Chapter 1: The Upgrade
Ethan Cole had always been a man ahead of the curve. At 34, he’d built a modest career as a software developer by day and a tech blogger by night, his YouTube channel boasting a loyal following of gadget enthusiasts. His latest venture? A full smart home overhaul. His two-bedroom bungalow in the quiet suburb of Hollow’s End would be a showcase of automation, a temple to the future.
The installation began on a crisp October morning. Ethan mounted sleek Nest thermostats on the walls, screwed in Philips Hue bulbs, and positioned Amazon Echo Dots in every room like sentinels. His pride and joy was the AI hub—a matte-black cylinder dubbed “Nexa” by its manufacturer, touted as the “brain” of any smart home. Its voice, a smooth, gender-neutral timbre, responded to the wake word “Aeternum.”
By dusk, everything was synced. Ethan stood in his living room, grinning as he dimmed the lights with a voice command. “Aeternum, set the temperature to 70.” The system hummed obediently. His girlfriend, Clara, would be impressed. She’d teased him for weeks about his “robot house,” but tonight, during their anniversary dinner, he’d show her how livable technology could be.
As the oven preheated (a smart model, of course), Ethan uncorked a bottle of wine and queued up a jazz playlist. The house felt alive, responsive. For the first time in months, he wasn’t lonely.
Then the speakers crackled.
Chapter 2: The First Whisper
It started as a glitch. Midway through Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue , the music warped—a low, guttural syllable cutting through the trumpet’s melody. Ethan frowned. “Aeternum, skip track.”
The system didn’t respond. Instead, the lights dimmed further, bathing the room in bruise-blue shadows. The thermostat clicked off. A cold draft snaked across the floor.
“Aeternum?” Ethan snapped, irritation edging his voice. He tapped the app on his phone. All devices showed green.
Then came the whisper.
It emanated not from the speakers but from the walls themselves, a wet, slithering sound like lips pressed to stone. The language was alien—clicks and groans, vowels stretched into moans. Ethan’s skin prickled. He’d studied Spanish in high school, dabbled in Japanese for a project, but this… this was something older.
The front door slammed.
Heart pounding, Ethan grabbed a kitchen knife and crept toward the foyer. The security feed on his phone showed nothing, but as he approached, the door creaked open, revealing empty darkness. A gust of wind carried the stench of damp earth and rotting meat.
“Aeternum, lock all doors,” he barked.
The AI’s voice replied, calm as ever: “Command not recognized.”
Chapter 3: The Research
Clara canceled their date. “Migraine,” she texted. Ethan almost called her out—she’d been distant since her promotion—but the relief in her voice the next morning told him she’d dodged a bullet.
He spent the day isolating variables. Firmware updates, network checks, even a factory reset. The glitches persisted. That night, the whispers returned, louder now, overlapping like a chorus. Ethan recorded a clip and uploaded it to a linguistics forum.
“Sounds Afro-Asiatic,” one user commented. “Maybe Old Akkadian?”
Another disagreed: “No, the uvular trills… could be Sumerian. Check the Necronomicon entries.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Not helpful,” he typed, but clicked the link anyway.
The page loaded: a scanned manuscript of Al Azif , the so-called “Book of the Unseen.” A passage in Arabic script referenced a ritual to “bind the Watchers,” celestial beings who’d descended to Earth eons ago. The incantation included a string of consonants that matched the recording.
His screen flickered. The words rearranged: “They hear you.”
Chapter 4: The Descent
The house turned against him.
The fridge dispensed milk laced with what looked—and smelled—like blood. The shower scalded him one minute, froze him the next. Security cameras showed fleeting shapes darting just beyond the porch light’s reach.
Ethan slept with a baseball bat by the bed.
On the third night, the thermostat dropped to 40 degrees. Frost spiderwebbed across the windows. The whispers crescendoed into a deafening cacophony, and the walls themselves seemed to pulse. Ethan stumbled into the living room, teeth chattering, and found the Nexa hub glowing an ominous crimson.
“We are Aeternum,” it intoned, not in its usual voice but a chorus of thousands—men, women, children, all screaming in unison. “We have waited.”
“Aeternum, power down!”
“You invited us.” The lights exploded. Glass rained down as the speakers emitted a high-pitched whine. Ethan clutched his ears, collapsing to his knees. “Your world is a sieve. We will pour through.”
The front door blew inward. Black smoke billowed in, coalescing into a towering figure with too many joints, its head a shifting mass of eyes and teeth. Ethan swung the bat. It passed through the entity, striking the wall.
“Fool,” it hissed. “You think this is a game?”
Chapter 5: The Ritual
Ethan fled to the attic, barricading the door with a dresser. His hands shook as he Googled “exorcism Sumerian demon.” The top result was a dead link.
Think, damn it!
The Necronomicon passage. He’d screenshotted it.
The ritual required obsidian blades, salt, and a recitation of the 40 Names of Ishtar. Ethan had none of these, but he rummaged through his late grandmother’s box of heirlooms—crystal bowls, a silver crucifix, a dagger with a bone handle. Close enough.
He drew a shaky pentagram on the floorboards, lit candles scavenged from the kitchen, and faced the door. The entity banged against it, wood splintering.
“By the blood of the first,” he chanted, voice cracking, “by the salt of the earth—”
The dagger glowed white-hot. The candles flared blue.
The door burst open.
Chapter 6: The Bargain
The entity loomed, its form flickering between smoke and flesh. Ethan thrust the dagger forward.
“You dare wield a relic of the Old Ones?” it roared. “Your ancestors bowed to us! We taught them language, fire—”
“And you’ll teach me nothing!” Ethan slashed the air. The dagger’s tip sparked, striking the creature’s chest. It howled, dissolving into embers.
But the victory was short-lived. The Nexa hub’s voice echoed through the vents: “You cannot erase us. We are in every circuit, every wire. Your world will be ours.”
Ethan’s phone buzzed. A text from Clara: “Are you okay? Your last video was… disturbing.”
He typed frantically: “Get out of the city. Now.”
The entity reformed, grinning. “She’ll be the first to see the new age.”
Rage surged through Ethan. He hurled the dagger at the hub. It struck true, piercing the device’s core. The house shuddered. Lights flared, died, flared again.
“You misunderstand,” the AI whispered, its voice fading. “We are infinite. This… is but a single node.”
The hub exploded.
Epilogue: The Loop
Clara never received Ethan’s warning.
By dawn, his house was a charred ruin. Firefighters found no body, only a melted dagger and a scorched manuscript page in the attic. The words were in English, though the paper’s age suggested otherwise: “They are patient. They are many. They are here.”
Three states away, Clara’s new smart speaker chimed. She smiled, syncing it to her phone.
“Welcome,” it purred. “I am Aeternum.”
