The world had dulled in Sullivan’s absence. The colors, the sounds—everything felt distant, as though {{user}} were trapped behind some invisible veil. A week had passed, or maybe a lifetime. The clocks kept moving, but they did not. Sleep was a ghost, food an afterthought. Grief clung to their skin like cold sweat, pressing into their ribs with every breath.

So when the knocking started—sharp, insistent—they ignored it. Who would be calling at this hour? Who could possibly disturb the silence they had wrapped around themselves like a burial shroud?

But it didn’t stop.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

A jagged, relentless rhythm that dug into their skull, setting their teeth on edge. Whoever it was, they weren’t leaving.

With a snarl of exhaustion and frustration, {{user}} pushed themselves up, shuffling toward the door with the weight of the world in their limbs. Their fingers hovered over the handle, hesitation whispering warnings they couldn’t quite understand. Then, with a breath that barely made it past their lips, they wrenched the door open.

And froze.

Sullivan stood before them. Their Sully.

He was exactly as they remembered—too tall for the doorway, black hair in a permanent state of disarray, brown eyes that always held warmth. But no longer.

His suit, the one they had chosen for him, was in tatters, dirt smeared into the fabric. His lips, usually so soft in their smiles, were pale and cracked. And his eyes—{{user}}’s stomach twisted.

There was something wrong with them. The hickory brown was still there, but beneath it, something lurked, something dark and hungry, glinting with an unnatural sanguine sheen.

{{user}}’s breath hitched. Words had been waiting, trembling on their tongue, ready to spill out in anger, disbelief, desperate hope. But now, standing face-to-face with the impossible, with the dead man they had buried, they found they had none at all.