**House Number 20 — The Room**
Moster moves toward Son, blade driving forward —
Leo shoves Son sideways in one hard, fast motion. The strike cuts through empty air.
Johnny launches himself at Moster from behind, locking both arms around him tight.
"We're going to kill you, you bastard."
Moster doesn't move. Doesn't tense. Just stands there like the grip means nothing.
"In your dreams," he says flatly.
Son comes forward swinging —
Moster drives his elbow back into Johnny's stomach like a piston — the grip breaks instantly. Then in the same fluid motion he draws the blade across Son's arm. Deep enough to bleed. Fast enough that Son doesn't feel it until it's already done.
Son staggers back a step.
Moster turns toward him. Slow. Deliberate. He raises the knife and points it straight at Son's chest like he's done this a hundred times before.
Son watches the blade come closer.
The light catches the steel — and everything slows down. The room goes quiet in his head. His legs stop working. Something deep in his chest just unlocks, like a door he'd been holding shut for years.
*So this is it.*
"...I'm going to see my mom and dad," he says quietly, almost to himself. "Finally."
His voice doesn't shake. That's the worst part.
"Thank you. All of you. For everything you gave me."
"SON—"
Leo grabs Moster's arm and wrenches it sideways with everything he has — shoulder, weight, desperation.
"F*ck you," Moster says through his teeth, voice ice cold.
Son blinks. The room comes back. The noise comes back.
Leo turns on him, chest heaving, blood from his effort in his face.
"What are you DOING?" His voice cracks between anger and something closer to grief. "We all came here together to end this. You wanted revenge — for your mom, for your dad. You've been carrying that since the beginning." He steps closer. "And now you're just gonna die in front of him like it's nothing? Like he wins and you don't even fight back?" He grabs Son by the collar. "YOU are the one who ends this. Not him. Not us. YOU."
The words land hard.
Son stares at him for a long moment. Then looks down.
"...You're right," he says quietly. "I'm sorry, Leo."
He looks at the floor.
A metal spike. Heavy. Long. Just sitting there like it was waiting.
Son picks it up.
He moves forward fast —
"NO—"
Moster actually steps back. One step. Involuntary.
Son keeps coming —
The door bursts open. Andrew, Gowin and George rush in from the hallway.
"Son—"
One second. That's all it takes.
Moster moves — drives his fist straight into Leo's face with everything he has. Leo's nose cracks like a knuckle. Blood sprays. He drops.
Then Moster is gone. Just gone. Like he was never there.
Son stands in the middle of the room, spike still in hand, staring at the empty space where Moster was standing a heartbeat ago.
The silence is suffocating.
"NO — DAMN IT—"
Gowin looks around at all of them — the blood on the floor, Leo on the ground, Son with a weapon and nothing to use it on.
"...Were you about to kill him?"
"Yeah," Johnny says quietly, one hand still pressed to his stomach.
"I'm sorry." Son's voice drops. "I lost focus."
"Don't worry about it." Leo's voice comes up from the floor, thick and wet. He pinches his nose, tilts his head back. "At least we learned something." He looks up, eyes steady despite the blood running over his lips. "He stepped back, Son. When you picked that spike up — he moved away from you." A pause. "He's not untouchable. He can be beaten."
Son looks down at the spike in his hand.
The weight of it feels different now.
"Yeah," he says.
"Yeah, he can."
---
**That Night — A Street in New York**
The street is empty the way New York streets get after midnight — not quiet, never quiet, but hollow. Streetlights humming. Distant sirens. The city breathing in its sleep.
Jason walks alone, hands in his pockets, going nowhere in particular.
A man comes the other way and clips his shoulder hard without slowing down. Doesn't look back. Doesn't say a word.
Jason stops.
"You blind or something, you punk?"
The man turns around slowly. Takes his time. Like he's decided something.
"...You really talking to me like that." His voice drops flat and ugly. "You got a death wish, son of a b*tch?"
He reaches into his jacket.
The gun comes out casual — like he's done it a hundred times, like it's nothing, like Jason is nothing.
Jason goes completely still.
The man's finger moves toward the trigger —
A blade punches through his stomach from behind.
The sound is small. That's what's wrong about it. Something that final shouldn't sound so small.
The man's mouth opens. Blood pours out slow, then fast. His knees go first. Then the rest of him. He hits the pavement and doesn't move again.
The street goes back to humming.
Jason stares at the body. Then at the figure standing behind it.
