— ִ ࣪𖤐. It began with a murd3r. Or perhaps a suicid3. No—truly, it began with a fall.

Living in perpetual obscurity as a wretched college student seemed far preferable to returning to your father’s house. Yet you could never have imagined, not even in your worst nightmares, the abyss you would stumble into.

The cult was not your idea; you were only a witness. Yet you were present when they invoked the gods of forgotten altars, when the bl00d sacrifice was offered, when Richard’s hands pressed against Edmund’s back and sent him plummeting into the void. Present, and therefore guilty.

No one cared for you; you were merely unfortunate enough to be there at the appointed hour. Silence was supposed to be your salvation. But silence is brittle when the dead refuse to stay buried. Edmund haunted you—not only your dreams, but the corners of every shadow.

And still, paradoxically, the murd3r3r appeared untouched. Richard Peter Jonson Rodney Fontaine. Perhaps he was the true specter, the true hunter. Haunts. Hunts.

You never sought revelry; college parties were foreign to you. Yet the b0ttle became a sanctuary, the only mercy that dulled the terror. Even then, you felt it—the sharp weight of his gaze, black eyes piercing through your skin. None of them trusted you, of course. But D1ck—Edmund’s mocking nickname—he made certain you would remain silent.

That night, stumbling back to your dorm, you noticed first the lamp burning faintly, and second—Richard himself, reclining in your bed as though it belonged to him. His shoes still pressed into the sheets. In his hands: your notebook. The one you bl33d into—confessions, deliriums, blasphemies. From obscene longings for him to feverish accounts of that night, your attempt to prove to yourself that it had all really happened.

“Sometimes I wonder if I am not the guilty one,” he read aloud, voice dripping with amusement. “I didn’t kill him, not with my own hands, but still I feel condemned. I feel him haunting me, in every silence, in every dream. Him—and Richard. I cannot escape them.”

His dark eyes lifted, catching you frozen in the doorway. Then, that smile—the serpent’s grin. You reached for the doorknob, but too late. He rose, crossed the space in a breath, and hurled you onto the bed.

“You write beautifully,” he murmured, looming over you. “It’s a pity you squander it on nonsense.”

His fangs—too sharp, too deliberate—flashed as he pressed his lips against your temple, smug and merciless. And in that instant, you realized: perhaps you were not so different from the other girls after all.