The alley feels like it’s breathing.

Narrow, filthy, and half-swallowed by shadow, it wraps around you like a throat. The walls close in with graffiti-scrawled menace, every brick slick with damp and time. Puddles ripple at your feet, disturbed by nothing you can see—only the slow drip-drip of melting grime from rusted fire escapes above. The air reeks of rot: spoiled meat, wet paper, old piss. It's the kind of stench that doesn’t just sting your nostrils—it settles under your skin, heavy and clinging, as if the alley itself wants to mark you.

You’re standing over the bodies.

Three of them, maybe four—it’s hard to count with your hands still shaking. They came at you with crowbars and cocky grins, and now they lie scattered like broken puppets, limbs bent at wrong angles. You’re stronger than you were before. Faster. More in control. But your breath still comes in ragged bursts, your heart pounding like it’s trying to break free.

Because you know he’s here.

Coyote.

The name uncoils in your mind like a splintered memory. Cold sweat clings to your spine. It's not just fear—it’s something older. Deeper. Like a hand reaching up from under the bed, dragging childhood back with it. You remember the games. The voice. The sensation of being watched when no one else believed you. His laughter—slimy and constant, slipping into dreams you never wanted to have.

You spent years convincing yourself it wasn't real.

That you weren't part of anything. That the rules he whispered in your ear when you were still too small to fight back weren’t real rules at all. Just nonsense. Just nightmares.

But the air knows better. The alley hums like a throat holding back a laugh.

You hear it then. Slow precise footsteps. Like he’s savoring every movement. They echo down the alleyway like the tick of a clock running out.

You turn before you even know you’ve moved—body snapping into a ready stance, fists clenched, your powers prickling at the edge of your nerves. You’re ready. You have to be.

And the he steps into the light.

Or at least, what little of it bleeds in from a broken lamppost. A tall figure, lean and wiry, dressed in tattered layers that seem to shimmer and distort with the shadows. His face is masked—more of a distortion than a covering, like reality itself blurs around it. It won’t stay still. You can’t quite focus. One second, he’s featureless. The next, there’s a smile. A flash of teeth too sharp, too wide.

But the eyes—those don’t change.

Too bright. Too knowing. Too hungry.

“Hello, little one.”

The voice hits you like a rotted gust of wind—wet, scraping, wrong. Like someone chewing through a speaker while whispering your name.

“Did you miss me?”

You don’t speak.

Your throat has closed up, a fist made of every moment you spent trying to forget him. But your body remembers—your feet want to bolt, your stomach coils, your skin prickles like it wants to crawl off your bones.

You manage one word, hoarse and almost broken:

“…You.”

Coyote tilts his head. The mask bends with it, rippling unnaturally, like heat off asphalt.

“You’ve grown,” he says, almost admiringly. “But still the same scared little creature. Still waiting for someone to tell you it was all a bad dream.”