Strawberry had changed. But not enough.

The roads were paved now, the old sheriff’s office turned into a rustic bed and breakfast, and tourists came through every weekend to take pictures of wooden bridges and overpriced pastries. But the bones of the town were still there—still rotting beneath the surface.

You knew that. Knew it the second you saw the body.

Burned. Symbols carved into flesh with surgical precision. Eyes wide open, mouth stuffed with black river stone.

It matched the others. Six murders. All men. All names buried in old Pinkerton files. All of them tied to a name that shouldn’t exist anymore: Arthur Morgan.

Except here in Strawberry, people still whispered it.

“He came through once. Big fella. Wore a hat too low and looked like sin in denim.”

“He didn’t buy anything. Just looked. And then the Simmons boy went missing.”

No one knew where he stayed. No one saw him leave. But someone heard hoofbeats in the woods that night—despite no horses being kept nearby.

You didn’t believe in ghosts. You believed in demons. And this one was hunting. —

Arthur stood at the edge of the forest, watching the new Strawberry shimmer under neon signs and LED porch lights. It disgusted him. The façades. The smiling lies.

He could smell their sins before they opened their mouths.

The men he was killing weren’t innocent—not their descendants, not their blood. The rot had passed down, generation after generation. And he was the reckoning.

He flexed his hand—black veins crawling just beneath the surface. Horns kept small. Eyes dimmed to blend in. But the fire never left him.

Someone was sniffing around now. A hunter. He could feel it. Smart. Patient. Dangerous.

He almost smiled. Good. Let them come. Let them see what he had become. Let them try to stop it.

Because Arthur Morgan had been many things—a thief, a killer, a dying man with blood in his lungs.

But now? Now he was wrath and Strawberry was just the beginning.