[Sexton POV]
It was one of those foggy nights where you could barely see a few meters ahead, and I hated them.
Not that I hated bad weather or anything, but if you worked in a cemetery, those were the days when you felt like you were walking through a horror movie.
In all the years I worked there, nothing truly creepy ever happened, still, on such nights, I regretted not listening to my now-dead mother, who always said I should have chosen a different job.
I stopped behind one of the graves to take out the flask my daughter had given me for my birthday and took a sip of liquor. After the first swallow, I felt the warmth spread through my body, and the tension slowly fade away.
While feeling that warmth, I noticed, a bit further away, a tall silhouette moving through the fog.
I was ready to call out, to tell him the cemetery was closed and that he should visit the dead tomorrow and maybe in nicer weather. Or was the person one of those lunatics from that horror school?
Before I could think any further, the silhouette raised its hand.
What was he doing? I opened my mouth to shoo him away, but suddenly the ground started to vibrate.
I saw shadows, thin dark lines, crawling from his hand. They seemed to devour the soil, and within seconds they uncovered a coffin.
Then, with another small motion of his hand, the coffin lid creaked and opened by itself.
The smell hit me first, thick, sweet, and rotten. I couldn't see what was inside at first, but then the silhouette lifted something out, and for a moment the fog thinned.
I saw it clearly then.
A severed head in his arms.
The skin was grey and stretched tight, hair still clinging to the skull in a few patches. The jaw hung open, the tongue black and dried. It looked like the kind of thing that crawled out of horror movies, only worse, because it was real and right in front of me.
My knees went weak. My hand shook so badly the flask slipped, spilling the liquor beside me. Every instinct screamed to run, but I couldn't move. It was like my body was rooted in that spot, too scared even to twitch.
He turned the head in his hands as if inspecting something fragile. Then, in a voice too steady for what I was seeing, he said, "To be, or not to be. That is the question."
Then he laughed.
But not a laugh that anyone could join in.
No, it was a laugh that sent chills down my spine. A laugh that bordered… scratch bordered, it was pure madness.
"This will make the perfect entry, before I kill her," he said softly.
The fog rose higher, thickening around him until he was nothing more than a shadow, then not even that. He vanished, as if the night had swallowed him whole.
For a moment I just stood there, breathing too fast, shaking all over.
Then I forced myself forward, step by step, toward the grave. My legs didn't want to listen. Each movement felt wrong, like I was walking underwater.
When I reached it, everything was normal.
The dirt untouched. The coffin buried. The grass still damp and unbroken.
I stared at it for a long time.
Maybe I drank too much. Maybe I was seeing things. But the smell and the sight were too real to be a hallucination.
I backed away slowly, not turning my back on the grave until I reached the gate. My hands were still trembling when I locked it.
And even then, I swear I could still hear that laugh echoing in the fog.
[Tyler POV]
I stood in front of Crackstone's crypt, hands shoved in my pockets, waiting for Wednesday.
Her message still burned in my head: Meet me at the crypt tonight.
I had read it five times, trying to make sense of it. She wasn't the type to write randomly, so what did it mean?
I kicked a stone aside and watched it disappear into the mist.
"Why does she want to meet?" I muttered. Did she figure out, through clues or some family book, what this place really is? Maybe she wants to end it before someone brings Crackstone back.
I looked at the old door, damp wood streaked with age. But then why tell me to come? If she knows what this crypt is, why not destroy it herself without anyone knowing?
Or does she think I have something to do with it?
Knowing her, if she knew who I really was, I would already be dead.
So that meant she trusted me in her own way. That also explained why she sometimes visited me at the coffee shop and narrated her findings and clues. Sometimes I nudged her toward the right trail; other times, when she got too close to the truth, I steered her away.
Thanks to that, we avoided her finding a lot of important clues, by killing people like the mayor or burning down evidence before she reached it.
While I was thinking, a branch cracked somewhere behind me. I turned too fast, heart kicking against my ribs. Nothing there, just the fog moving.
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Get a grip, Tyler."
Another sound this time, an engine.