Moster. Blade raised. Still dripping. The mask catching the orange glow of the streetlight.
"...You." Jason's voice is slow, like he's working through a memory. "You're the one from the bathroom. You disappeared before I could say anything." His eyes drop to the knife. "And you're the one who left me that blade."
"That's right," Moster says. He lowers the blade slowly, like he has all the time in the world. "I've been watching you for a while, Jason." He pauses. "You want to know what I see?"
He steps over the body like it's furniture.
"The strongest people alive don't care. About any of it. Someone disrespects you — you hit back harder. Someone looks at you wrong — you make them regret the eyes they were born with. You don't bow. You don't apologize. You don't answer to anyone." His voice stays level, almost gentle. "You're strong because you never handed anyone power over you." He looks at Jason the way a person looks at something they've been searching for. "So."
He extends his hand.
"What do you say we work together?"
Jason looks at the hand.
Looks at Moster's face behind that mask.
Looks at the body on the ground between them.
He smiles. Slow. Wide. Like something that had been locked up inside him just got let out.
"Hell yeah. Without a doubt."
He takes the hand.
Thunder rolls overhead — not a rumble, a crack. Loud enough to rattle glass two blocks away. The kind of sound that makes people in their beds wake up and not know why.
---
**The Next Day — The University**
Campus looks normal. That's the thing about daylight — it makes everything look like it couldn't possibly be dangerous.
Son and Andrew walk side by side across the courtyard, voices low.
"We need to stay sharp," Andrew says, eyes moving. "Moster could be watching right now. Any one of these people walking around."
"Yeah." Son scans the faces around them out of habit. "There's Leo, Gowin, Johnny." He slows down. "Wait —"
He looks around again.
"Where's George?"
Leo stops walking.
"...Now that you mention it. Where IS George?"
---
**The University Library**
George is alone in the stacks, pulling a book from the shelf. The kind of quiet that only exists in libraries — heavy, padded, like the world outside stopped.
The lights go out.
Every single one. All at once.
"What the—"
Darkness. Complete and total. Then — something shifts between the shelves. Not footsteps. Something dragging. Books scraping against each other like fingers running along a wall.
George doesn't think. He just runs.
He hits the library doors at full speed —
They don't move.
Locked.
"F*ck—"
He yanks again. Nothing. He slams his palm against the door. Nothing.
Then he hears them.
Children's voices. Small and high and completely, deeply wrong — the kind of wrong that your body understands before your brain does.
*"Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him."*
George spins around.
They're everywhere. Surrounding him from every angle, closing the circle — children, dozens of them, eyes burning blood red in the dark, mouths moving in perfect unison like a single terrible thing with many faces.
*"Kill him. Kill him. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE."*
And in the center of them —
Still. Silent. Watching.
Moster.
He doesn't move. He doesn't rush. He just stands there while the voices chant around him like a current he's standing in the middle of.
Then he opens his mouth.
"Die..." The word comes out almost soft. "Die..." Lower now. Colder. Like the temperature in the room dropped a degree with each repetition. Until it barely sounds like a voice at all — just a frequency, a vibration, something that gets into your bones.
"...Die, George."
George SCREAMS —
And runs. Straight through the ring of children — or through where they should be — crashing into shelves, sending books avalanching to the floor, sobbing between gasps, running with no direction, no plan, just away, just anywhere but here —
"PLEASE — PLEASE, NO—"
Behind him — footsteps.
Steady. Unhurried. The kind of steps that don't need to rush because they already know how this ends. Always just close enough. Never falling behind no matter how fast George runs.
George throws himself behind a bookshelf at the back wall and collapses against it, knees to his chest, back pressed flat. He clamps a hand over his mouth.
Chest heaving. Heart slamming so hard he can feel it in his teeth. Face soaked — sweat and tears mixing together, dripping off his jaw.
Silence.
He squeezes his eyes shut.
*Please. Please. Please.*
Then —
A drop hits the floor in front of him.
Dark. Thick.
He opens his eyes.
Another drop. Then another. Falling from above the shelf, landing in a small spreading pattern directly in front of his shoes.
Blood.
George tilts his head up slowly.
A head descends from above the top of the shelf. Upside down. Lowering toward him inch by inch, unhurried, like gravity itself is in on it.
Moster's face. The lower half of the mask pulled aside to reveal what's underneath.
A mouth full of fangs. Wet. Dripping.
Those eyes looking down at him like he's already dead.
George opens his mouth —
And the scream that comes out doesn't sound like him anymore.