Elias Finch’s confession was a dam breaking. He wasn’t just a witness; he had been an unwitting enabler, his guilt a heavy shroud.
“They talked about ‘bound power’,” Elias reiterated, his gaze fixed on some point beyond us. We were huddled in a small, anonymous coffee shop, far from Sterling Heights. “But it sounded like they thought they were making a deal. Like they could control it.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a chilling whisper. “After I saw what Eleanor looked like on the news… I went back to that forum Claire found. The one about the Shadow-Ghoul.”
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “It wasn’t just lore. It was a warning.”
“What kind of warning?” I pressed, my heart seizing in my chest.
“The Ghoul,” Elias explained, his eyes wide with a newfound horror, “it’s not a spirit they *control*. It’s a parasite. It consumes. And it grows with each feeding. It was never meant to be a servant.”
He paused, gathering himself. “The forum posts, they talked about how it turns on its summoners. How it latches onto them if its primary anchor dies or weakens too much. It needs a constant source. And if it can’t get it, it starts to feed on its hosts.”
A cold dread seeped into my bones. “Brandon and Sierra…”
“They were losing control,” Elias confirmed, his voice barely audible. “The Ghoul was weakening Eleanor too fast. It needed more. And they weren’t strong enough to keep it tethered just to her.”
He looked directly at me, his gaze pleading. “They were becoming its next willing hosts. Slowly, subtly, it was corrupting them, pushing them to do more, to become more desperate. Their ambition was turning against them, making them its puppets.”
The truth was far more insidious than I had imagined. Brandon and Sierra weren’t just malicious; they were becoming enslaved by their own creation. The “unforeseen side effect” wasn’t just Eleanor’s suffering; it was their own impending doom. The Ghoul wasn’t just a tool; it was a predator, and it had its sights set on them next.
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