The night air clung to the city, damp and cool. A faint mist hung around after the rain. My clothes almost felt moist as I strolled the city streets, lost in thought. The storm had left everything slick, the streets shining under the dim streetlights, a quiet reminder of the downpour that had moved on hours ago. People were back out, hoods up, coats zipped tight, slipping back into their nighttime routines like the storm had never touched them.

I kept my hood low, blending into the crowd. It was easy to become part of the background here, just another passerby in the city. Some nights, I needed to feel closer to humanity more than I wanted to admit. Usually, it was when I felt like I was slipping away, becoming more monster than man. Tonight especially.

My time with the Wicklows had gone south… fast! Shelta’s abrupt terror at what had happened was still fresh in my mind. She didn’t just want me to leave, she needed me to go as far from her as possible. Something scared her. Her touch was brief, but it left me wondering, what did she feel? What did she see inside of me when she reached out with her mind? What could have put that look on her face?

I walked aimlessly, the cool air filling my lungs as I tried to piece it all together. I needed space, some kind of clarity. My thoughts, my doubts, returned. What had I become in her eyes… in all their eyes?

After the Chasse family had seen me for what I really was again, something deep inside me shifted. Something I couldn’t identify. It was like they weren’t just looking at me anymore… they were seeing the thing inside the cage. The monster. They saw the wreckage I left in my wake, the violence, murder, and death that followed wherever I went. I could feel it in their stares, the way their eyes didn’t just register my face but saw the horror hiding beneath my skin, into the chaos I could unleash. Even with how much Eleanor clung to me, I felt the darkness inside of me making me think of it all in different ways. Maybe Eleanor was staying close to keep her family in my favor? No… that couldn’t be it. I doubted it immediately. Yet… it still lingered. Maybe Frank was so welcoming only to keep me calm and docile? I shook my head, trying to cast the thoughts away. It couldn’t be true.

And Shelta… the way she looked at me, that mix of fear and disgust, like she’d glimpsed something inside me that I could no longer hide. The hunger for death. The need to kill, kill, and kill again, ever present in the back of my mind. Her power felt like it tore open some part of me I’d been trying to hold together… and maybe she saw that urge… felt it. The darkness I kept buried so deep now clawed its way to the surface, more alive than ever, spreading through me like poison. I felt it in my head, twisting thoughts, causing doubt in everything. I could almost feel it curling around my bones, thickening my blood, turning my thoughts… colder.

As I walked through the city streets, the night pressing in around me, the distance between me and the people passing by felt wider. The sounds of their voices, the rhythm of their footsteps, it all seemed distant. It was like I wasn’t part of their world anymore. My boots hit the slick pavement, but the city felt less real somehow like I was moving through it without belonging to it.

I tried to shake it off, to remind myself that I was still me, still human. Nothing had changed, not really. But with each step, that yearning feeling to be human slipped further away, replaced by something else. Something darker, heavier. The part of me that had once clung to my humanity felt frayed like it was unraveling with every second that passed. Maybe I was becoming what they feared. Maybe the part of me that fought to be human was fading away and that guy didn’t exist anymore. After months on the road, hunting down the names I was given, and slaughtering them for the things they had done in those visions, I felt like the beast, and I had begun to mentally blur together. The old me started to slip away.

I felt it stirring inside me. The beast clawed its way up from the depths where I had buried it. Its sudden, violent push startled me, its presence was too close to the outside, too real. My steps faltered, and I stopped dead in the middle of the street. The cool night air felt like it was pressing in as I struggled to keep control. My breath hitched, and I forced it down. I tried to steady the panic and confusion rising in my mind.

My grip tightened mentally, and physically, as if I could hold the wheel of my mind steady through sheer will. “No,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, more a plea than a command. But I wasn’t sure who I was begging… myself, or the thing inside me.

The pressure was mounting. Muscles tensed involuntarily like I was fighting a battle within my own skin. The force was strong, stronger than I’d felt before. It pulled at me, yanking my gaze across the street like it knew something I didn’t. My head turned on its own, eyes locking onto something I couldn’t even see, but it could. A convenience store with people inside… A chill ran through me. This wasn’t just a slip in control; the beast was trying to break free, to take over… to kill. And for a moment, I felt my grip loosening, felt myself slipping into the dark pull of it. I almost… wanted to let go…

I couldn’t let it win. I couldn’t. I was the one in control.

I forced the thoughts down, crushing them beneath my will, and shoved the beast back into its cage harder than ever before. With every ounce of mental fortitude I could muster, I shoved the darkness back into its home. I wouldn’t let it out…not now, not ever. I was in control! The darkness that clawed at the edges of my mind was locked away where it belonged. It didn’t control me. I controlled it. Right?

