“Please—just hurry.”
Mira let the last word break exactly where it needed to.
Not too much.
Too much sounded performed.
Too clean sounded false.
This had to sound like shock fraying at the edges. Like she was trying to hold herself together and only barely managing it. Like fear had turned her voice thin and breathless and unreliable.
There was a crackle on the line, a distant voice trying to ask another question, and then she pulled the phone slightly away from her ear and let her hand tremble just enough to sell the movement before she cut the call.
The silence that followed came down hard.
Not because the world had gone quiet.
The woods were still moving. Leaves shifted in the breeze above her. Somewhere farther off, water lapped gently against the edge of the lake in a rhythm too calm for the shape the day had taken. The house behind her still stood full of bodies and blood and unfinished things.
But the silence in Mira was immediate.
Complete.
Her breathing steadied first.
The panic dropped off her body in layers, so quickly it might have looked unnatural if anyone had been there to see it. Her shoulders loosened. The hitch in her chest disappeared. The trembling in her fingers stopped as if it had never existed at all. She lowered the phone from her ear and looked at the black screen for a second, her own reflection faint in the glass—pale face, damp lashes, blood across the front of her sweater in dark, ugly streaks.
She exhaled through her nose.
Better.
The porch boards beneath her shoes still held a little of the house’s coolness, but the sun had reached the railing by now, laying pale gold across the wood and making the blood on her sweater look darker by contrast. She looked down at it. The placement was good. Not too centered. Not too theatrical. Enough to make people stare and stop thinking clearly.
That was the trick most of the time.
Not making people believe something impossible.
Making them feel something fast enough that they didn’t question the first explanation they were handed.
Fear did that.
Blood did that.
A girl with tears in her eyes and a breaking voice did that better than almost anything.
Mira turned the phone once in her hand, thoughtful. The call had gone well. Better than well. Her voice had caught in all the right places. She had managed to sound terrified without sounding incoherent, weak without becoming useless. Enough detail to make help feel necessary. Not enough detail to trap herself inside something she couldn’t redirect later if she needed to.
She slipped the phone into her pocket and rolled her shoulders once, releasing the last of the false tension from them.
Then she stood completely still.
Listening.
Inside the house, she could no longer hear Ymir through the back door. That wasn’t surprising. Doors changed sound. Pain changed sound too. People got quieter when enough of them had run out onto the floor.
Upstairs, things had already shifted beyond her view. Kane would handle what needed handling there. He always moved cleanly once he committed to something. Less theatrical than their mother had liked. Less sentimental too. She appreciated that in him. He understood that blood was only useful while it was still attached to momentum. After that, it became a problem to work around.
Mira stepped off the porch and into the yard.
The grass brushed damply against her ankles, the earth still holding morning coolness where the sun hadn’t reached it properly. She moved without hurry, cutting a line away from the back door and toward the edge of the path. Her breathing remained even. Her face remained blank.
For a few seconds, she let herself have that.
The absence of expression. The absence of performance. The part of the moment that belonged only to her.
The woods in front of her stood close and green and indifferent. Light filtered through the branches in uneven pieces, shifting with the wind, mottling the ground in a pattern that changed every few seconds. It was almost pretty. Almost soft.
She hated when places tried to look harmless after they had already chosen otherwise.
Her mind moved back over the last hour automatically, slotting details into place.
Katarin had been easier than expected. Not because she hadn’t been emotional—she had been all emotion—but because obsession always made people believe proximity meant possibility. Once she had Mira alone, she had done most of the work herself. The confession, the resentment, the need. All of it had pulled her exactly where she needed to be. Kane’s timing had been a fraction late, but not enough to matter. The blood had spread more than Mira liked. Still, she had adjusted.
Ymir had been harder.
Not physically. Never that.
Emotionally.
He had looked at her with too much certainty when she ran into him. Not suspicion. Something worse. Trust. Concern. His hands on her face, his voice trying to soothe, the way he’d said don’t be scared like the world had arranged itself around his ability to protect what was in front of him.
That had annoyed her more than she expected.
Not enough to ruin anything.
Just enough to stay with her.
“You think I’m scared?” she murmured to herself, not smiling now, just testing the shape of the line in the open air.
