Chapter Text
The Fog felt wrong that night. Not heavy. Not suffocating. Intrusive.
It slid close around the campfire, curling into the survivors’ hair, their clothes, their lungs. The fire hissed low as though the air itself wanted to smother it.
They all felt it.
Jane sat rigid, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the flames. Dwight shifted on his log until the wood creaked, biting his nails until they bled. Meg tapped her foot fast, restless, like a mare locked in a stall too small. Even their silence was noisy.
And then the sounds began.
First, a wet, steady breathing. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once, sliding through the Fog like a whisper pressed against the ear. Then the faint rattle of chains across unseen stone, tugging taut, releasing. And beneath it—softer still—the staccato chatter of teeth, gnashing like an animal preparing its bite.
Every survivor flinched.
No one spoke. No one dared.
I sat still, hands folded in my lap, my gaze pinned to the darkness beyond the firelight. They weren’t hallucinations. Not this time. These were her helpers—the faithful who served her sermons. The Weeper’s mournful sob. The Gasp’s cruel exhale. The chattering silhouette with its mouth forced open to eternity.
They lingered just at the edge of sight, never stepping closer, always waiting.
It meant only one thing.
The next trial would belong to the Priest.
No one wanted to say it. But everyone knew. Pinhead’s trials were sermons dressed as hunts. Few survived them. Fewer still survived whole.
The fire cracked, sparks flying into the suffocating dark.
I didn’t move. Because if she was coming for me again… then I was already hers.
The Fog did not wait long.
One moment, I was watching the survivors squirm by the fire, their bodies caught in a silence too heavy to be broken. The next—chains rattled. A bell tolled in the marrow of my spine.
The Fog tore us open and spat us out.
Coldwind Farm.
The dirt hit hard beneath my boots, soft with mud and scattered straw. The stench hit harder—fertilizer gone sour, copper rot baked into the soil, mildew clinging to wood. The cornfields rose around us like walls, stalks tall enough to blot out the sky, whispering against themselves with no wind to move them.
The others stumbled nearby. Jane steadied herself first, jaw tight, posture squared like she could bully the Fog into leaving her alone. Dwight hit the ground awkwardly, palms scraping dirt, panic already carved into his face. Meg cursed under her breath and bolted before her knees had even straightened, sneakers tearing tracks into the soil as she sprinted into the corn.
And me? I just stood. Breathing.
Because I already knew what waited here.
The air was wrong—too heavy, too sharp. The sound wasn’t silence. It was chains. Rattling faintly, like wind chimes in the distance, tugging and pulling at invisible points in the air. And underneath that, woven into the rustle of stalks, the sound of wet breathing. Long. Measured. Intentional.
The corn split.
She stepped out.
The Priest. The pins gleamed under a sickle moon, each one set in its perfect grid of flayed flesh, each one shining like holy symbols. Her movements were unhurried, inevitable. The chains dragging behind her weren’t bound to anything, but they clattered and scraped as if they were attached to the whole of reality itself.
Her gaze passed over Jane, lingered on Dwight, slid past the direction Meg had run. Then it landed on me.
I felt the ache before she even spoke. That deep coil in my core, the phantom rush of recognition.
“You cannot outrun me, Analyst.”
My throat locked. The word hit like a lash, striking deep where flesh met memory. The Analyst. The title she gave me when the Order reshaped my purpose. The title they carved into my mind before my exile. Hearing it now ripped the stitches loose.
“You were mine,” the Priest said. Her voice was calm, soft, merciless. “You will be mine again.”
The chains answered her words.
Dwight shrieked when the first set ripped through the earth and hooked into his shoulders, jerking him back so hard his feet left the ground. He clawed at the links, but they only tightened, pulling him upright into a grotesque crucifixion. The sound of tearing muscle was louder than his screams.
Jane lunged to help him—foolish, desperate. She grabbed at the chains, tried to wrench them free, only to recoil as the steel burned her palms. She cursed, stumbling back.
That’s when the laughter came.
High. Musical. Bright as broken glass.
The corn swayed, and Kakihara slid into view like a shadow given flesh. His suit was immaculate, his scars gleaming like jewelry in the pale light, mouth stretched in its eternal smile. He moved with all the urgency of a man walking to dinner.