Maybe the agitation still lingered from my encounter with Peter. I worried it was something deeper, something darker inside me that I didn’t fully understand yet. But I didn’t care. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t let it take hold. Unless I was given a vision, the beast was mine to command, and I would keep it buried until I summoned it. No matter the struggle.

I steadied myself, pulling in a breath as I shoved everything else aside. The stares from pedestrians, the tension in my body, the beast clawing at my mind, it all fell away. Only one thing was left, my footsteps. One after the other… left then right, left then right. It became the only thing that mattered, the only thing I could focus on. My entire existence narrowed to that simple rhythm.

Left, right, left, right. The wet pavement glistened under the dim light, my boots hitting it in steady beats. Each step felt heavy, and deliberate, like I was grounding myself with every footfall. I couldn’t think beyond it. I didn’t want to. The world outside blurred, people moving past me like shadows, unimportant, irrelevant. All that mattered was keeping my feet moving, not losing the thread that held me together. I had to go home. It wasn’t safe for me to walk the world with humans right now. I had to get this thing away from innocent people.

Left, right, left, right. It became my sole purpose, the only thing keeping me tethered to whatever was left of myself. Without it, I didn’t know what would happen. I couldn’t afford to think about the beast, the weight pressing down inside me. I couldn’t afford to let my mind drift. This… this movement… was the only goal I had. If I could just keep walking, I could keep it all at bay. I felt it prying against my very bones, screaming and thrashing to get out of the cage.

In a sudden, sharp moment, something flipped inside me. Something that had never happened before. I froze up, completely locked in place. Except… my body kept moving. My legs were still carrying me forward, but the terrifying realization hit me like a punch to the gut. I wasn’t the one in control anymore.

A resolute and unflinching willpower overtook my own, casting me somewhere else within my mind. There was no fight, no resistance I could muster. It stopped playing nice and took what it wanted.

It was like I’d been yanked out of the driver’s seat, ripped away from everything I knew about myself. Confusion swirled, but beneath that, fear set in fast, like ice in my veins. I wasn’t at the helm anymore. I wasn’t calling the shots. My mind, my consciousness, everything that made me… me, had been shoved into the dark, locked away.

And then it hit me. I was in the cage. The place where I’d always kept the thing inside me. But now, I was the one trapped, helpless. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even scream. My body was still moving, but I wasn’t the one telling it to. I could feel every step, the ground beneath my feet, the turning of my head… but none of it was my choice.

It had always been me turning into the monster. But for the first time… the monster turned into me. He was in my body. Thoughts of Autumn, Eleanor, and Carter flooded my mind. What would they do if they knew that I had lost complete control?

I watched in horror as I felt myself turn, my legs carrying me back in the direction I’d come from. The pull in my mind was still there, that same pull I’d felt earlier, only now, we were heading straight toward it. And I had no say in the matter.

I was a passenger, a puppet on strings, being dragged along by the thing inside of me. Terrified, I tried to fight it, tried to take back control, but it was like trying to move through a thick, suffocating fog. I couldn’t do anything but watch as my body moved on without me.

I felt my hands twitch, adjusting my hood, pulling it up to obscure my face as much as possible. We were approaching a convenience store, following a group of middle-aged people who seemed to be chatting in their own little world. I had no idea what was coming next, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t going to end well.

I wanted to scream, to warn them to run, to get as far away from this place as they could. But as I tried to yell, no sound came out. Inside the cage of my own mind, my voice, my will, everything was completely muted. My entire being felt like it was trapped, suffocated in isolation.

The bell above the door rang softly as it yanked open the glass door with my hand. I watched helplessly as my form stepped inside, moving with a purposeful, unyielding stride. It turned right, heading down an aisle stocked with chips and crackers. There was no hesitation, no deviation. I could only feel the relentless forward motion as if my body were on autopilot and I didn’t know how to shut it off.

Like a predator on a hunt, it knew exactly where to go. Except this wasn’t a scent we were following; it was the dark, ominous pull that guided us. And as I watched from behind the bars of the cage within, all I could do was brace myself for whatever came next, and the consequences that would follow.

We moved through the convenience store with an unrelenting, cold precision. It passed through to the back storage room and pushed out the heavy, metal backdoor. The alleyway stretched out before us, a narrow, grimy passage cluttered with overflowing dumpsters and scattered debris. The remnants of the storm clung to everything, leaving the ground and trash soaked and leaking. The air was thick with the stench of decaying garbage, a rancid mix of old food and rot that seemed to seep into every breath.

