Mia's eyes snapped open.
Cold.
Wet.
The alley smelled of piss, rain, and something metallic she didn't want to name.
She was on her knees.
Her hands—both fists—were slick, warm, dripping. Blood. Not hers. Too much of it. It ran between her fingers like dark oil, pooling in the cracks of the concrete.
She stared at them.
No memory.
Nothing.
Just the echo of a scream that wasn't hers and the sudden, violent absence of time.
A man lay three steps away, face down in a puddle. His arm was twisted at a wrong angle. His head… she couldn't look at his head. Something dark spread beneath it, catching the weak neon from the street beyond the alley.
Her breathing came in short, sharp bursts.
(What did I—)
The thought died before it finished.
She didn't know.
She couldn't know.
But the body remembered.
Her knuckles throbbed with satisfaction. Her shoulders still carried the ghost of a swing—fast, precise, merciless. Something inside her chest felt… quiet. Content. Like a predator that had just finished feeding and was already bored.
That feeling terrified her more than the blood.
She tried to stand. Her legs shook. The world tilted.
A flash—half memory, half nightmare—cut through the fog: a hand on her waist in the dark. Fingers digging too hard. A voice too close.
"Pretty little star… come here—"
Then nothing.
Black.
Red.
Now this.
Mia's stomach lurched. She pressed the back of her bloody hand to her mouth, tasting copper and fear.
I didn't… I couldn't…
But the evidence was right there, cooling on the ground.
Sirens in the distance. Not close yet. Not yet.
Her pulse hammered so loud it drowned the city.
She looked down at herself—dress torn at the shoulder, one heel missing, hair wild. The perfect EEE girl was gone. Something else had worn her skin and left the mess behind.
She didn't know what it was.
She only knew it was still inside her. Watching. Waiting for the next time someone touched what wasn't theirs.
Mia backed away.
One step.
Two.
Her eyes never left the body.
She turned.
And she ran.
Not the controlled, graceful run of the stage. This was raw, stumbling, animal.
Past overflowing dumpsters. Past flickering streetlights. Past the world that still thought Mia Valen was just a broken pop star.
She ran until her lungs burned and the blood on her hands started to dry, cracking like old paint.
She ran until the alley was far behind and the only thing left was the certainty that she could never go back to the dressing room.
Never go back to the lights.
Never go back to being alone with whatever had just woken up inside her.
Home.
She had to get home.
Before it decided it liked the taste of violence.
Before it decided it wanted more.
Mia ran.