Meg’s scream tore through the fields a moment later. He’d caught her already.
「ああ、美しい。皮膚の下にある音楽だ。」
(Ah… beautiful. The music beneath the skin.)
I didn’t need translation. His tone carried everything. Delight. Reverence. Worship.
Pinhead tilted her head, and though she did not speak Japanese, she answered as though she understood every syllable.
“Yes, Kakihara. She still carries it. The song is not gone.”
Meg stumbled into the clearing, dragged by his hand clamped around her wrist. He knelt beside her like a lover, pressing a sliver of steel into her shoulder, eyes wide with bliss as her body buckled around the pain. His voice hummed low in her ear, the sound like a hymn.
And I realized with a cold twist in my gut: he hadn’t been talking about Meg at all. He’d been talking about me.
The chains tightened around Dwight until his scream broke into something wet and raw. His legs kicked uselessly, heels digging trenches in the dirt, before the links yanked him across the ground toward the barn.
I should have followed. I should have run. I did neither.
Because this wasn’t a hunt anymore. It was a performance.
The barn doors creaked open of their own accord, the Fog breathing them wide. Dwight’s body was dragged up, up into the rafters, chains pulling him higher until his arms stretched wide. Hooks glimmered in the moonlight like teeth.
The steel bit in. His shriek rattled the loft beams.
Pinhead stepped beneath him, serene as a priest before an altar. She looked not at him, but at me, her calm voice cutting through the air.
“You see? Struggle only proves devotion. Pain is the one truth that never lies.”
Dwight’s eyes bulged, lips working frantic, but no sound came out. His throat had given up. The chains carried his silence better than any voice could.
Movement to my right drew me—Kakihara. He had left Meg kneeling in the mud, her sobs muffled by his careful hand pressed over her mouth. Not to silence her, not really. Just to feel the way her jaw trembled under his palm. His gaze wasn’t on her now.
It was on Dwight.
The screams. The open mouth.
He watched every syllable that didn’t come, lips curling with delight at the silent contortions. His head tilted, his scars glistening, the smile in his split mouth stretching until I thought it might split further. He didn’t need to hear. He was feasting with his eyes.
He whispered in Japanese, soft, reverent:
「歌だ… 叫びは歌だ。」
(A song… the scream is a song.)
And Pinhead, without turning, answered as though he had spoken straight into her skull:
“Yes, Kakihara. And every note belongs to us.”
The barn shuddered. Chains bit deeper. Dwight’s body jerked, his head lolling as blood painted the rafters.
Jane sobbed somewhere behind me, a sound she tried to swallow and couldn’t. Meg thrashed weakly in the dirt, Kakihara’s grip tightening like a lover’s embrace.
Jane broke first.
Her sob cracked into a scream as she bolted for the barn, skirts catching on corn husks, her hands outstretched like she could pull Dwight down with sheer will. The chains answered before she reached him. One snapped across the ground and coiled her ankle, tearing her off her feet so hard her teeth clacked. She hit the dirt face-first, blood seeping into the soil. Her nails clawed trenches as she tried to drag herself forward, but the chain only reeled her back, slow and deliberate, until she lay writhing beneath the crucified body above.
Pinhead did not look at her. Not yet. The sermon had not reached its next verse.
Dwight’s body jerked against the hooks. His throat worked uselessly, mouth wide, silence spilling out like incense. Kakihara tilted his head to watch it, transfixed. His hand remained firm over Meg’s mouth, but his eyes devoured Dwight’s wordless agony. Every spasm. Every twitch. Every gasp of air that never became a sound. His smile widened until his scars gleamed like raw jewels in the moonlight.
「もっと…もっと。」
(More… more.)
Pinhead obliged.
Another chain tore through Dwight’s thigh, splitting flesh with the sound of wet canvas ripping. His body arched, his silence breaking into a strangled wheeze. The hooks above groaned as blood poured down in slow sheets, pattering into Jane’s hair where she knelt beneath. Her hands lifted, shaking, as if she meant to catch it, to shield herself from a rain that did not end.