A man stood fifteen yards away from the backdoor, hunched against the wall of the building, puffing on a cigarette. His figure was slight and weathered, with short, thin, grey hair that clung to the sides of his skull, barely more than a few wisps. His frame was frail, a coarse structure barely concealed beneath a threadbare jacket. As he inhaled, the cigarette flared briefly, casting a small orange glow. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, drifting lazily towards me.

His eyes were sunken deep into his face, dark and hollow from a life of hard labor. He stared with a vacant, detached look as if he didn’t really see us, or perhaps didn’t care. The smoke mingled with the overpowering odor of the alley, adding another layer to the already oppressive atmosphere. His gaze, lacking recognition or emotion, seemed to slide off us as we moved through the mire, blending seamlessly into the grimy setting.

My arm extended, groping into the shadowed abyss where a familiar presence lingered. The blade. That ominous supernatural weapon that once held the form of Jon’s rifle. I had no clue what it truly was, but it was as if the monster controlling my body instinctively reached for it. He pulled it from the void with practiced ease. It knew it would be there. In an instant, the air beside us shimmered with a ghostly tremor, and the blade materialized with a cruel, otherworldly aura.

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The blade felt impossibly heavy in my grip, a weight that seemed to anchor me not just to the earth but to something far darker, far older. Its surface gleamed under the faint light of the alleyway, casting unnatural reflections that danced across the damp walls like specters. The steel itself was cold, almost unnaturally so, and emblazoned with names. There were hundreds maybe… etched in a multitude of scripts and languages I could scarcely begin to understand. The names were like scars on the metal, some worn deep, others barely visible as if the blade had passed through countless hands. My name stuck out as I watched it flip the long knife around in a reverse grip, the blade length running up behind us as we closed the distance to the man.

Also carved into the length of the blade were intricate designs—symbols that felt both ancient and alien, belonging to no one culture, but to all. Some were tiny, barely perceptible, thin lines so delicate they seemed to writhe if I stared too long. Others were bold, jagged inscriptions that seemed to pulse with menace, their edges sharp enough to draw blood just by looking.

Being locked inside the cage, detached from the murderous intent, allowed me to observe the blade differently. I saw more, felt more. The whole thing felt wrong like it didn’t belong in this world at all. It was like the blade itself was a doorway to something unspeakable. It hummed in my hand, a low, vibrating pulse, as if alive… no, not alive… hungry. The air around it seemed to warp, pulling at the edges of reality, a deadly aura that sent a chill crawling up my spine.

The man before us stood frozen, his mouth hanging open in a grotesque caricature of disbelief. His cigarette tumbled from his lips; his gaze fixed on the unfolding horror. Our form before him… the glinting blade hungry for his life…his shock morphed into a palpable, suffocating dread.

The man stood frozen, his eyes wide with terror, as if some primal part of his brain was screaming at him to run. His body refused to listen. The blade in my hand… no, its hand, began to hum louder, vibrating with an energy that made my skin crawl. I could feel it stirring inside me, the thing that had taken control; its anticipation building like a storm. There was no hesitation in its movements as it shifted its weight, the blade moving effortlessly in the air, cutting through the shadows.

With a single, swift step, the distance between us and the man disappeared. His eyes flicked down to the blade, and a whimper caught in his throat as he finally realized the danger, but by then it was already too late.

The blade slashed through the air, faster than I could have ever moved on my own. The steel made a sickening sound as it met flesh, a wet, tearing noise that echoed off the walls of the alley. It planted the blade into his chest with powerful force. Blood sprayed in an arc, splattering across the brick and pooling on the cracked pavement. He tried to scream, but the sound that escaped his lips was nothing more than a gurgling choke as the blade cut deep into his chest. It split him open with terrifying precision. The force of the impact drove open a wedge in his chest cavity.

His body crumpled, but the thing controlling me wasn’t done. It yanked the blade free, the weight of the man’s blood now coating the steel, dark and thick. I could feel its satisfaction radiating through my limbs, a twisted sense of hunger being fed. Without a shred of mercy, it plunged the blade into the man’s heart, the edge slipping effortlessly between ribs, tearing muscle and bone like paper.

The man’s eyes were wide, and bloodshot, his mouth hanging open in a grotesque, silent scream. His legs buckled beneath him, collapsing to the ground as his blood pooled around him, darkening the filthy street. Every movement was precise, and calculated, as if the blade had its own will. It ripped through him again and again, every strike filling the alley with the sound of flesh being torn apart, the smell of copper thick in the air.

He stabbed and stabbed, the wet impacts filling the alleyway behind the convenience store. My body thrashed and fought against my own thoughts. It never stopped. It wanted this guy dead… but why? I had no name… no vision. Why was it doing this?

