As the first pale light of dawn crept through the window, the morning silence felt heavier than usual. The lingering echo of that strange midnight bell and a lingering sense of unnameable dread still frosted the edges of Viktor's mind. He couldn't stay in bed any longer. Alia was fast asleep, exhausted her face looking remarkably peaceful after the violent storm of tears and emotional turbulence that had racked her all night. Leaving her behind, Viktor slipped out of the room with quiet, calculated steps. An unfamiliar restlessness hammered against his ribs like a war drum. Even this fresh morning light brought him no peace; his subconscious kept pulling him toward answers that threatened to rewrite his entire existence and relationship. He marched straight toward his father's private study—the domain of the man whose towering shadow and iron discipline had loomed over his life like an unmovable mountain.
Walking down the long, echoing corridor, Viktor's feet felt heavier with every step as he approached the heavy oak doors of his father's study. A faint sliver of light leaked through the gap beneath the door. He knew his father hadn't slept; the older man was likely awake long before the first hint of dawn, wrapped in his eternal solitude. Without knocking or hesitating, Viktor pushed the heavy door open and stepped straight inside. The atmosphere within the room was thick and suffocating surrounded by towering bookshelves, antique artifacts, and stern, solemn portraits of family ancestors hanging rigidly on the walls. Right in the center of this grim, oppressive environment sat his father, leaning back in a massive leather armchair. His face bore less of the marks of aging and more of the chilling, calculating stamp of ruthless authority. This suffocating silence only amplified the creeping dread inside Viktor's chest.
Sensing Viktor's presence, his father slowly lifted his head. When that sharp, ice-cold gaze locked onto Viktor, the temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree. A single glance from those eyes was enough to send a freezing shiver racing down Viktor's spine. Yet, today, there was no room for fear or hesitation inside Viktor; instead, a fierce defiance boiled within him—the dangerous quiet right before an explosion. He walked right up to the front of his father's desk. His jaw was clenched, his gaze razor-sharp, and his breathing heavy. Unable to hold back a second longer, he unleashed the questions that had been tearing him apart, confronting the man who had given him life but whose true intentions he had never been able to read. Shattering the heavy stillness of the room, Viktor's deep, challenging voice echoed off the walls.
Looking straight into his father's unblinking eyes, Viktor spoke with fierce, unyielding resolve: "Father, stop playing games. I know you know everything. The tolling of that bell last night, the storm raging inside my head, and Alia's frantic, terrified screams none of this is a coincidence. What kind of twisted game are all of you playing with my life? Why is Alia so terrified? What curse is she constantly warning me about? What is it that you are hiding from me things that I, and I alone, have the right to know? You are going to give me answers today, Father! No more secrets, no more lies, no matter how terrifying the truth turns out to be!" At Viktor's sudden and direct challenge, the muscles in his father's face twitched faintly, but the ruthless chill in his eyes didn't fade by an inch. With agonizing slowness, the older man rested his hands on the desk, looking at Viktor not as his own flesh and blood, but as an old adversary across a battlefield. Amidst that suffocating tension, as his father finally parted his lips to speak, it felt as though a single sentence was about to shatter their family's meticulously constructed world of lies into irreparable dust.
Hearing such an unexpected and indifferent response from his father made Viktor's blood boil. Just as he was about to press further, his father leaned back against his chair and replied in a chillingly detached tone, "I know nothing about any of this... handle your own problems, Viktor."
Without giving Viktor a single second to respond or blocking his path further, the older man stood up from his desk and walked away toward an inner private room, the heavy door clicking shut behind him.
While Viktor stood frozen in sheer disbelief and frustration at his father's bizarre dismissiveness, two familiar silhouettes stepped out from the deep shadows of the study his two sisters, Katrina and Anna.
Katrina's face bore a mix of cynical tension and deep anxiety, while Anna approached Viktor with quick, cautious steps. Lowering her voice to a nervous whisper, Anna said, "Brother... don't believe a word of what Dad just said. Whatever you think is going on, the danger surrounding us is far bigger than you can possibly imagine..."
The words hovering on the tip of Anna's tongue dissolved into the heavy, suffocating air. At that exact split second, Katrina moved with lightning speed, stepping forward to press a sharp, silencing gesture against Anna's lips—a sudden, frantic warning painted in a language of absolute terror. Katrina's eyes widened to their limits, darting nervously toward the shadowy corners of the vast study as if the very walls possessed ears, and a single raised voice could summon an invisible, unnameable horror.
