Lahat ng Kabanata ng Daddy's Little Secret : Kabanata 131 - Kabanata 140

Jamal’s POVThe world shook again. The heat from the pit rolled over me until sweat dripped down my neck. I tried to stand but the ground kept trembling under my feet.The mimic stared at the rising creature, then turned sharply toward me.“You feel that, do you not,” she whispered.I ignored her. “Melissa. Stay out. Please stay out.”The pit roared again. A sound like fire snapping against stone.The mimic smiled. “She is stepping in.”I froze. “No. She would not.”“Oh she would,” the mimic said. “She chose you. She will always walk toward danger if you stand inside it.”“Melissa,” I shouted. “Do not enter. Stay where you are.”A sharp crack ripped across the chamber ceiling.A voice drifted through it.“Jamal…”My heart stopped.I turned toward the gate above. A thin flash of white cut across the darkness like lightning.Her voice again. Closer this time.“Jamal… I am here.”The mimic let out a slow delighted breath. “She follows the thread. How lovely.”“Do not touch her,” I warned

Jamal’s POVDead men do not clap.That was the first thought that cut through my mind as the shadow stepped fully into the light.The second was worse.He looks exactly the same.Not scarred. Not broken the way a man should look after dying the way he did. His suit was pristine. His smile easy. Familiar in the most poisonous way possible.Alive.My hands started shaking before I could stop them.Melissa felt it instantly. Her grip tightened around my arm, grounding me even as my chest hollowed out.“No,” I said hoarsely. “That’s not possible.”He chuckled, slow and indulgent, like I was a child refusing medicine. “You always did struggle with reality when it inconvenienced you.”The creature behind us growled, uneasy now, its massive form shrinking back into the pit as if it knew its place.That terrified me more than anything else.“You died,” I said. “I watched you...”“Yes,” he interrupted smoothly. “You watched what I allowed you to see.”Melissa’s breath hitched beside me. I felt

Melissa’s POVThe first thing I felt was silence, not the quiet kind and not the kind that comes when a room empties or when night falls over a city.This silence felt alive, thick and pressing against my skin like deep water.Then came the cold.It seeped into my bones slowly, like it had been waiting for me.I opened my eyes and light stretched endlessly around me, pale and shifting like fog made of glass. There was no floor, no ceiling and just layers of glowing white drifting in slow currents.For one terrifying second, I thought I was falling but when I tried to move, my feet met something solid, invisible, but steady.“Jamal?” My voice sounded strange. Distant like it had to travel miles just to reach my own ears.Nothing answered and my chest tightened. I forced myself to breathe.Think and do not panic cos panic wastes time.I turned slowly and there were shapes in the distance. Tall structures made of light and shadow twisting together. They looked like pillars, but they move

Melissa’s POVThe first thing I felt was weight.Not physical weight, not pain and not exhaustion but thorough responsibility.It pressed against my chest like a second heartbeat, slow and enormous and patient.I was lying on something cold. Stone, maybe. Or something that wanted to be stone.Voices reached me, muffled, like I was underwater.“Melissa… stay with me.”Jamal.I forced my eyes open and light stabbed into my vision, then softened. Shapes came into focus slowly. Dark crystal pillars with fractured shadows that ruined cathedral space.And Jamal, he was kneeling over me, hands hovering near my shoulders like he was afraid touching me too hard might break me.Relief flooded his face when my eyes focused.“You are here,” he said, voice raw. “You are actually here.”“I am,” I whispered.But my voice did not sound right.It layered. Echoed. Like two tones trying to occupy the same space.Jamal heard it too. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, even though he tried to hide it.

Melissa’s POVThe symbol pulsed.Not with light.With time.I could feel it in my teeth. In my pulse. In the space between heartbeats.Tick.Not a sound. A sensation.Tick.Zara crouched near the carved lines, careful not to touch them. “Okay. I am going to need a lot more explanation than ‘countdown.’”I swallowed, forcing my eyes to stay on the symbol even though every instinct told me to look away.“It is not counting down to destruction,” I said slowly.Jamal folded his arms, scanning the chamber, always watching for threats. “That sounds like the beginning of a sentence that ends with something worse.”“It is counting down to replacement,” I said.Silence filled the bone chamber.Zara straightened slowly. “Replacement of what.”I exhaled slowly.“Reality,” I said.The word hung in the air like a loaded weapon.Jamal shook his head once. “No. Explain that in smaller pieces.”I nodded, trying to organize thoughts that still felt too big for my skull.“When I touched the core… I did