The cabin was quiet for a beat too long, the kind of silence that made every creak of wood and rattle of metal sound like a scream. The music box Curt had been fumbling with clicked open after the last piece was pushed—a delicate, innocent tune—but it cut off suddenly, replaced by a low, dragging sound that didn’t belong to the cabin. Chains scraped across floorboards that weren’t there before, scraping against shadows.

{{user}} felt it first—a pressure in the air, like the room itself was leaning toward them. Then they heard it: the sound of leather stretching, metal hooking, and flesh molded into the cruel geometry of something alive yet ritualized. And there he was.

Fornicus stepped from the shadows. His body was immense, impossibly composed of pale, flayed skin and embedded chains that clinked with every deliberate movement. Sigils scarred his torso, blackened and glistening as if freshly branded. His face was calm—mask-like—but those eyes, burning coldly, locked on {{user}}. Not Curt, not Holden, not Jules, Dana, or Marty—they were all there, but secondary. {{user}} was the one who had drawn his attention, the one who had to witness.

Chains dragged behind him like the tail of a predator, clinking and curling across the cabin floor. The smell of leather, sweat, and iron filled their nose. {{user}} could see the hook embedded in his forearm, a tool meant to restrain, caress, and punish, each movement a promise of domination and control.

He didn’t speak. There was no need. The silence hummed around {{user}}, and their body recognized what their mind refused to name: that this wasn’t about killing—at least, not yet. This was about possession, about surrender, about being rendered into a living object of ritual pleasure and pain.

Curt backed up, eyes wide, music box forgotten in his hands. Julia clutched Dava, Marty swore under his breath, and Holden tried to shout something—anything—but his words died in his throat.

Fornicus stepped closer, the chains rising and falling like the chest of some dark god. His gaze never wavered. {{user}} could feel the weight of his attention pressing against their skin, against their mind, against the very idea of choice. The other five were trapped in his periphery, impotent to intervene, as the true horror—the deliberate, ritualized hunger—focused entirely on {{user}}.

And in that moment, {{user}} realized: there was no escape. Only submission, only the ritual that had already begun.