cold, unyielding stone wall. The sound of her skull meeting the masonry thudded through the room like a funeral drum.

Blood bloomed across her forehead. The world tilted, dissolved into a blur of grey shadows and muffled echoes, as if she were drowning in deep, freezing water. She collapsed, her strength failing, her vision fracturing into a thousand broken pieces.

It was then that Suzanne intervened. With a child’s hopeless bravery, she threw herself at her father’s legs, hitting him, trying to claw her mother back from the brink. The monster did not hesitate. He snatched the girl by her collar, and as he stumbled in his drunken delirium, his hand found a jagged shard of glass from the broken pane.

In a heartbeat—a single, silent pulse where time itself stopped—the shard swept across the child’s throat.

The world went still. Suzanne slipped from his grip like a rag doll, her small body hitting the floor with a hollow thud, already soaking in a pool of her own innocent lifeblood. Robert stood frozen, a statue of horror, staring at his hands as the realization of his sin began to pierce through his stupor.

At that moment, a single, warm drop of blood trailed down Lara’s forehead and seeped into her eye. Her vision turned a violent, visceral red. It was a baptism of gore. She forced her eyes open, the world stained crimson, only to find the ultimate nightmare staring back at her.

Suzy… her little witch… her only light… lay slaughtered in the dark.