The Fog breathed heavier, curling close. It wanted this.
Meg thrashed against Kakihara’s grip, a muffled shriek escaping between his fingers. He chuckled low, almost tender, and pressed the blade deeper into her shoulder until her body buckled. The sound she made vibrated against his palm, and he shuddered like a man hearing music for the first time.
“Yes,” Pinhead intoned, her voice like iron through velvet. “Every soul is a note. Every cry a chord. Together they form a hymn.”
Her eyes rose from Dwight to me. “And you, Analyst, are the song that binds it.”
My stomach clenched. I could feel the chains in the air, humming, waiting. They were not wrapped around me yet, but every link knew my name.
I did not move. Because if I moved, I feared they would answer.
And me? I stood rooted to the floor, the ache in my chest twisting sharper with every syllable, every snap of chain. Because I understood the shape of the ritual. I recognized the pattern. They weren’t killing Dwight for Dwight. They were teaching me.
Meg kicked and clawed at the dirt, desperate to rip free, but Kakihara’s grip was steady, calm. One hand pressed gently over her mouth, not to silence her—no, he wanted her to scream. He wanted to watch it. But he wanted it when he chose. With his free hand, he reached inside his jacket. Moonlight caught the glint of polished steel — thin, needle-like weapons balanced between his scarred fingers. Senbon.
My stomach turned.
He selected one like a painter choosing a brush. With care. With ceremony. He whispered in Japanese, almost lovingly:
「泣け。声を聞かせろ。」
(Cry. Let me hear your voice.)
Of course, he couldn’t hear a thing. But the watching was enough. The shape of her lips, the strain of her jaw—that was his song.
The senbon slid into the soft muscle just below her collarbone. Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to catch a nerve. Meg’s whole body arched, muffled sobs tearing past his palm as tears streaked her face.
Kakihara’s smile widened. He tilted his head, studying the way her mouth stretched around each cry. His thumb brushed her cheek almost tenderly as he pulled the needle free, a thin ribbon of blood following it. He hummed, low and distorted, body trembling with delight. The sound wasn’t human, more vibration than melody.
Another senbon. This time, he slid it between the tendons of her forearm. Meg writhed, eyes rolling, her mouth shaping a plea she couldn’t voice. He leaned closer, watching every syllable, every desperate twist of her lips.
「美しい。痛みは芸術だ。」
(Beautiful. Pain is art.)
Pinhead watched as if he recited scripture. She spoke softly, her calm cutting through Meg’s muffled screams. “Do you see, Analyst? He understands. Suffering reveals beauty, and beauty endures.”
I clenched my fists until my nails bit crescents into my palms. The ache in my chest flared bright, sharp, dangerous. Because I did see. Every tremor in Meg’s body, every silent plea in her lips, every senbon Kakihara slid home like a conductor tuning an instrument. He wasn’t killing her. He was playing her.
Pinhead’s chains clattered, her sermon spilling smooth. “Suffering reveals beauty, and beauty endures.” She wanted me silent. To watch. To wilt. To remember her authority.
But silence had never been my only weapon.
My voice cut before I could swallow it, sharp and deliberate: “Why don’t you turn him into one of us then? Hm?”
Her head tilted, slight but sharp.
“Worried your dear human will change?” I pressed, every word steady though my stomach roiled. “Worried he’ll find interest in another? Maybe Abagore? Or the Sculptress? She lures many artists—”
The name cracked the air like a whip. Pinhead’s eyes narrowed, calm but cutting, and for the first time her sermon faltered.
Chains writhed in the rafters, eager.
Below, Kakihara laughed — jagged, delighted, his scars splitting wider as if the tension itself was another performance. He muttered in Japanese, glee raw in his voice:
「大胆だな。すばらしい。」
(Bold. Wonderful.)
And Pinhead? She only smiled. Slow. Patient. I had given her something she wanted — a spark to answer in kind.
Her eyes locked on me, still and terrible. The barn seemed to hold its breath.
I smiled back, teeth bare, letting silence stretch. “I don’t know, darling,” I murmured, “you seem… attached.”
It was a risk. A provocation. But calculated.
