Chapter 2: The Second Feeding

Chapter 2: The Second Feeding

Sleep didn't come. It circled him, a predator unwilling to strike, leaving him to marinate in the cold sweat of his own thoughts. Leo lay on the mattress, the stack of pages resting on his chest like a tombstone. The final, severed sentence echoed in the cavern of his skull, a phantom limb he couldn't stop trying to move.

…he finally saw the face of—

Of whom? The guildmaster? The king’s spymaster? The woman Kaelen thought was his ally? His mind spun out a hundred different possibilities, each more vivid and less satisfying than the last. They were his own clumsy creations, pale imitations of the story’s perfect, inevitable flow. He was an addict cut off from his source, and the withdrawal was a physical agony. A migraine hammered behind his eyes, his hands trembled with a fine tremor, and a nauseous dread churned in his gut.

By dawn, the grey light filtering through the grimy windows felt like an accusation. He had a life to live. A job. Responsibilities. He stumbled into the kitchen, the unpacked boxes looming like silent judges. He needed to call Frank, his boss, tell him he was settled, ready for the next call-out. A burst pipe, a clogged drain—the mundane, tangible problems of the world.

He picked up his phone, his thumb hovering over Frank’s name. But as he looked at the screen, the reflection showed a gaunt stranger with fever-bright eyes. The thought of crawling under a sink, of wrestling with a wrench while his mind screamed for Veridia, was impossible. He couldn't hear the drip of a faucet over the roar of the rain on Veridia’s cobblestones. He dropped the phone back on the counter.

His gaze fell on one of the boxes labeled ‘LIVING ROOM’. His books. His old friends. Maybe that was the answer. Fight fire with fire. Drown out one story with another. He tore the box open, the screech of packing tape a violation of the house’s thick silence. He pulled out a worn paperback, a fantasy epic he’d read a dozen times. He opened it to the first page, his eyes scanning the familiar words.

They were just letters. Black marks on a page. Lifeless and flat. The prose felt clumsy, the world-building thin as onion skin. It was like trying to satisfy a ravenous hunger by eating sawdust. After a few paragraphs, he slammed the book shut, a wave of disgust and despair washing over him. The manuscript hadn't just been a good story; it had ruined all other stories for him. It had rewired his brain, and now everything else tasted like ash.

His phone buzzed, rattling against the countertop. It was Frank. Leo stared at it, his heart pounding. It buzzed again, an insistent, angry sound from a world he no longer belonged to. Answering it would mean lying, pretending he was the same man who had turned the key on this house two days ago. He couldn't. He let it go to voicemail. The silence that followed was heavier than before, filled with the weight of his own dereliction.

He was losing his grip. The story was a parasite, and it was starving. The craving was no longer a mental itch; it was a physical need, a hollow ache that started in his bones and spread outward. He spent the rest of the day pacing the empty rooms, the manuscript clutched in his hand, rereading the pages until the words blurred. He'd find a turn of phrase he'd missed, a clever bit of foreshadowing, and the pleasure would be sharp but fleeting, a ghost of the initial high.

He had to get rid of it.

The thought came to him in a moment of desperate clarity. This thing was a poison. It was controlling him, dismantling his life from the inside out. He couldn't burn it—the idea felt like a sacrilege, like destroying a holy text—but he could return it. He could put it back in the filth and the dark where he found it. Bury the obsession. Seal the tomb. Maybe then, the phantom words would fade.

Clutching the manuscript like a shield, he walked back to the master bedroom. The air grew colder as he approached the closet, the funereal scent of cedar and old dust thickening. He pulled the closet door open, its shriek now sounding like a warning. He knelt, his knees protesting, and looked at the faint outline of the trapdoor under the carpet.

His hands shook as he peeled back the carpet and hooked his fingers through the iron ring. With a grunt, he heaved the heavy door open.

The same foul, subterranean air breathed up at him—mildew, rot, and rust. It was the smell of the story’s birthplace. He switched on his flashlight, its beam cutting through the oppressive black. The crawlspace was exactly as he’d left it: the dirt floor, the skeletal remains of the rat, the thick, ghostly cobwebs.

His plan was simple. Toss the pages in, slam the door shut, and never open it again. He held the manuscript over the dark square, his knuckles white. It was an act of self-preservation. A necessary amputation.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and aimed the flashlight’s beam at the spot where he’d found the pages, the spot where they would now return.

And he froze.

Something was there.

In the dead center of the crawlspace, exactly where the first manuscript had been, sat another stack of paper.

It was identical. The same pristine white, the same crisp edges, the same simple black binder clip holding it all together. It sat upon the damp earth, an impossible island of cleanliness in a sea of decay.

Leo’s breath hitched. A low, strangled sound escaped his throat. It couldn't be. He hadn't put it there. No one had been in the house. He was alone. The logic of the world screamed that this was impossible, but the evidence was right there, illuminated in the trembling beam of his flashlight.

His resolution to escape, his desperate bid for freedom, shattered into a million pieces. This wasn't just a lost manuscript he had found by chance. The crawlspace wasn't just a hole in the ground. It was a source. A wellspring. And it knew he was thirsty.

Slowly, as if in a trance, he lowered himself back into the suffocating darkness. The foul air no longer felt repellent; it felt like a homecoming. He set the first stack of pages down on the dirt, a silent offering. Then, with a hand that no longer trembled but moved with the steady purpose of a devout worshipper, he reached for the new manuscript.

He climbed out, the trapdoor left gaping like an open mouth. He didn’t care to close it. He stumbled back into the living room, his heart a frantic drum of relief and terror. He sat on the floor and looked at the first page. There was no title. It just began.

Kaelen slid the heavy iron key into the lock. It turned with a deafening, grinding click. He pushed the door inward, into the suffocating darkness, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he finally saw the face of the man who had orchestrated his ruin. It was a face he knew better than his own.

Leo smiled, a jagged, broken thing. He was lost. And he was home. He began to read.