That night, she dreamed again. 


She was standing in the woods. Suddenly a path lit up in red to a nice lovely house. It was her childhood home, one she hadn't seen since she was twelve. She followed the red path and then went inside. The wallpaper was peeling, the air thick. The hallway light flickered.


And in the reflection of the hallway mirror, she saw it again. The tall figure, half in the shadow, smiling. 


"Sydney..." It whispered.


You've been marked.


"Marked for what?" She asked, her voice trembling. 


The figure tilted its head. The smile widened, cracking its face like porcelain.


"For the debt you blood owes."


She was twisting and turning. Sweating even. Her heart was hammering, the echo of the creature's voice still curling around her mind like smoke. 


For the debt your blood owes.


The words wouldn't stop repeating. She sat there for a long time, staring at her hands, half-expecting them to start rotting away like in some nightmare. But they didn't. They just trembled. 


"What debt? What does that even mean?" She whispered.


The house was too quiet. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand. 03:33 a.m. Figures. Of course it would be. 

She needed air. She needed light, anything but this suffocating stillness. So she went into the kitchen, switched on the light and froze. 


The front door was wide open. 


She was sure she'd locked it.


Her pulse quickened. She stepped closer, slowly, barefoot on the cold tile. The night air was sharp and heavy, and a thin trail of muddy footprints led inside. Stopping halfway across the living room. 


They weren't hers. 


Sydney's throat went dry. She followed the trail with her eyes, heart thudding louder with each step. The prints stopped right in front of the couch, the same one where she'd seen her sleeping double.


Something was lying on it. 


Her hands shook as she reached for the lamp switch. The lights flickered on. 


It was an old photograph, edges burned, resting where the footprints ended. She recognised the house behind the people in it. It was the same childhood home from her dream. A man and a woman stood smiling in front of it, holding a little girl between them. The girl couldn't have been more than four. 


It was Sydney, but the man wasn't her dad. And the woman looked exactly like her. 


Not "similar", not "related". Just exactly like her.


Sydney stumbled back, knocking down the coffee table. 


"No... no, that's not possible..."


The air in the room shifted. From warm to cold and heavy. Like before a storm. The photograph slipped off the couch, landing face-down. When she leaned to pick it up, words were burned into the back of the paper. 


"One must pay so the rest may live."


Then the lights went out.


Darkness swallowed the room whole. For a moment there was only the sound of Sydney's breath. Shallow, panicked and the faint hum of the fridge dying into silence.

Then not long after, came the whisper. 


"Sydney..."


Her name slithered though the dark like a chill wind. She turned, eyes straining to see heart in her throat.

"Stop it! What do you want from me? She shouted. 


The whisper came again, closer this time, right behind her ear.


"To collect."