Kakihara’s laugh split the air, bright and jagged. He doubled over Meg’s body, whispering in Japanese as he slid another senbon beneath her skin:
「あはは！聞いたか？彼女はお前を縛る鎖を見たんだ。」
(Did you hear that? She saw the chain that binds you.)
Pinhead did not laugh. She did not frown. But the faintest flicker of tension pulled her lips, her calm cracking like porcelain. The chains in the rafters rattled louder, hungrier, striking the floor inches from my boots with a snap that rang through my bones.
Her voice came low, deliberate. “Careful, Analyst. Attachment is the language of the weak. You should know that better than anyone.”
And yet, for the first time since she stepped from the corn, I felt the balance tilt.
My words hung in the rafters like smoke. Attached.
For a breath, she didn’t move. The chains stilled, waiting for her will.
Then they answered.
teel screamed from the rafters.
The chains lashed down like striking serpents, links cracking through the air before I could move. One coiled across my chest, another wrapped my ribs, slamming me back against a support beam hard enough to rattle my teeth. Pain flared sharp, hot, blooming deep as bruises formed before the steel even cut.
I didn’t give her the scream she wanted. I bit it back, my throat working around a hiss instead.
Pinhead stepped closer, serene as always, her pale face luminous in the dark. “You speak of attachment as though you are above it.” Her calm voice slid under my skin more easily than the chains had. “But I know you, Analyst. I know the ache that drives you. I know why you touched him. Why you lingered when you should have fled.”
The chain at my side wrenched tighter, grinding flesh against bone. I winced, but I met her eyes.
Kakihara’s delighted laugh split the barn, ragged and sharp. He clapped once like a child at a show, then bent back to Meg, whispering against her ear as he drove another senbon into her thigh:
「ほら見ろ。彼女もお前と同じだ。鎖が必要だ。」
(See? She’s just like you. She needs chains too.)
Pinhead’s lips curved, faint, cruel. “Chains remind us of what we are, Kakihara.” Her gaze returned to me, pinning me harder than the steel. “And you, Analyst… you are still mine.”
The ache twisted inside me — not fear, not entirely. Something sharper, hotter, more dangerous. I swallowed it down and forced a smile back at her.
The chains cut deeper, biting across my ribs and arms, holding me spread against the beam. Every nerve screamed for release. My vision blurred at the edges. Still, I managed the words, my voice jagged but steady:
“Our sessions have grown so boring, Priest. Have you run out of designs and ideas?” I tilted my head, let the smile widen though my body trembled in the steel’s grip. “I haven’t even whimpered.”
The barn went still. Dwight’s body swung silently above. Jane clutched the wall, frozen between horror and disbelief.
Kakihara broke the silence with a gleeful, distorted laugh. His scars split wider as he clapped again. He hissed in Japanese, reverent and wild:
「ああ、いい。噛みつけ、もっと噛みつけ。」
(Ahh, yes. Bite her. Bite her more.)
Pinhead’s eyes narrowed, but her composure held. She tilted her head, serene even in irritation. “Very well. If you will not whimper, you will sing.”
The chains shuddered in answer. One coiled around my leg and yanked, dragging me half off the beam. Another twisted across my shoulder, forcing my spine to arch until agony lit every nerve. My teeth clenched, but a raw sound broke loose, torn between growl and scream.
The Priest tilted her head, watching with the still patience of a surgeon at work. “Better. Pain creates music, Analyst. The only true song worth hearing.”
Kakihara’s laughter rang bright, delighted. He abandoned Meg’s writhing body and stepped into the open, clapping once, eyes alight. He muttered in Japanese, voice trembling with reverence:
「聞こえるか？ 彼女の声だ… 最高の音楽だ。」
(Do you hear it? Her voice… the greatest music.)
The chains jerked again, dragging me higher, ribs grinding, arms straining until blood slicked my side. Dwight swayed above me, his limp body a grotesque metronome, keeping time with every pulse of the steel.
The chains bit deeper, their weight pulling until my shoulders burned and my arms screamed. Every breath came ragged, wet at the edges where blood slid in rivulets down my ribs. My body sang with pain, each note sharp and piercing, but I forced my jaw tight, kept the scream caged behind my teeth. She would not have it freely. Not yet.
