Chapter 5: A Father's Confession

Ben clutched the leather-bound pact against his chest as he and Elara hurried through the empty streets of Tourmaline Falls. The pre-dawn air was cold and sharp, and every shadow seemed to hide watching eyes. The ancient book felt warm against his ribs, as if it contained some residual heat from the vision he'd experienced in the hidden chamber.

"My house is closer," Elara said, glancing nervously over her shoulder. "We can study the pact there without—"

"No." Ben's voice was rougher than he'd intended. "I need to confront my father. He's known about this all along, and I'm done pretending otherwise."

Elara stopped walking. "Ben, that might not be safe. If your father's been keeping secrets about the pact, there could be a reason. What if he's working with—"

"He's not working with anyone," Ben interrupted, though uncertainty gnawed at him. "He's scared. I could see it in his eyes yesterday morning. Whatever he knows, whatever he's been hiding, it's been eating him alive."

The walk back to his house felt like a death march. With each step, Ben's resolve wavered a little more. What if his father really was part of some conspiracy to keep the pact secret? What if confronting him only made things worse?

But when he slipped through the front door and found Daniel sitting at the kitchen table in his bathrobe, staring blankly at a cold cup of coffee, Ben knew his instincts had been right. His father looked like a man carrying the weight of the world—or at least carrying the weight of his son's impending doom.

"Dad," Ben said quietly.

Daniel's head snapped up, his eyes immediately focusing on the book in Ben's hands. His face went white as old bone.

"Where did you get that?" Daniel's voice was barely above a whisper.

"From the chamber under the founders' monument." Ben set the pact on the table between them, watching his father flinch away from it like it might bite him. "The same chamber where our ancestor made a deal with a monster over a century ago."

For a long moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the tick of the wall clock and the distant hum of the refrigerator. Daniel stared at the ancient book like it contained his own death sentence.

"You shouldn't have gone there," he said finally. "You shouldn't have touched that thing. Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"I've done what you should have done years ago," Ben shot back. "I found the truth. About the pact, about the Collector, about why children keep disappearing from this town."

"The truth?" Daniel laughed bitterly. "You think you know the truth? You think reading some moldy old book makes you understand what's at stake here?"

"Then tell me!" The words erupted from Ben with more force than he'd intended, years of frustration and fear pouring out at once. "Tell me why you've been lying to me my whole life! Tell me why you wrote my name on that list in your hidden box! Tell me why you've been treating me like I'm already dead!"

Daniel recoiled as if Ben had struck him. For a moment, his careful mask of indifference cracked, revealing the raw anguish underneath.

"Because you are," Daniel whispered. "Because from the moment you were born with that mark on your wrist, you were already gone. I've spent seventeen years watching my son grow up knowing that one day, something would come to take him away, and there was nothing I could do to stop it."

The admission hung in the air between them like a physical thing. Ben felt his anger deflate, replaced by a hollow ache in his chest.

"So you just... gave up? Decided to treat me like a stranger so it would hurt less when I disappeared?"

"I tried to protect you," Daniel said, his voice breaking. "I thought if I kept my distance, if I made you seem less valuable to me, maybe the Collector would choose someone else. Maybe he'd think you weren't worth taking."

"That's not how it works, Dad." Ben opened the pact and turned it toward his father. "It's not about value or worth. It's about bloodlines. About a debt that gets passed down through generations whether we want it or not."

Daniel stared at the ancient pages, his hands trembling. "I know. God help me, I know exactly how it works."

"Then why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you prepare me?"

"Because I watched it happen before." The words came out in a rush, as if Daniel had been holding them back for years. "When I was your age, my best friend was chosen. Tommy Rodriguez. He was seventeen, just like you are now."

Ben remembered the name from his father's hidden list. Tommy Rodriguez - July 1, 1991.

"I was there the night it happened," Daniel continued. "Sleeping over at his house, just like you were at Mikey's. I heard the footsteps, saw the Man in the Suit appear in Tommy's doorway. And I watched my best friend walk away into the darkness, knowing I'd never see him again."

"But you survived," Ben said. "You weren't taken."

