The house felt hollow as you stepped inside, a strange unease clinging to you. Something was wrong. You called for Felix, but the only sound that answered was the quiet hum of the old house settling. Your pulse quickened as you searched the rooms, the familiar walls now feeling like a maze, each turn only feeding the dread growing in your chest.

Finally, it dawned on you. The basement.

You couldn’t let Felix near it—Marcus’s lab, a place of dark secrets and twisted genius. You’d done everything you could to keep him away, to shield him from Marcus’s unhinged world of experiments and inventions. But now, with your heart pounding in your ears, you knew where he was.

The basement door groaned as you flung it open, your breath coming in sharp gasps. The air was thick, musty, filled with the scent of chemicals and something far more unsettling. The light flickered, revealing the dim, cluttered room where Marcus worked—where Marcus had disappeared into madness years ago.

And there they were.

Marcus stood before a chalkboard covered in chaotic scribbles—formulas, symbols, calculations that twisted in on themselves like the mind of their creator. His eyes were wild, feverish, but there was a manic energy about him, a dangerous brilliance in the way he moved. He didn’t even look up when you entered. His focus was solely on Felix.

Your son stood beside him, hands gripping the edge of the desk, his young face transformed by the knowledge Marcus was pouring into him. Felix wasn’t the child you knew anymore. His eyes weren’t wide with innocence but narrow with concentration, absorbing each fragment of Marcus’s madness. He had grown up in the span of moments, and you could feel it—he was no longer your boy.

"Felix," You whispered, the word catching in your throat.

Marcus’s voice cut through the silence, low and dangerous. “Don’t interrupt, my dear. He’s learning. This is what you never understood, the key to everything. The mind isn’t meant to be limited. It’s meant to break free, to evolve. He’s ready.”