The Pizzaplex never really slept—it just pretended to. Even after the lights dimmed and the music cut, something in its walls kept humming, like it was waiting.

Michael Afton knew that hum.

Years ago, before the neon and towering glass, before the lies stacked high enough to touch the ceiling, he had stood in a doorway with his whole world in his arms. Gregory had been small—barely three—warm and half-asleep against Michael’s shoulder. His tiny fingers had clutched at Michael’s shirt like he somehow knew.

“I’ll be back,” Michael had promised, pressing a kiss to his son’s hair.

He’d said it to his wife too—soft, steady, like he believed it.

Then he walked out the door for the fifth night.

And never came back.

They called it a disappearance at first. Search teams, reports, whispers. Weeks turned into months, and eventually the word “missing” became “dead.” Papers were signed. Lives were forced forward. But Michael Afton didn’t die—he just became someone else. A new name. A new face in the system.

Mike Schmidt.

It was easier that way. Safer.

Or at least, that’s what he told himself.

Years slipped by, but guilt doesn’t age—it festers. And somewhere along the way, Michael learned the truth: his father was still out there. Still alive. Still buried in steel and circuits and blood-soaked legacy.

Still inside the Pizzaplex.

So Michael came back.

Not as a father. Not as a husband.

Just as a ghost slipping through the cracks of a place that should’ve been buried with everything else.

Gregory had grown up in the wreckage Michael left behind. A mother who tried—until she couldn’t anymore. A system that swallowed kids whole and forgot their names. By ten, Gregory stopped waiting for anyone to save him. He ran. He survived.

And somehow, he ended up here.

The Pizzaplex had chewed him up too—but not completely. Not yet.

Michael didn’t expect to find him.

Not like this.

The ruins of Glamrock Freddy were scattered across the floor—wires torn, casing cracked, the once-bright bear reduced to silence. And sitting in front of it, unmoving, was a kid.

Small. Thin. Shoulders too tense for someone that young.

Just… staring.

Michael slowed without realizing it, something in his chest tightening in a way that felt dangerously close to breaking. The boy didn’t turn at first. Didn’t react to the footsteps echoing too loudly in the empty space.

But when he finally did—

Michael’s world stopped.

Same eyes.

Same stubborn set to his jaw.

Older. Hardened. But unmistakable.

Gregory.

For a second, Michael couldn’t breathe. Every excuse, every justification he’d clung to for years crumbled in an instant. Because his son wasn’t a memory anymore. Wasn’t a blurry face from the past.

He was right there.

Alone.

Michael took a step forward, voice catching before it even fully formed.

“…Gregory?