Elias’s breathing grew heavier, ragged, as though the air itself was choking him. His eyes darted between the two figures at the foot of the stairs, the mother who left, the brother who should be dead. Their faces glowed warm in the candlelight, too perfect, too whole.

His lips trembled. A laugh cracked out of him, short, sharp, deranged.

“You think I don’t see it?” His voice rose, the sound bouncing off the cement walls like shrapnel. “You think I don’t know when the world is lying to me?” He twitched his neck so violently it looked like it might snap. “This isn’t real. It’s another trick. Another test.”

He staggered toward them, arms wide, laughing and snarling all at once. “You…. both of you, you’re ghosts! You’re shadows wearing their faces. You can’t fool me. You left me. You died.”

The mother stepped forward, tears streaking her cheeks. “Elias, no… it’s us. Look at me. Touch me. I’m here.”

He recoiled as though her words were acid. His face twisted into something monstrous, eyes wide, teeth bared.

“Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you dare use her voice. You’re not her. She abandoned me. She watched him die.” He pointed a shaking finger at his brother, his laughter dissolving into a guttural scream. “And you, you’re rotting in the ground! You don’t get to come back and tell me what to do!”

He spun suddenly, his boots striking sparks off the concrete, and snatched the dagger from the floor. The captives flinched, their muffled cries filling the air as he raised the blade high, pointing it at his mother and brother like a torch in the dark.

“I won’t let you trick me!” he bellowed. Spittle flew from his lips. His eyes glistened with tears, wild and unsteady. “You want me to let them go? So you can take them away? So you can leave me again?”

His neck jerked, harder, faster, until the motion shook his whole body. The blade trembled in his hand, catching the candlelight with each twitch.

“No!” he screamed, his voice breaking into something raw and childlike. “No one leaves. Not them. Not you. Not ever again!”

He lunged forward, slashing the air, driving his mother and brother back against the stairwell wall. The captives wailed behind him, their chains rattling violently as if they too were trying to tear free from the nightmare.

His laughter split the air, jagged, echoing, filling the basement with a storm of madness.

“You’ll all stay,” he roared, stabbing the dagger into the wooden step, splintering it. “If I have to carve the truth into your faces, you’ll all stay!”

The basement seemed to close in, every flickering shadow now his ally, every candle flame bending toward his fury.

And in the center of his storm, Elias twitched, shook, and whispered the lullaby again, his voice cracked, breaking into sobs and rage.

“Twinkle, twinkle… little star…”