The temperature inside the room plummeted, the air turning as biting and frost-bitten as a Siberian winter night. Viktor could no longer contain the boiling rage and desperate confusion tearing through his veins. The veins at his temples throbbed violently, his jaw locked so tight it ached, and his voice dropped into a low, menacing rasp. "Katrina, Anna what in God's name are both of you hiding from me? Why did Father just walk away like a coward? And that bell last night... the one that hammered against the inside of my skull like a war drum what does it mean? You are going to tell me right now, or I swear I will tear this entire house down to its foundation!"
Katrina whipped her head around, sweeping a razor-sharp, paranoid gaze across the room, ensuring the heavy oak doors remained tightly sealed. Slowly, she crept closer to Viktor, her boots making not a single sound against the Persian rug. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled with a chilling, visceral dread. "Viktor... can't you feel it? Can't you understand a single fragment of what is happening? The answers you are hunting for aren't just secrets; they are anchored in a past so dark, so twisted, that once you see the truth, your entire existence will shatter. Father didn't tell you because he wanted to protect you from the abyss... but it's too late now. The machine has already started moving, and nothing on this earth can stop it."
Anna, shivering violently, reached out and clawed desperately at Katrina's sleeve, her eyes brimming with unshed tears as she stared up at her brother. "Brother... do you honestly think Alia is safe right now, left all alone in that room? That bell last night wasn't just a sound it was a beacon, a countdown. The curse that has hunted our bloodline for generations has finally tracked us down to this very doorstep. What Alia saw in her nightmare last night wasn't just a random flash of terror... she saw something inside you, Viktor. Something waking up. Something you don't even know about yourself yet!"
Shattering the freezing, suffocating stillness of the room, a familiar yet impossible sound echoed from the corridor the faint, unsteady scrape of barefoot steps.
Viktor, Katrina, and Anna all snapped their heads toward the open doorway like they had been struck by lightning. Stepping out of the dimly lit hallway and into the oppressive shadows of the study stood Alia.
Her eyes were still red and swollen from hours of crying, her face deathly pale, and her hair loose and tangled. Wrapped loosely in a simple nightgown, she looked like a fragile bird battered by a ferocious storm. How she had managed to walk all the way here from the bedroom and how much of their whispered conversation she had overheard remained a chilling mystery.
Without uttering a single word, Alia walked forward with a vacant, haunted stare fixed entirely on Viktor. Her legs trembled with every step, yet the expression in her eyes held the terrifying weight of an undeniable, apocalyptic truth. Closing the final distance between them, she stopped right in front of him. With agonizing slowness, her ice-cold fingers reached out and pressed flat against the center of Viktor's chest right over the place where an unknown, monstrous heartbeat was beginning to stir.
In a voice barely above a whisper, heavy and final as a tombstone, Alia murmured, "Running to your father is useless, Viktor... what you're trying to escape isn't out there anymore. It's already awake, right here, beating inside your chest."
Hearing those bizarre and spine-chilling words from Alia triggered a complete explosion inside Viktor. He could no longer bottle up his mounting fury and tension. All the suppressed anger and raw masculine pride accumulated in his chest shattered in a single instant.
With a sharp, violent motion, he batted Alia's ice-cold fingers away from his chest. Fixing a cold, menacing gaze upon her, he growled out a harsh threat, his voice echoing with authority: "Enough of this! Are all of you treating me like I'm trapped in some lunatic asylum? Have you forgotten who I am? I am the sole heir to the blood-soaked throne of the underworld, the Russian Mafia Lord Viktor! At a single word from me, the entire criminal empire from Siberia to the rest of the world trembles, and yet you're trying to scare me with some imaginary curse and monsters hiding inside me? There is no monster in this world more terrifying than the one standing right here!"
The moment the words "Russian Mafia Lord" left Viktor's lips, the oppressive atmosphere in the room grew even heavier, suffocatingly dense.
Yet, to everyone's absolute shock, instead of shrinking back in fear at Viktor's bloodshot eyes and mafia-level intimidation, Alia flared up with an even greater rage. Her pale face flushed crimson with anger. Taking a sharp step forward, locking her eyes fiercely onto his, she lashed out in a biting, furious tone: "It is precisely this blind arrogance and pathetic pride in your power that has brought this utter destruction upon us, Viktor! Your precious mafia title, your billions of dollars, and the power of your guns they are worth no more than a pile of ashes in the face of this darkness! What you foolishly mistake for your ultimate strength is the very thing that will one day destroy you, and every single one of us along with you!"