Above me Dwight swung, his silence a grotesque lullaby, a body made into a pendulum for the Entity’s amusement. The Fog lapped at him greedily, savoring each drip of blood as though it were incense rising in an unseen cathedral. His head lolled side to side with every sway, eyes wide but already empty, a marionette dancing in someone else’s ritual. The barn’s rafters groaned with the weight, wood creaking like pews bending beneath an unseen congregation.
Jane pressed herself flat against the far wall, hands splayed as if she could meld into the boards. Tremors rattled her arms, her eyes darting from Dwight to me to the door. When the chains shifted away from her, she bolted, skirts tearing against splintered wood as she crashed through the barn door. The Fog caught her, swallowed her into the corn with a sigh like an inhaled prayer. A heartbeat later Meg followed—half-crawling, half-stumbling, her arms smeared slick where Kakihara’s senbon had kissed her. Her sobs tangled with the rustling of stalks until both sounds disappeared.
Pinhead did not stop them. She didn’t care. The sermon was never meant for them. It was meant for me.
The chains tightened once more, a cruel punctuation. They wrenched a sound from my chest I hadn’t meant to give—high, unwilling, half-scream, half-groan. The rafters rang with it, vibrating with grim approval. Even the barn itself seemed to pause, to listen.
Kakihara moved then. He left Meg’s blood behind in the dirt and approached, every step deliberate, unhurried, reverent. He dragged a scarred hand through his hair, slicking it back with the wetness that dripped from the steel biting into my flesh. When his palm came away red, he smeared it across his face like a lover’s caress, a war-paint mask painted from me. His grin widened, his mouth nearly splitting open at the scars, and his tongue darted across the seam to taste it. He shivered with delight.
Beautiful. Scars and all.
The thought should have sickened me. Should have broken the hold of the pain with revulsion. But it didn’t. Instead, it frightened me. Because it wasn’t the Entity’s Spark that rattled me, it was him. Kakihara Masao. Human. Still human. And yet he reveled in carnage with more hunger than any Cenobite I had ever seen in my life.
Beneath his mania burned emotions twisted like wildfire: desire, devotion, an eagerness so bright it bordered on worship. His madness was not the dispassionate cruelty of Pinhead’s sermons. It was personal. Hungry. Loyal, I realized suddenly, with the sharp clarity of steel pressed against bone. Loyal to a fault. Loyal to the one who earned it. Could I use that later? Could I bend it? Could I find the fault lines in his chaos and pry them open with the same tools I once used to break men in sterile offices—with patience, with calculation, with my voice?
The thought flickered—fragile, dangerous, but real.
Not now. Not here.
Now I had to endure.
My body strained against the chains, my chest tight, each inhale rasping ragged, catching on blood pooling inside. Endure, because the others needed time. If Jane lived, if Meg lived, if Dwight’s sacrifice held, then perhaps the Entity’s cruel rotation would spin elsewhere. If they lived, they might not have to kneel at this sermon again for dozens of trials. Their pain tonight might be enough.
So I bit back another cry, clenched my fists until nails carved crescents into my palms, and forced myself to hold the line. Endure. Wait. Survive.
The thought of using Kakihara later—of twisting his devotion, of binding his chaos to my own advantage—barely had time to root before the chains yanked again. They dragged me higher, joints screaming, blood slicking faster down my side. My shoulders stretched toward breaking, my ribs grinding under steel’s insistence. My body screamed. My mind screamed louder.
Because some part of me knew she was right.
It was a song. A hymn carried in the grinding of bone and the tearing of flesh. The music of pain.
And I hated myself for hearing it. For listening. For almost answering back.
My body snapped forward, then back, like a marionette in the hands of an impatient puppeteer. Links coiled around my waist, my thighs, my throat, tightening with the rhythm of her will. The beam at my back groaned under the strain, threatening to crack with every jerk. The smell of hot iron and blood filled my nose as the chains ground deeper into flesh, their rasping song filling the barn.
