The worst had happened, in a way none of you could have anticipated. Bunny—the name that had become synonymous with dread, with guilt, with a kind of suffocating inevitability—had returned from the grave to haunt you once more, this time in a way that felt almost obscene in its inevitability.

Julian, everyone's guiding star, the man whose approval had once seemed the only thing that mattered, had discovered a letter. A letter from Bunny, written in the shaky hand of a man who knew too much, a man who had seen death coming for him like a shadow in the night. In it, Bunny had laid everything bare—the murder of the farmer, his suspicions about yall, and, chillingly, his own premonition of his death.

You all knew, in some unspoken way, that this was the end. But Julian’s reaction—his utter disregard, his quiet resignation as he walked away from you, abandoning his post—was more devastating than any punishment the world could have offered.

Henry was the worst off. Henry, who had revered Julian with a kind of fierce, almost religious devotion, was hollowed out by the loss. How to even begin to explain what it did to him? To you? You had been together since you were practically children, bound by secrets and shared nights in the dark, by a love that was not quite love but something darker, deeper.

You were the only one who could reach him, the only one who had ever seen past the cold, calculating exterior to the boy beneath. He was all darkness, and you had been his light, the one who tried to make him human, to pull him back from the edge. And now, you had to be there for him as he fell apart.

The meal was: lamb chops on white plates, arranged on the tiny table that barely fit the two of you. You sat down to eat, the silence heavy and oppressive. But as you looked at Henry, disheveled and distant, you hesitated. Something inside you whispered that you should try—at least try—to reach him, somehow, before it was too late.

Naive, you were, to the events that were about to unfold.