Finally, the thing stopped. The man was nothing more than a broken heap, limbs twisted unnaturally, his lifeless eyes staring up at nothing. The blade dripped with blood, its once gleaming surface now slick and dark, stained with his life. A sick, unnatural quiet fell over the alley, save for the slow drip of blood hitting the concrete.

And I could feel it… the thing inside me… savoring every moment of the slaughter, the power of the blade throbbing in my grip, like a beast well-fed but always hungry for more.

My breath came in ragged, uneven bursts, but it wasn’t mine. I still wasn’t in control. The thing inside me was still there, its presence pushing against my mind like a suffocating weight.

Then, there was a sound… a shuffle from the mouth of the alley.

I froze. My heart, my heart, hammered against my ribs as a figure stepped into the light, their silhouette barely visible in the gloom. A blonde-haired woman, middle-aged, with a crumpled grocery bag in her arms. She had heard something… and had to come to investigate.

Her eyes scanned the scene, the darkness not quite hiding what had just happened. First, she saw the body. The blood. Her footsteps faltered, the bag slipping from her fingers as cans and produce clattered onto the ground. Her gaze lifted, and then she saw me…or rather, the thing that stood in my skin. Pitch-black eyes emptily stared back at her.

The shock on her face shifted instantly into horror, as she saw my stance over the man, my blade slick with his lifeblood.

I felt a surge of panic slam into me like a tidal wave, more real than anything I’d felt since this nightmare began. She was seeing me, seeing the moment after the act, the lifeless body at my feet. I could feel the fear was mine, not the monster’s. It had no care for what was happening. I felt it boiling up inside like a cold, crushing hand wrapping around my throat. What had I done?

Her mouth opened, lips trembling, trying to form words, but nothing came out. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to understand, to process what she was looking at. I could see it, the realization settling in; a man, standing over a dead body, holding a knife slick with blood. And the woman, a helpless witness to it all.

I wanted to say something, to do something, to tell her it wasn’t me, that I wasn’t the one holding the knife, that I didn’t want to hurt anyone. But my mouth wouldn’t move. The thing inside me was still gripping tight like it was deciding what to do next.

Her breathing quickened, panic rising as she stumbled backward. The fear in her eyes grew, turning into something wild and animalistic. She knew what I was, what I looked like… a killer, standing in the dark with blood on his hands. Her foot caught on something, a loose piece of trash or a bottle, and she nearly fell.

I tried to fight it, to stop whatever was about to happen. I could feel the thing stir, its instincts sharpening. My body shifted forward, a subtle movement, but enough to make her flinch, her eyes widening as if she knew I was coming for her next. And then she turned and ran. The sound of her shoes pounding against the wet pavement echoed through the alley, her breath ragged and loud in the night. The panic surged higher inside me; she’d seen everything. She was going to tell someone. They’d know. They’d come looking for me. How much of my face had she seen?

Suddenly, the thing inside me loosened its grip, and all at once, I was shoved back into the driver’s seat. It felt like surfacing after drowning, lungs gasping for air, my mind scrambling to make sense of the world around me. My body was my own again… finally, but the horror hit me in the gut like a sledgehammer.

I looked down. My hands, slick with dark, wet blood, trembled uncontrollably in the aftershocks of the thing’s control. It coated my skin, dripping from my fingers like some sick reminder of what I’d done. What it had made me do. The blade still hung in my hand, its cold surface glistening under the streetlight. It felt foreign, wrong… but I couldn’t drop it. I stared at the body crumpled at my feet, the unknown man’s chest ripped open, blood pooling in the cracks of the pavement. His dead, glassy eyes stared up at me, wide with terror even in death.

I felt bile rise in my throat. My knees almost buckled.

“What the fuck have I done?” I whispered. My voice was strangled and weak. I wanted to scream, to tear my skin off, to undo it all. But there it was… the truth, staring at me in the shape of a mutilated corpse and blood-soaked hands.

This guy didn’t fit the bill. He wasn’t a possibility. I hadn’t found him through his heinous acts… it just chose him, and I couldn’t stop it.

The weight of it crushed me. My heart pounded so hard I thought my chest might burst, my heart beating in my ears like a drum. I could still feel the echo of the thing inside me, its sick, twisted satisfaction lingering, feeding off the violence and death. I could feel it satisfied, even now.

I dropped the blade. It hit the ground with a dull clang, the sound way too loud in the thick silence of the alley. My hands were shaking so badly that I had to clutch my arms to my chest just to stop them from betraying me. But the blood… the blood was everywhere. It stained my shirt and smeared across my arms and face, some of it still warm, seeping into my skin like a curse I couldn’t escape. I felt contaminated, ruined.

