The Weekend Thriller Story 5 – The Final Offering | Scariest Story Ever

The Weekend Thriller Story 5…….The Final Offering

The first thing Silverlyn felt was cold stone against her cheek.

The second was silence that was thick, ancient, pressing against her ears like deep water.

When she opened her eyes, darkness breathed back at her.

She tried to move.

Chains rattled.

Her wrists were bound above her head, iron biting into bone. Symbols were etched into the cuffs older than the ones on her skin, deeper, crueler. Each pulse of her heart made the markings on her palms flare in answer, as if the metal was listening.

“Zara,” she whispered.

No response.

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Memory crashed back in fragments: the video of Jonas, the wrong smile, the forest that refused to reflect him, then the knock at the door. Not loud. Not violent. Polite. Certain.

She remembered opening it.

Remembered the smoke.

Hands that weren’t hands.

And then—

Nothing.

A sound rippled through the darkness. Not footsteps. More like breath moving through stone.

Torches flared to life one by one, igniting blue instead of orange, casting warped shadows across a vast underground chamber.

Silverlyn sucked in a sharp breath.

She was inside the ruins of the original Blackwood temple.

The walls were carved with thousands of symbols layered on top of one another, as if generations had carved their terror into the stone. The floor dipped toward a circular pit at the center—its edges cracked, as though something beneath it strained to rise.

And surrounding her—

The collectors.

They stood in a wide ring, their forms half-smoke, half-hollowed human shapes. Faces shifted endlessly: men, women, children, all blurring into one another. Black sand trickled from their feet, pooling like ash.

One stepped forward.

Its voice came from everywhere at once.

“You are awake, Silverlyn Ashford.”

Her throat tightened. “What do you want from me?”

The collector tilted its head.

“You still believe you are prey.”

The chains loosened slightly, not enough to free her, but enough to force her upright. Her feet scraped stone as she was turned to face the pit.

“No,” the voice continued. “You are not prey.”

The torches flared brighter.

“You are inheritance.”

Images flooded the air between them, memories not her own.

Children in white linen standing in the Blackwood woods.

A ritual bowl brimming with red fluid.

A little girl breaking free, running barefoot through trees, her palm marked, her name screamed behind her—

The girl turned.

Silverlyn’s breath hitched.

Those eyes.

They were hers.

“You are the descendant of the escaped founder,” the collector said. “The blood that slipped the circle. The line that should have ended but did not.”

Silverlyn shook her head violently. “That’s not possible. My parents—my life—”

“—were constructed,” the voice finished gently. “To hide you. To delay us.”

Her knees weakened.

All this time… the note… the markings… the pull she’d always felt toward Blackwood—

It wasn’t coincidence.

It was blood memory.

A new shape appeared at the edge of the chamber.

Silverlyn’s heart shattered.

“Jonas.”

He stood suspended above the pit, bound by strands of smoke and light, flickering in and out of solidity like a corrupted image. His face was pale, eyes rimmed red with exhaustion.

“Silver,” he whispered.

She surged forward instinctively, chains biting deeper. “Let him go!”

The collectors hummed, amused.

“He exists between realms now,” one said. “A hinge. A lure. He led us to you.”

Jonas closed his eyes.

Silverlyn stared at him, betrayal and relief tangling painfully. “You told me you didn’t know,” she said. “You said you were scared.”

“I was,” he said hoarsely. “But not of them.”

He looked at her then—really looked at her.

“I was scared of you.”

The words cut deeper than any blade.

“They were already watching,” Jonas continued. “I realized it before the others. Before you. And I knew if they understood what you were…” His voice broke. “They’d never stop.”

“So you betrayed me,” she whispered.

He nodded once. “I fed them half-truths. Misdirections. I let them think I was the key.”

The collectors hissed softly, displeased.

“But you weren’t,” Silverlyn said.

“No,” Jonas replied. “You were.”

The lead collector raised its arms, and the symbols in the chamber ignited.

“The choice returns,” it intoned. “As it always has.”

The pit cracked wider, light blazing from below.

“Save the hinge,” it said, indicating Jonas. “And the Circle awakens fully. The worlds merge. The collectors walk freely again.”

Silverlyn’s chest tightened.

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“Or,” it continued, “seal him as the final offering. The rift closes. Permanently.”

Jonas’s eyes locked onto hers.

“If you do it,” he said softly, “there’s no coming back for me.”

Tears burned her eyes. “You lied to me.”

“I know.”

“You used me.”

“Yes.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. “And you still think I’d choose you?”

Jonas swallowed. “I’m hoping you choose the world.”

The ground began to tremble.

Cracks raced across the stone floor, splitting symbols in half. The collectors shifted uneasily.

From beneath the pit came a sound like laughter drowned in earth.

A hand burst through the stone.

Not smoke.

Not shadow.

Flesh.

Old. Scarred. Marked with symbols so deep they looked carved.

The chamber fell silent.

The figure pulled itself free—an ancient woman with white hair braided tightly against her skull, eyes sharp and alive. Her body bore centuries of ritual scars, but she stood unbowed.

Unbroken.

The collectors recoiled.

“Impossible,” one hissed.

The woman straightened slowly and looked directly at Silverlyn.

A smile curved her lips.

“Little Lyn,” she said.

Silverlyn’s blood turned to ice.

No one had called her that since she was five.

The woman stepped forward, chains and all, and placed a hand over her own heart.

“They told you I escaped,” she said calmly. “They never told you I survived.”

Silverlyn stared, shaking.

“You’re—”

“The First,” the woman finished. “Your blood. Your beginning.”

The temple groaned violently as the cracks widened.

The collectors screamed.

Jonas shouted, “Silverlyn—decide!”

The ancient woman’s eyes gleamed.

“Choose wisely, child,” she said. “Because either way…”

The ground split open beneath them.

“…the Circle will never be the same.”

The chamber collapsed inward, light and shadow spiraling together as the pit yawned wide—

And Silverlyn screamed Jonas’s name as everything fell.

To be continued…