The night air was heavy, suffocating even. A deep fog swept across the city streets like a ghost on a mission, smothering every lamp post and shadowing every alley. Somewhere within this cloak of darkness, something was hunting.
The "BangBangs" gang had gone quiet for days. Cheese, the self-proclaimed leader, had holed up in a cheap motel outside the city, paranoia eating away at his sanity. He knew something was after him. He could feel it. One of the gang had already gone missing—Jonas. Then another. Every time they tried to meet up, someone else vanished.
Now, Cheese sat in the corner of his room, gripping a rusted knife with trembling hands, the television playing static. His sweaty fingers twitched every time he heard a creak. "You're just being paranoid," he muttered to himself. But he knew it was a lie. He knew what they did to Lukas. And he knew someone—or something—was punishing them for it.
And Wrath was already outside.
Standing silently under the orange glow of the flickering streetlight, the creature was watching. It had no eyes, not in the normal sense, but it knew. It could smell fear, taste regret, sense guilt. And Cheese? He reeked of all three.
Wrath stepped forward, the ground beneath its feet crunching with broken glass. With every move, its monstrous body twitched unnaturally, skin shifting like there were too many things beneath it, trying to crawl out. Long arms scraped the ground, claws like twisted metal.
Inside the motel room, Cheese's screen went black. Then red. Then a voice whispered.
"Lukas sends his regards."
The window shattered.
By the time the officers arrived, all that remained of Cheese was blood, a few teeth, and carvings on the wall: "One down, Eleven to go."
Meanwhile, Missy stared blankly at the mirror in her bathroom, toothbrush in hand but unmoving. The smile she gave everyone these days was fake—tight-lipped and too quick. Her friends noticed it, but no one asked questions. Not yet.
She opened her drawer and pulled out the locket Lukas gave her. It was bent now, the glass cracked from the last time she threw it across the room in a fit of guilt. She held it in her palm like a fragile heartbeat.
"Raver..." she whispered, "I didn't mean to—"
The memory came back again, uninvited. The warehouse. The loud argument. Raver crying, Cheese laughing, the other boys taunting him like hyenas.
"Don't!" Raver had shouted. "I don't want to be part of this anymore!"
Missy was there. Hiding. Watching.
Cheese handed her a gun. "Scare him a little. Just a warning."
She hesitated. She was shaking.
"Do it," Mark said. "You want him to stop crying, right?"
"I... I just want him to stop hurting..." she replied.
She didn't want to pull the trigger. She swore she didn't. But her finger twitched, and the safety was off. One shot. That's all it took. And Lukas fell.
The boys screamed. They ran. Cheese covered for her, told her to keep quiet or she'd be next. He cleaned the prints, made it look like someone else did it. Missy was too broken to argue. Now, every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face. The blood. The way his body jerked back. The way his hand reached out for her before going still.
She never told anyone. Not Lukas, not Ali. Not her parents. Not the cops. But the gang knows.
Missy knew..... her death is on its way.