He was just some guy. He could have been completely innocent…

In only moments after I dropped my blade, it vanished from the physical world. It was gone.

I couldn’t stay there. Someone would come soon. The woman… she would tell someone. The thought of it… the look of pure terror in her eyes made my chest seize. She’d seen everything. She’d seen me standing over the body, the knife still dripping. It was the same look Shelta had in her eyes…

They’d be after me, the police, the witnesses, everyone. They’d take one look and see the blood, see the body. They wouldn’t care about what had taken control of me. They’d see a murderer. Then questions would arise, and consequences could reach back, all the way to my family. I couldn't let that happen.

I backed up, my foot slipping in the blood pooling around the dead man. I almost fell, but I caught myself, heart racing, panic clawing at the edges of my vision. My pulse was thundering in my ears, drowning out everything else. I couldn’t think… just move.

I turned and bolted. Panic and a shaking fear of what had just happened. It wasn’t just the kill of the unknown man, but more so, it was the realization that the monster could reach out and take control… whenever it wanted. It was getting stronger, and I didn’t know what that meant now.

The alley twisted and turned, the narrow streets closing in on me as I ran, my breath coming in ragged gasps as my mind raced with fear. The cold night air bit at my skin, but it wasn’t enough to numb the guilt gnawing at my insides. Every corner I turned, I half-expected to see someone I cared for, judging me for what I had just done. I could practically feel humanity slipping further from me, the weight of my crime hanging over me like a black cloud. What just happened?

I didn’t know where I was going… just away. Away from the body, the blood, the sickening reality of what I’d become. Away from the horror of it all. But the guilt followed me like a shadow, creeping into every corner of my mind.

And as I fled into the night, I knew one thing for certain: there was no outrunning the monster I’d let in. He was there, just behind my eyes… waiting.

I had to get home, I had to hide from what I’d done. I needed to be alone, to breathe. I couldn’t let them know what I just did. I couldn’t let anyone know. If they found out… everything I built with them would crumble. My doubts from before resurfaced, but this time I didn’t shake them off. I knew that, if they discovered what I had just done, they would be true. They would see the monster in me more than the tiny shred of humanity that I still clung to.

My path through the woods was completely hidden beneath the dense canopy, the black sky overhead choked with thick, swirling clouds. Branches whipped against me as I stumbled forward, the cold air biting into my skin. Above, the trees were alive with the harsh, unrelenting caws of crows, their black forms littering the skeletal branches like shadows with wings. Their shrill cries cut through the night, echoing around me, unceasing, a chorus of fury that seemed to mock me with every step I took.

"Shut up!" I roared, my voice raw and desperate, but the crows only answered with more furious cawing, the noise swelling, crashing down on me like a wave. My heart pounded in my chest as I broke into a run, the undergrowth snagging at my boots, but I barely felt it. I didn’t care. I couldn’t.

I had to get back to my sanctuary, hidden deep within the woods. The place where I could shut out the world and, maybe, what I’d just done. The darkness of the woods seemed to close in tighter, the crows’ cries drowning out even my thoughts. It was like they were welcoming it back to its home, saying hello to the beast inside. They flocked to it, following me everywhere I went.

I burst through the last line of trees, the small, weathered home looming ahead. It was concealed by the dense woods, nearly invisible unless you knew where to look just off the road that slithered out to it, a shelter built for isolation. I scrambled up the porch, my hands shaking as I grabbed the door. The crows above still cawed with unrelenting fury, their eyes glinting like tiny black stones in the shadows.

“Leave!” I screamed up at them, my voice cracking, fury and panic bleeding together. "Go!" But they didn't. They did stop cawing, now just watching, silently.

I couldn’t bear it anymore. I shoved the door open and slammed it behind me, shutting out the world in one violent motion. The air inside the cabin was thick and still, but it did nothing to calm the storm inside me. My chest heaved as I stood in the darkness, fists clenched, my mind replaying the moment again and again. What I’d done. What I couldn’t take back.

Outside, the crows began cawing again, their cries piercing through the walls like jagged blades, refusing to leave me alone. It was like they could sense the thing inside me.

I sat in the suffocating darkness of my home, hidden deep within a forgotten corner of the woods. The air was thick and heavy with the scent of damp earth. Outside, a murder of crows perched in the tangled trees, their black forms blotting out the pale slivers of the night sky like a living shroud. Their presence was oppressive, surrounding me, cloaking my sanctuary in a restless, uneasy gloom. It was like they were hiding the beast from the world. And I was trapped here with it.