Pain seared white behind my eyes, rolling in waves that made my vision strobe. I hissed through clenched teeth, choking on a sound I swore I wouldn’t give her. Every muscle jumped with each lash, a puppet made to twitch at her command.
Pinhead stepped closer, expression calm as ever, pins glinting in the moonlight, her movements slow and deliberate as if savoring the lesson. “You speak of loyalty, of attachment, of boredom.” Her words fell like a scripture being carved into my ribs.
Another chain whipped across my side, tearing fabric and skin alike, the snap echoing like a whip in a cathedral. I gasped, knees threatening to buckle, but the steel held me upright, arms and spine locked into place like a grotesque effigy on display. My head lolled, but still I refused her scream.
“You whimper now, Analyst. Your body betrays you.”
Blood ran in thick streams down my side, dripping onto the dirt in a steady rhythm that sounded almost like a drum. Kakihara’s eyes lit at the sight, his face alive with fanatic glee. He crouched low, dragging his fingers through the red trail before pressing them to his mouth. His split lips shone wet as he whispered, hungry and reverent:
「もっとだ…もっと見せろ。」
(More… show me more.)
Pinhead’s gaze never wavered from mine. “Do you see? He understands. He honors what you deny.” Her tone carried the satisfaction of a sermon finding its echo.
The chain at my throat tightened, cutting into tender flesh, stealing my breath, black edging into my vision. I forced my lips into a smile anyway, though the blood at my mouth made it ragged and broken. My teeth gleamed red in the candlelit dark.
Endure. I had to endure. If Meg and Jane could keep running, if the Entity’s cycle spun true, this punishment would spare them for nights to come. My agony might purchase them a reprieve.
But here, in this moment, under the Priest’s chains and Kakihara’s delighted eyes, I knew the truth she wanted me to confess. She wanted more than pain—she wanted admission. She wanted the song.
Pain wasn’t just survival.
It was song.
And I was still singing.
The chains cut deeper, vibrating through my bones as if they were strings plucked by some unseen hand. Blood slicked my chest, my throat, my thighs. Every nerve screamed. Every breath tore ragged from my lungs, gurgling in my chest like broken notes of an organ.
And still, I smiled. A cruel rictus that mocked her even as tears pricked at my eyes. Because I could feel it—the thing I had buried, the thing I had been forced to forget. The place in me that used to open like a door when the Order called. It stirred now, restless, clawing at my ribs as if begging to be let out.
I pushed. My nails cut into my palms, my back arched, my veins felt molten. My vision bled silver at the edges, the ache in my chest splitting into something sharp, radiant. My skin tightened, stretched as though about to tear and reveal something else beneath. I could almost taste the old power again—the promise of transformation, of becoming more than this fragile meat. My bones hummed with it, vibrating with the chains’ rhythm.
Pinhead’s calm voice cut through the air, her tone edged with hunger: “Yes… Analyst. Sing for me.”
Kakihara’s laughter rattled the rafters, broken and euphoric. He clapped his hands once, eyes gleaming as he whispered in Japanese:
「そうだ！戻れ！美しい怪物に！」
(Yes! Return! Become the beautiful monster again!)
The barn shook, rafters groaning, dust spilling from beams. The gates yawned open with a howl, and I glimpsed Meg and Jane in the distance, sprinting through the corn toward the shimmer of freedom, their silhouettes desperate and small against the moonlight.
And then the sky split.
The Entity’s judgment fell like a guillotine of night.
A spike of black void speared down through the crown of my skull, splitting me head to spine in one merciless stroke. My body convulsed violently, the chains snapping as the steel tore me free of Pinhead’s control. I was dragged upward like a skewered puppet, blood streaming down in sheets, raining over the rafters, soaking the dirt, spattering across Kakihara’s eager face.
I didn’t even have breath to scream. The sound that left me was something else—wet, guttural, torn raw as my jaw cracked open around it, a note not meant for human throats.
Pinhead’s composure shattered, her chains flailing impotently as the Entity stripped me from her grasp. Her calm broke for the first time. Kakihara threw his head back, laughing brokenly, slicking his hair with the spray as if it were holy water. He shuddered, reveling in every drop.