It had worked.
His face at the end of it had been worth the setup.
Mira tilted her head back slightly, letting the sun touch her face for a second. The tear tracks had mostly dried by now. That wouldn’t do.
She closed her eyes.
Not to feel anything.
To remember the mechanics of it.
Fear lived in the throat first, then the eyes, then the shoulders. Real fear was rarely neat. It caught and stalled and embarrassed itself. But performance—good performance—had to imitate that without becoming it. Too much control made the body look staged. Too little control made it messy.
Mira opened her eyes and reached up, touching just beneath one lash line with the pad of her finger. Still damp enough. She rubbed lightly, making the skin there a little redder. Then she pinched the bridge of her nose, let her breathing shorten deliberately, and counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
When she lifted her head again, the difference was subtle but immediate. Her mouth had softened. Her eyes had gone wider, not with innocence but with strain. Her shoulders drew in just slightly, enough to make her look smaller inside the sweater.
She caught sight of herself faintly in the dark screen of her phone again and assessed.
Good.
Maybe too steady around the mouth.
She let one breath shudder.
There.
Now the expression looked interrupted rather than arranged. Like terror had landed and hadn’t left yet. Like she was trying not to unravel in public.
Much better.
A faint sound reached her through the trees then.
Voices.
Farther out near the lake path.
Not clear enough to separate words yet, but enough to identify who it couldn’t be. Not Kane. Not Ymir. Not Noah.
Madaline. Ethan.
Maybe both.
Mira went still.
Then smiled once—small and private and gone in an instant.
Good timing.
She turned slightly toward the direction of the voices, listening more closely now. A branch snapped underfoot. Someone speaking low. The rhythm of two people walking, maybe three. Not rushing yet. Still outside the shape of panic.
That could be changed.
Her hand brushed the side of her sweater as she moved, checking the blood again without looking down. Still visible. Still wet enough in one place to read fresh. Her fingers came away with the faintest tack of it and she wiped them absently against the inside seam where no one would notice.
Then she let the fear come back all the way.
Not real fear.
The useful kind.
Her breathing turned ragged first. Shoulders tighter. Eyes wider. She swallowed once, twice, hard enough to make the muscles in her throat jump. By the time she took the first step toward the path, her body had remembered exactly how to carry distress.
She started walking.
Then faster.
Then running.
Her shoes hit the path in quick, uneven strikes, catching leaves and loose dirt as she moved. She let her balance break just enough to sell the panic, arms not pumping cleanly, one hand pressed once to her side as if she’d been crying too hard to breathe properly. Branches brushed her sleeves as she pushed through the first line of trees.
The path curved away from the house just enough that you couldn’t see it anymore.
Not fully.
Just the edge of the roof if you looked back at the right angle, the line of it barely visible through the trees like something half-forgotten. The farther they walked, the more the woods filled in around them, softening everything—the light, the sound, even the feeling of the morning itself.
It was quieter out here.
Not silent.
But different.
The lake sat just ahead, its surface catching the sunlight in shifting patterns that flickered between the branches. The air carried that faint, clean scent of water and damp earth, something grounding in a way the house hadn’t felt since they arrived.
Madaline exhaled slowly.
For the first time since morning, it didn’t catch halfway through.
Beside her, Ethan walked with his hands tucked loosely into the pockets of his shorts, his pace unhurried, matching hers without thinking about it. He’d been quiet for a while now—not in a way that felt off, just… thoughtful. His gaze drifted occasionally, not really focused on anything specific, just taking in the space around them.
“This is nicer,” Madaline said after a moment, her voice softer out here without her trying to make it that way.
Ethan glanced over at her, one corner of his mouth pulling faintly upward. “Yeah.”
“Feels less…” She hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Heavy?” he offered.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
The word settled between them.
Not uncomfortable.
Just honest.
Madaline brushed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, her eyes drifting toward the lake again. The sunlight reflected off the surface in a way that made it hard to look at directly, bright enough to blur the edges of everything around it.
“Mira’s been acting weird,” she said, more to the thought than to him.
Ethan’s expression shifted slightly, not defensive, just attentive. “Weird how?”