"No, I wasn't. Because Tommy was three months older than me. Because his mark appeared first, making him the chosen one from our generation." Daniel's voice was hollow. "I spent the next thirty years thinking I was safe, that I'd escaped the curse. Then you were born, and I saw that spiral on your wrist, and I knew it was all starting over again."

Ben felt pieces clicking into place. "That's why you became a historian. You've been researching the pact, trying to find a way out."

"For seventeen years, I've read every book, every document, every piece of folklore I could find. I've traced the bloodlines, mapped the patterns, counted the days between takings." Daniel's laugh was bitter and defeated. "And in all that time, I never found a single child who escaped once they were marked."

"What about the clause in the pact? The part about a worthy substitute or proving yourself more worthy?"

Daniel's eyes sharpened. "You read that far?"

"I had a vision when I touched the book. I saw the original pact being made." Ben described what he'd witnessed in the hidden chamber, watching his father's expression grow more troubled with each detail.

"The Heart of the Mountain," Daniel murmured. "I've heard references to it in old documents, but I never knew what it meant."

"It's the source of the town's wealth, isn't it? The crystal that makes the tourmaline deposits so rich."

"If it exists, yes. But Ben, even if we could find this crystal, even if we could offer it as a substitute—"

"Dad!"

Both men turned as Allen appeared in the kitchen doorway, his pajamas wrinkled and his hair sticking up at impossible angles. But it was the terror in the ten-year-old's eyes that made Ben's blood run cold.

"I heard them again," Allen said, his voice small and frightened. "The footsteps. But this time they didn't just stop at my door."

"What do you mean?" Ben asked, though he was afraid he already knew.

"The door opened," Allen whispered. "Just like you said happened to Mikey. And there was a man there, all tall and dark, with something shiny on his face."

Daniel shot to his feet, his chair clattering backward. "When? When did this happen?"

"Just now. But he didn't take me." Allen looked confused, almost disappointed. "He just looked at me for a long time, and then he said something weird."

"What did he say?" Ben's heart was hammering against his ribs.

"He said, 'Two prizes are better than one. The debt grows heavier with each passing year.'" Allen wrapped his arms around himself. "What does that mean?"

Ben and Daniel exchanged horrified looks. The Collector wasn't just after Ben anymore. Whatever rules had governed the pact for over a century were changing, adapting.

"It means we're out of time," Daniel said grimly. "The entity is getting stronger, and it's no longer satisfied with taking one child per generation."

"How long do we have?" Ben asked.

Daniel looked at the pact lying open on the table, then at his two sons—one marked for certain death, the other now apparently joining him.

"Eight days until July first," he said. "But if the Collector is already manifesting physically, if he's talking to Allen..." Daniel's voice trailed off.

"What, Dad?"

"I don't think we have eight days anymore. I think he's accelerating the timeline." Daniel ran his hands through his graying hair. "In all my research, I never found any record of the entity appearing to multiple children from the same family before the actual taking."

Ben felt the walls of the kitchen closing in around him. Everything they thought they understood about the pact, about the pattern, was falling apart.

"There has to be something we can do," he said desperately. "Some way to fight back."

Daniel looked at his sons—really looked at them, maybe for the first time in years. When he spoke, his voice was steady for the first time since Ben had returned home.

"Then we'd better figure out what that clause really means," he said. "Because you're right, Ben. I've spent too many years being afraid, and not enough time fighting."

He reached across the table and pulled the pact toward him, his hands no longer trembling as he turned the ancient pages.

"If the Collector wants both of my sons," Daniel said quietly, "he's going to have to go through me first."

Outside, the sun was beginning to rise over Tourmaline Falls, painting the sky in shades of gold and crimson. But Ben could swear he still heard them, even in the growing daylight—the phantom footsteps that had been haunting his nights, growing stronger and more real with each passing hour.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound seemed to whisper a promise: Soon.

Eight days had become something less. The Collector was no longer content to wait for his appointed time.

And now Allen was marked too, drawn into a curse that had been claiming children for over a century.

Ben looked at his father studying the pact with desperate intensity, at his little brother trying to be brave despite the terror in his eyes, and felt something harden in his chest. The Collector might be bound by ancient rules and powered by an otherworldly crystal, but he was still just another bully.

And Ben had never backed down from a bully in his life.

"Dad," he said quietly. "Tell me everything you know about the Heart of the Mountain."