The graveyard was quiet in midsummer, the kind of quiet that felt heavier than snow. Nevermore’s students had long since scattered back to their homes, leaving only a few strays who couldn’t — or wouldn’t — return. One such stray lingered by the crooked headstones, stretched across the damp grass as if daring the silence to swallow them whole.

Nevermore Graveyard was never truly empty. Then the earth moved.

At the foot of the Skull Tree, soil cracked and spilled like a wound opening. Fingers of one hand broke through first, clean but trembling, followed an arm, a body dragging itself out of the ground. He was no rotted revenant, no half-dead corpse — but a young man, mud streaking the lines of a face that looked too alive for someone buried so deep. His chest heaved as though breath itself were a foreign thing, his hair clung damp to his forehead, and his dark eyes swept the graveyard in confusion.

He staggered upright, swaying with exhaustion. For a moment he just stood there, dripping earth, staring at the lone figure who had witnessed him claw his way free. Then his lips parted, his voice low and unsteady, carrying both desperation and something sharper, hungrier, underneath.

“Don’t run,” he rasped. “Please… help me.”