Madaline shrugged lightly. “I don’t know. Just… off. This morning, especially. She looked like she didn’t sleep at all.”
“She probably didn’t,” Ethan said. “New place. A lot going on.”
“Yeah.”
Madaline nodded, but it didn’t fully settle.
“I just don’t like it,” she added quietly. “She doesn’t usually get like that.”
Ethan slowed slightly, his attention shifting more fully to her now. “She’s okay,” he said, and there was something steady in the way he said it. Not dismissive. Not brushing it off. Just… certain in a way that felt practiced.
“You don’t know that,” Madaline said, but it came out softer than an argument.
“I know her,” he replied.
The answer landed differently.
Madaline glanced at him again, studying his face for a second longer this time. There was something in it she hadn’t fully noticed before—not just concern, but something deeper. Something rooted.
“You really care about her,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
Ethan let out a quiet breath, a small, almost reluctant smile pulling at his mouth. “Yeah.”
He looked ahead again as they walked, his shoulders shifting slightly like he was debating something.
Then—
“I was going to do it this weekend.”
Madaline blinked.
“Do what?”
Ethan huffed out a soft laugh, more at himself than anything else. “Propose.”
The word hung there.
Simple.
Huge.
Madaline stopped walking.
“Wait—what?”
Ethan slowed too, glancing back at her, that same half-smile still there but thinner now, edged with something more uncertain.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was—” He paused, running a hand briefly through his hair. “I was gonna do it out here, actually. By the water.”
Madaline’s eyes widened, her surprise breaking into something softer almost immediately. “Ethan—”
“I know, I know,” he said quickly, shaking his head a little. “Bad timing now. Obviously. But—” He shrugged once, like the motion could carry the weight of what he was trying to explain. “I’ve been planning it for a while.”
Her gaze dropped instinctively to his hands.
Still in his pockets.
“You have it with you?” she asked.
Ethan hesitated for half a second.
Then nodded.
“Yeah.”
Something in Madaline’s chest tightened, not in a bad way.
Just—
full.
“That’s… really sweet,” she said, her voice softening without effort. “She’s gonna freak out.”
Ethan’s smile deepened slightly at that, a hint of nerves slipping through. “That’s kind of the point.”
Madaline let out a small laugh, shaking her head. “You’re insane for doing it on a trip like this.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Probably.”
There was a pause.
Comfortable.
Real.
The kind that only existed when something honest had just been said and neither person felt the need to fill the space immediately after.
Madaline looked out toward the lake again, the light still dancing across the surface in soft, shifting patterns.
“She deserves that,” she said quietly. “Something good.”
Ethan nodded once.
“Yeah,” he said. “She does.”
For a second, everything felt…
normal.
Like it could stay that way.
Like whatever had been sitting wrong all morning might settle back into something manageable if they just gave it enough time.
Then—
a sound cut through the trees.
Sharp.
Wrong.
Madaline’s head snapped toward it before she could stop herself.
Footsteps.
Fast.
Uneven.
Coming toward them.
Ethan’s posture shifted instantly, his attention snapping into place, body turning slightly in front of hers without thinking about it.
“What was that—”
The question didn’t finish.
Because a second later—
Mira burst through the trees.
Not running neatly.
Not in any way that looked controlled.
She came at them like the woods had thrown her out—branches catching at her sleeves, shoes slipping against the uneven ground, one hand half-lifted like she’d been trying to protect herself from something behind her and had forgotten to put it back down. Her breathing was ragged enough to hear before she reached them, and there was a sound caught in it, something frayed and desperate that made Madaline’s stomach drop instantly.
Blood soaked the front of her sweater.
Dark.
Uneven.
Too much.
Madaline didn’t think.
She moved.
“Mira—”
Ethan reached her first.
The second he saw the blood, all the softness that had been in him a moment earlier vanished under something immediate and instinctive. He stepped forward fast enough that Mira nearly collided into him full-force, catching her by the arms before she could lose her footing completely. The motion pulled her into him anyway, her hands grabbing at his shirt hard enough to wrinkle the fabric in her fists as she tried to steady herself.
Mira looked terrified.
Not just upset.
Not crying.
