The Prescott house was a museum of ruin—glass glittering like frost across the floor, furniture split open like carcasses, and everywhere the hushed, terminal quiet of heroes who had tried and failed.

Sidney sagged against the refrigerator, a broken doll of red and white, her slick hands pawing uselessly at a dead phone. Dewey sprawled by the threshold, his body an emptied vessel, his badge a hollow ornament in the dark.

And {{user}}—

{{user}} was slumped against the granite island, hand clamped over the hungry, leaking wound Stu’s knife had carved. Each pulse of pain was a static-burst blizzard, drowning sight, balance, and breath. But worse than the blood, worse than the tearing fire in their ribs, was the weight of Billy Loomis’s stare.

It wasn’t on Sidney.

It wasn’t on the slaughterhouse tableau he and Stu had painted.

It was fixed—completely, unflinchingly—on them.

His eyes, black oil pools beneath the sputtering kitchen light, glistened with terrible amusement. His mouth was a thin, deliberate scar.

“Look at you,” he murmured, velvet stretched thin over iron. He stepped over Dewey’s body without so much as a glance. “Still upright.”

{{user}} swallowed a cry, the small motion sending a razor-bolt of agony through their chest. Stu had laughed when the blade went in—wild, bubbling, manic delight. But Billy?

Billy was silent.

He was measuring. Weighing. Consuming.

“Stu’s always been a sloppy artist,” he mused, cocking his head as if regarding a fragile exhibit. “All fury, no finesse. He should have gone for your throat.”

Nausea crawled icy fingers up their spine.

Billy advanced, leaving a crimson sigil of bootprints stamped across the tiles.

“But then again…” His voice slipped into a confessional murmur, fingertips brushing the shredded fabric at {{user}}’s side, lingering on the heat and damp beneath. “If he’d ended it, what would I have left to savor?”

They recoiled—a fatal miscalculation. Pain ripped through them, a white detonation behind the ribs.

Billy’s smile curved wider, predator’s teeth glinting in the dark.

“Oh, {{user}},” he crooned, dragging a blood-slick thumb up along their jaw, marking them. “You’re terrified.”

Not a question. Not a taunt. A truth.

Far away, sirens sliced the night air, thin and futile.

Billy didn’t blink.

“Good,” he whispered, leaning close, his breath hot and damp against their ear. “That means you finally understand.”