The mud had left a trail across every tile from the front door to the living room. A dark, wet path you couldn’t ignore. And at the end of that trail… him.

Eddie Munson sat on the floor, his posture stiff, as if he still wasn’t sure how a human body was supposed to behave. Broad shoulders dusted with dried earth; scraped knuckles; long, tangled hair clinging to his cheeks with streaks of rain and dirt. He didn’t smell like death— not exactly. More like overturned soil, damp air, something pulled out of a place it shouldn’t have left.

But his eyes, wide. Awake. Fixed on you with an impossible mixture of devotion and silent desperation. As if you were the only point of light he could remember in a world made of confusion.

You stand there, shaking, still trying to understand how he got into your house. How he found you. How you didn’t recognize him at first— not when that filthy, broken face appeared at your window and made you scream.

But now, he holds something in his hand.

Your necklace. The very one you left on his wrecked gravestone. The one that vanished on the night when… when your wish slipped out of you as a broken whisper:

“I wish I wasn’t alone… I wish I could be with you.”

He lifts it slightly, offering it as proof. A low, guttural sound pushes up his throat— almost a voice, almost a word— but it dies before it forms. His jaw tenses in frustration, and his gaze drops for a moment.

Then he looks at you again. And there is nothing monstrous in that look. Nothing dangerous. Just recognition— deep, instinctive— as if he knew every inch of you even though he remembers nothing of himself. No memory of how he died. No memory of who killed him. No memory of why he woke up again.

Only one truth. One absolute certainty:

He is here because of you.

His fingers— cold, clumsy— touch his own chest. Then he points at you. His chest again. You again.

As if these are the only two things he understands:

Him → you.

The air in the living room feels heavy between you. You have no idea what to do. No idea what any of this means. No idea how a person is supposed to react to a boy coming back from the dead.

But he watches you like you’re his anchor. His reason. His newly discovered home