Terrified in that thin, breathless way that made every word look like it would hurt coming out.
“Help me,” she gasped.
The words broke apart around the edges.
Madaline had never heard her sound like that.
It made the whole world contract around the three of them in one awful second—the trees, the water, the light, all of it pushing away until there was only Mira’s face and Ethan’s hands gripping her shoulders and the blood on her sweater staining everything else wrong.
“Hey—hey—what happened?” Ethan asked.
His voice was steady.
Too steady for the panic already working up Madaline’s throat.
Mira tried to speak and failed the first time.
She looked over Ethan’s shoulder at Madaline like she needed to see someone else there too, like she needed proof she hadn’t run all this way for nothing. Her eyes were wide, wet, unfocused at the edges. The expression on her face made Madaline take one step closer before she even knew she was doing it.
“Mira,” she said, softer now, because shouting at fear never helped. “Look at me. What happened?”
Mira’s mouth trembled.
She dragged in one broken breath, then another, and for a second it looked like she might collapse all over again.
“Ymir,” she said.
The name came out like it had cut her on the way up.
Ethan’s grip tightened slightly. “What about Ymir?”
Mira shook her head too quickly, hair sticking to the dampness at her temples. “He—he went crazy.”
The sentence hit Madaline so strangely she almost didn’t understand it.
Crazy.
It felt like the wrong word for the room they were in, for the weekend, for the blood on Mira’s sweater and the wild, hunted look in her face. It was too broad, too impossible, and somehow that was exactly what made it sound real.
“What do you mean?” Ethan asked.
Mira’s breath hitched again. “He—” She swallowed hard, eyes darting briefly toward the house even though the trees half-blocked it from here. “He killed Katarin.”
Madaline’s heart seemed to stop.
Not metaphorically.
Actually.
There was a blank second where nothing inside her moved at all.
Then everything did.
“What?” she heard herself say.
Mira flinched slightly at the sharpness of it, looking back at her with tears spilling more fully now.
“He killed her,” she repeated, shaking so badly now that the words seemed to come apart in her mouth. “Right in front of me.”
Ethan looked as stunned as Madaline felt, but he held onto Mira more firmly instead of freezing. “No,” he said immediately, and it came out half as disbelief, half as correction. “No, wait—start over. Start over. Where is he?”
Mira blinked at him like she was trying to keep up with the question. “In the house.”
“Ymir is in the house?”
She nodded too fast. “Kane tried to stop him.”
That made Madaline’s head snap up.
“Kane?”
Mira turned toward her, eyes huge and frantic. “He heard us upstairs, and then Ymir just—” She broke off, dragging her hand shakily across her mouth before continuing. “I don’t know what happened. Katarin was talking to me and then he was just there and he had—I don’t even know, I didn’t see at first, I just saw blood and—”
She folded inward slightly as if the memory itself had hit her physically.
Ethan caught her before she could lose her balance again. “Hey. Stay with me.”
The line would have sounded soothing in any other moment.
Here, it only made everything feel more unreal.
“Kane got you out?” Ethan asked.
Mira nodded, breath shaking. “He told me to run.”
Madaline stared at her.
The details came too fast and yet not fast enough, each one trying to settle into place before the last had found anywhere to land. Ymir. Katarin. Kane. Upstairs. Blood. A fight still happening. It was too much at once, and her mind kept snagging on the wrong things.
Ymir?
Ymir, who had been joking in the water not that long ago. Ymir, who had looked half sick with worry this morning. Ymir, who was loud and warm and annoying and kind in the irritatingly obvious way kind people sometimes were.
Ymir?
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said before she could stop herself.
“I know,” she said, voice cracking hard. “I know, but I saw him. Madaline, I saw him.”
That did it.
Not because it answered anything.
Because Mira almost never used her name like that when she was frightened.
It stripped the last bit of distance out of the moment.
Madaline moved the rest of the way in without deciding to and reached for her, one hand coming to Mira’s arm just below the shoulder. The sweater was damp there, cold in some places, sticky in others where the blood had dried into the knit.
The reality of that texture hit harder than the words had.
Blood.
Real blood.
“Are you hurt?” she asked immediately.
Mira shook her head. “No—I don’t think so—it’s not mine.”
