Chapter 9: The Offering Game

Chapter 9: The Offering Game

The projector whirred, and the girl smiled again. And again. Leo frantically fumbled for the switch, plunging the room back into semi-darkness. The sudden silence was a physical blow, but the image remained, seared onto the inside of his eyelids—a grainy, black-and-white smile that had crossed eighty years to mock him personally. They hadn’t just haunted this land. They had seeded the past with warnings, with threats, with their own terrifying awareness. Steffy hadn’t just recorded a tragedy; she had captured the moment the veil had been pierced by their ancient, malevolent consciousness.

He stumbled away from the projector, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The Atlas of Wards sat on the table where he’d left it, a hulking, silent promise of power. This was his only path forward. He dragged the massive tome closer, its cracked leather cover cold beneath his trembling fingers.

He threw it open. The pages were thick, vellum-like, and covered in his aunt's spidery handwriting, but it was a script driven by a frantic urgency he hadn't seen in her journal. The text was a chaotic mix of Latin, what looked like Gaelic, and languages he couldn’t even begin to identify. Beside the text were terrifyingly complex diagrams: celestial charts overlaid with human anatomy, geometric patterns that seemed to shift and writhe on the page, and crude but chilling sketches of the Children, their eyes rendered as dark, swirling vortexes. This wasn't a "how-to" guide. It was the frantic, desperate research of a woman staring into an abyss, and it was utterly, terrifyingly incomprehensible to him. Hope curdled into frustration. He had the weapon, but he couldn't even figure out how to lift it, let alone swing it.

Defeated for the moment, he collapsed into an armchair, the weight of his utter isolation pressing down. He needed an anchor, a reminder of the world he’d left behind, a world where problems were solvable and monsters stayed in books. Without thinking, he pulled his worn leather wallet from his back pocket. He flipped it open to the clear plastic sleeve that had, for the last three years, held the only recent picture of him with his ex-wife, Lisa. It was from a happier time, a beach trip before the burnout and the slow, agonizing decay of their marriage. It was a painful memory, but it was his. It was proof of a life lived.

The sleeve was empty.

A jolt of pure ice shot through his veins. He frantically pulled out every card, every folded receipt, shaking the wallet over the table. Nothing. The photograph was gone.

He told himself not to panic. He must have taken it out. Maybe he’d put it somewhere safe when he first arrived. He checked the desk drawers, the kitchen counter, the small box of personal effects he’d brought with him. Nothing. It had been in his wallet when he went to the Sheriff's station. He knew it. The wallet had been in his pocket the entire time.

A new kind of violation washed over him. They hadn't just gotten into his truck or his house. They had somehow gotten into his pocket. They had taken something from his person. The threshold ward held them out, but what if they had ways of reaching through?

His search grew more frantic, more desperate. He tore through the bedroom, pulling open drawers, checking under the bed. The house was sealed, secure. It had to be here. They left things. The nail, the mud squirrel. If they took something, did they leave something in return? His eyes scanned the room, looking for anything out of place.

He saw it on his nightstand.

Next to his reading lamp sat a small, dark object that hadn’t been there before. It was a dead crow, laid out carefully on its side. Its feathers were a dull, dusty black, and one of its legs was bent at an unnatural angle. Its eye, a single black bead, stared at nothing, yet seemed to hold all the emptiness of the world in its tiny, vacant surface. The faint, cloying scent of rot was just beginning to rise from it.

He stared, his mind refusing to connect the two events. The stolen photograph, a relic of love and loss. The dead bird, a token of decay and ruin. A trade. A substitution.

He backed away, snatching his phone and dialing Clara’s number. He didn’t wait for her to speak.

"They took something," he said, his voice a ragged whisper. "A photograph. From my wallet. It's gone."

"Where was the wallet, Leo?" Clara’s voice was sharp, clinical.

"In my pocket! The whole time!"

"And did they leave something?"

Leo swallowed, his throat dry. "A dead crow. On my nightstand."

A heavy, weary sigh came through the phone. It was the sound of a doctor delivering a grim prognosis she’d delivered a hundred times before. "So, it's begun," she murmured. "The Offering Game."

"The what?"

"It's a more intimate form of claiming," Clara explained, her voice low and grim. "They've moved past marking your territory; now they're marking you. They are drawn to objects with strong emotional resonance. Things you love, things you hate, things that define your past. They see that emotional energy like a bright light."

Her words painted a horrifying picture. His memories, his feelings, were beacons attracting these predators.

"They take it," she continued, "and they absorb that piece of you. They feed on the memory attached to the object. And in its place, they leave a piece of their world. A piece of the rot. A dead thing from the woods, a stone from the riverbed where they drowned. It’s an exchange. An offering. They are systematically replacing your past with their tragedy."

The full implication crashed down on Leo. This was a war of attrition for his very soul. They were eating him, one memory at a time.

"What do I do?" he asked, his voice hollow.

"You give them nothing to take," Clara commanded, her tone leaving no room for argument. "You have to turn your home into a fortress of anonymity. Pack away everything personal. Every photograph, every book you love, every keepsake, every piece of clothing that has sentimental value. Anything that ties you to your past, to your identity. You have to hide yourself from them. Make this house a sterile prison. It's the only way to starve them out."

A sterile prison. The words echoed the cold reality of his situation. He was already a prisoner; now he had to become his own jailer.

After the call ended, Leo stood in the center of the living room, a profound sense of defeat washing over him. Then, the grim determination that had saved him before surged back. He would not be consumed.

He began the grim work. He found empty cardboard boxes in the attic and started the systematic erasure of Leo Vance. The framed photos of his parents went first, their smiling faces disappearing into the darkness of a box. The collection of vintage sci-fi paperbacks he’d cherished since college, each one a memory of a different time in his life, were stacked neatly and sealed away. The worn university sweatshirt he still slept in. The coffee mug from his first design job. The film reels and the projector that had shown him the face of his tormentor.

He worked for hours, a grim-faced curator dismantling the museum of his own life. The house grew colder, more impersonal with every item he packed away. The quirky, cluttered home of his aunt, which had briefly become his own, was stripped bare, its walls empty, its surfaces clear. It was becoming a shell, an anonymous space devoid of warmth or history.

As dusk fell, he sealed the last box and pushed it into a closet. He stood in the living room, looking at the blank walls, the empty shelves. He had followed Clara’s instructions. He had given them nothing to target, nothing to steal. He was safe from the Offering Game.

But as he caught his own reflection in the dark glass of the window, a stranger looked back at him from the empty room. He realized with a chilling certainty that the Children didn't need to take anything else from him tonight. He had already started the work for them, stripping away his own identity with his own two hands.