The spike pulled me higher, higher, until the barn roof vanished, until the Fog swallowed me whole. My body bent and snapped in its grip, vision spiraling into black. The hymn of chains faded behind me, replaced by the roar of the void.
All I could think, in that last violent instant, was how close I had been. How nearly I had broken free. How the taste of that power lingered even as I was dragged away.
Then nothing.
I drifted in the black, weightless, turning slowly as if I were no more than a leaf caught on an unseen current. The void wasn’t empty. It breathed. Thick waves rose and fell around me, dark as tar, carrying countless hands that stroked, tugged, and swayed me wherever they pleased. Their touch was cold and slick, leaving oily trails across my skin that clung long after they pulled away, as if they were claiming me piece by piece.
The black rocked me like a cradle, endless hands shifting in rhythm. My limbs bent without resistance, moved like a doll’s, each motion precise, deliberate. Their fingers pressed into the hollows of my ribs, traced the line of my throat, smoothed back my hair as though preparing me for display. Too many to count. Too many to fight.
Two voices wound through the dark, brushing along my skull like whispers carried through bone.
“Poor darling—” crooned one, syrup-sweet, smoothing my hair back again. Slime dribbled cold along my temple, slick as oil.
“We took the Cenobite’s fun away, my love,” purred the other, breath soft as silk against the inside of my ear. “It will be angry—”
The first voice cut sharp, hungry, vibrating in my chest like teeth against glass. “And so will we, the longer they deny us a proper meal. This is not their Fog, darling. It is ours.”
Their tones tangled—soothing, threatening, caressing—until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. They overlapped, echoed, made a single harmony that sank into my marrow. But I knew this much: they weren’t angry at me. Not yet.
No, they meant to use me.
The way their hands cradled, tilted, arranged me—it wasn’t comfort. It was placement. Like a lure dropped into dark water, a bright thing meant to catch a predator’s eye. My ribs expanded and contracted with their rhythm, as if my very breath was being pulled to a tempo not my own.
I floated, helpless in their tide, knowing what they were shaping me into.
Not prey.
Not killer.
Not survivor.
Incentive.
Their grip vanished all at once.
No weight. No sound. Just a jolt, like my body had been dropped down a shaft with no end. The black slipped away, peeling back like a curtain, and firelight struck my eyes, harsh and sudden. The campfire hissed and cracked in front of me, the same as always, its warmth crawling up my skin as though it had never left.
But the way they looked at me wasn’t the same.
Dwight dropped the half-whittled stick in his hands, wood clattering against the stone circle. Jane froze mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open. Even Meg—bruised, pacing, her fists tight—stopped cold as though she’d seen a ghost.
Their faces told me what the hands hadn’t.
It hadn’t just been one trial.
To them, I’d been gone for dozens.
I lifted a hand instinctively, needing proof that I was solid, that I hadn’t been left behind in that black tide. My palm trembled, pale in the firelight, but it was there. I was there. The ache from Pinhead’s chains still thrummed deep in my ribs. It was fresh—raw, immediate. No time had passed at all.
Jane blinked at me once, twice, as if convincing herself I was real. Then she surged forward, seizing my cheeks in her hands and pinching hard enough to make me jolt. “You’re alive—holy shit!”
The words rang out too loud, too bright. Dwight laughed nervously, the sound sharp, breaking almost into a sob. His shoulders shook as if he might fall apart. Meg dragged a hand down her face, muttering curses under her breath, her chest rising fast.
Alive.
I was alive.
But the look in their eyes said it plain: they weren’t sure I should be.
Jane’s hands still cupped my cheeks, her eyes wide, wet at the corners, her breath shaky. Dwight muttered “no way, no way, no way—” like a prayer or a mantra, eyes locked on me as if I might vanish again. Meg sat down hard on the log, staring at me like she was watching a corpse climb out of its grave.
To them, I’d been gone for weeks.
To me, it was seconds.
The ache from Pinhead’s chains hadn’t even faded. It was still singing under my skin, every bruise and cut humming like plucked strings.
Alive.
But not right.
Never right again.