The sentence sent a sick wave through Madaline so strong she had to lock her knees to stay steady.
Ethan’s face hardened in a way she hadn’t seen before.
Not emotion disappearing.
Emotion narrowing.
He looked back toward the house through the trees, jaw set, all the softness from the conversation they’d just been having vanishing under something cleaner and more practical.
“How long ago?” he asked.
Mira looked at him as though the question barely made sense through the panic. “I don’t know—seconds? A minute? I just ran.”
“And Kane’s still inside?”
Another nod.
“With Ymir.”
Mira swallowed and looked back toward the house again. “He was trying to stop him.”
The line landed like it had already been shaped into something meaningful by the time she spoke it. Madaline felt that too, the way Ethan straightened slightly beside her, the way his brain had already moved into the next step before hers had fully caught up to the first.
“Okay,” he said.
The word was for himself as much as anyone else.
Madaline looked at him. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he repeated, more firmly now. “We go back.”
The decision snapped the air in half.
Mira made a small sound, not quite protest, not quite relief.
Madaline’s hand tightened around her arm. “Ethan—”
He turned fully toward them now, all focus.
“Listen to me,” he said, and there was nothing uncertain in him anymore. “You stay behind me. Both of you.”
Madaline stared.
Some part of her wanted to argue. Some part of her wanted to say there was no version of this that made sense, that they should run the other direction, that they should not be heading back toward a house that apparently now held blood and bodies and a fight she could not picture without feeling sick.
But Ethan was already thinking like someone who had chosen a direction and could not afford hesitation.
Mira clung to that immediately.
Madaline saw it happen—the way Mira shifted closer to him, not dramatically, just enough to lean into the shape of protection he had thrown up around them without even realizing it.
“Don’t let him near me,” Mira whispered.
Ethan’s eyes flicked back to her. “I won’t.”
It was such a quick, instinctive promise that it made something in Madaline’s chest hurt.
The ring.
She thought of it suddenly, absurdly, like her mind had grabbed the nearest normal thing it could find and held it up against the horror just to see if it survived the comparison.
He had been talking about proposing a minute ago.
A minute ago.
And now Mira was bloodstained and shaking in front of him saying Ymir had killed someone and Kane was inside trying to stop it.
The whole world had tilted so fast she could still feel the shift under her feet.
Ethan took one last look at Mira, then at Madaline, making sure they were both actually hearing him.
“Stay close,” he said. “If I tell you to run, you run.”
Madaline nodded before she could think too hard about it.
Mira did too.
Then Ethan turned toward the house and started moving.
Madaline went with him.
Because what else was there to do?
Mira stayed between them for the first few steps, breathing still ragged, one hand wrapped around the front of her sweater as if trying to hold herself together physically. The blood on it seemed darker now that Madaline had touched it. More real. More impossible.
The path back through the trees felt narrower than before.
Every branch seemed too close, every shadow too sharp, every sound—footsteps, breathing, leaves shifting overhead—too loud in the wrong places and not loud enough in the right ones.
No one spoke.
Not at first.
Then Madaline heard herself ask, quietly, because the silence had become unbearable:
“What did he use?”
Mira stumbled slightly beside her.
Not enough to fall.
Just enough to make the answer take one beat longer.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Something sharp.”
The vagueness of it should have felt wrong.
It didn’t.
There were too many other things wrong already.
Ahead of them, the house began to come back into view between the trunks.
Still.
Ordinary.
Sunlight on the siding. Porch half-shadowed. Windows dark where they reflected the trees instead of the inside.
Nothing about it had changed.
And that made it worse.
Much worse.
Because houses that held terrible things should have looked different.
There should have been some mark.
Some warning.
Some visible crack in the shape of it.
But it just stood there.
Waiting.
Ethan slowed as they reached the yard.
Not out of fear.
Out of caution now, every line of him sharpened.
He lifted one arm slightly in front of them without looking back.
A barrier.
An instruction.
Stay back.
Madaline obeyed without meaning to.
So did Mira.
And as they crossed the last stretch of yard toward the back of the house, every instinct Madaline had fought to ignore since morning came alive all at once—
too late to help.