Léry’s walls hummed, restless in their silence. The asylum seemed to breathe in uneven pulses, every corridor a throat that whispered static. Between trials the place slept, but he never did. His boots dragged unevenly on the cracked tiles, heel and toe striking irregular rhythms like a broken metronome. Each pass down the hall carved deeper into the ruin. The Stick trailed behind him, prongs sparking faint, arcs of blue crawling up the walls like ivy spun from lightning. Dust fell from the ceiling with each burst.
Then it hit.
A spike of resonance, jagged and sudden, ripped down his spine until his teeth rattled against each other. Not the Spark. Not his. Something other. Something vast, coiled, and wrong. Familiar in its wrongness.
Her.
His breath hitched, sharp and stuttering, chest seizing like a machine jolted with foreign current. Every fluorescent bulb in Léry’s guttered, then flared, then flickered in unison, pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn’t his own. The static rushed across his skin, crawling into his gums, his jaw, making his skull hum like a tuning fork.
She was back.
He couldn’t see her. Couldn’t hear her. But the Fog sang it through him, vibrating his marrow with electric clarity. She had returned. Dragged back into the campfire, alive when she should not have been, when he had felt her absence carve space through him like a hole drilled in bone.
Every line of his body coiled with hunger. His knuckles whitened around the Stick, wood groaning under the pressure of his grip. He dug it into the tile hard enough to split the grout. The Entity toyed with him—taking her away, dropping her back like a bauble on a hook, daring him to break. It wanted him to boil. To hunt. To kill. And the pulse of her return was winding his insides tighter than any chain.
His hum slipped out unbidden, fractured, uneven, his teeth buzzing with sparks. “You’re mine…” The sound warped, cracked, broke, then rebuilt itself under his breath. A mantra. A promise. A plea. Need thickened it until his throat tore raw.
Static bled through the walls in answer. Plaster bulged with veins of blue light, crawling like roots, each pulse synced to a heartbeat that was not his. The resonance didn’t fade. It grew. It became a rhythm, steady, unstoppable, crawling under his skin until even his bones throbbed with it. He pressed a trembling hand against the wall, breath jagged, eyes wide and bloodshot. The asylum trembled faintly, fluorescent hum building into a shriek as if responding not just to him but to her.
Then came the voices.
They didn’t echo in the halls. They didn’t need air. They slid directly into him, seamless and twinned, finishing one another, overlapping, curling like smoke inside the shell of his skull. Lovers’ voices, mocking, indulgent, impossibly close.
“She can be—” one purred, velvet and cruel, its cadence laced with hooks.
“If you want,” the other finished, softer, slicker, a whisper stroking the edge of his eardrum.
His grip on the Stick tightened further. Wood splintered under his hand, slivers driving into his palm. His hum cut off mid-note, replaced by a guttural rasp. “What’s the catch?” His voice fractured, words sparking against his teeth. There was always a catch. Always a leash.
The first voice purred again, clawed and sweet, dragging sensation across his shoulder. Not flesh. Not metal. Something lithe and alien, tipped with cracks glowing faint red like embers smoldering under coal. “Nothing you aren’t used to, Doctor Carter.”
The second voice pressed heavier, a suffocating weight sliding down his spine. He felt it as an inky-black tendril curling down his arm, suction cold, leaving round marks on his skin that throbbed after it passed. “Just kill. Just torment. Feed us their fear, and we will let you keep your little pet here.”
His pulse stuttered, Spark sputtering like faulty wiring inside his chest, static boiling against his ribs. Camilla’s face ripped through his mind’s eye with merciless clarity—the tilt of her head, the curl of her lips, the way she had once whispered Doctor like a hymn into the dark. The ache that gnawed him hollow every time she vanished now roared back, not absence but presence, so sharp it split him open.
The voices cooed together, seamless in duet, their tones sliding around him like silk dripping over barbed wire. “Go on then. Kill…”
“…and you can collect her straight from the fire.”
Above him, the lights burst in unison, glass raining down in sparks and shards. Electricity spat from severed wires, hissing across the floor like serpents. He didn’t laugh. Didn’t hum. He only gripped the Stick tighter, wood shrieking as it bent in his hand, splinters biting so deep into his palm that blood ran down the handle in dark rivulets.
She could be his.
All he had to do was kill.