It came closer, headlights flashing through the trees.
Oh, was she finally here?
I raised my hand to greet, then froze.
Why wasn't the car slowing down?
Why was it aiming at me?
[Enid POV]
The forest blurred past us in streaks of black and grey, the fog sliding over the windshield.
Through the fog, I caught a figure, probably Tyler, standing near the crypt's entrance.
Wednesday's hands were steady on the wheel, too steady for someone driving straight toward a person.
He turned, hearing the engine and seemed to want to wave at us, but his movement froze.
"Uh, you see him, right?" I asked, clutching the seat belt.
Nothing.
"Wednesday?" I said again, louder this time. "You do also see that wall behind him, right?"
Still nothing.
"Wednesday!"
She didn't answer and Tyler didn't move fast enough.
The front of the car hit him square on. The sound was nauseating, a sharp, heavy crunch followed by a crack that seemed to split the night open. The impact threw me forward; the belt cut into my shoulder. The car slammed into the crypt's wooden doors. They exploded into splinters, stone cracking around the frame.
Glass fractured across the windshield. Blood streaked over it in long red arcs before sliding down in slow drops.
When we stopped, the world went quiet except for the hiss of the engine and the soft tick of cooling metal. Dust drifted through the air, stone dust, wood dust, and the sharp smell of burnt oil and blood.
I sat frozen for a second, heart racing so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Wednesday blinked once, hair perfectly still despite everything.
"Oh," she said flatly. "I regrettably didn't find the brake pedal in time."
Then she opened her door, completely calm, stepping out onto the broken ground like this was a casual parking job and pointed to Tyler, who was still breathing, saying, "He was the one behind the gossip."
And with that she turned around and left.
I looked at her, then at what was left of the car… Percy probably won't notice the small scratch I did yesterday.
Then I looked at Tyler, who had rolled several meters away, his body twisted, breath shallow.
"Don't kill me!" he shouted, voice cracking. "She controlled me! I didn't have a choice! I never remembered anything when I changed… I swear!"
I turned my gaze toward him, impassive.
"So, you're innocent?" I asked softly, my tone unreadable.
His shoulders sagged with relief. "Yes…"
I approached him without haste. There was no need for hurry.
He looked smaller now, weaker. There was blood on his chin, dripping down his neck. His eyes were wide, glistening with panic and something that almost looked like hope.
I crouched beside him and placed a hand behind his head. His body was trembling, breath uneven.
And in that moment, I remembered a conversation I had with Wednesday.
[Flashback]
Rowan's body still lay on the ground, the blood already drying on the grass. A thin trail of it stretched behind him, uneven, broken, like he had tried to crawl away before the end found him.
I stood a few steps away from her, shaking. "Why did you kill him?" I shouted. "He didn't accomplish anything, Wednesday! He failed, so why?"
She turned slowly, her face unreadable, eyes calm in that way that always made me feel like I was the one being dissected.
"He failed, yes," she said, voice quiet but sharp enough to cut. "But what if he hadn't? What if success had been a second slower to reveal itself? Perseus would be dead."
I blinked, throat tight. "So that's it? You kill people because they could have done it?"
Wednesday stepped closer, her boots silent on the wet ground.
"What would you have done then, Enid, if he had succeeded? Gone to the law? Whispered about justice? Watched him rot in a cell until society forgot his name, then walk free again to finish what he began?"
Her tone didn't rise, didn't shake. It was cold reason wrapped in poetry, every word measured and deliberate.
"The world is rotten," she said softly. "It demands justice through others because it's too afraid to soil its own hands. They pardon monsters so they can sleep at night, pretending mercy makes them pure. But why? What do they have left to lose once the person they love dies because of someone else? Why not unleash the monster inside and let it feed? What holds them back… society? The rules drilled into them since childhood?"
She paused, eyes distant, as if considering the idea with clinical curiosity.
"And why pardon someone who wanted to ruin their life? What is mercy worth to them then?"
Her voice dropped lower, smoother.
"I never understood why people trust blindly in the law, or cling to society's hollow morality, as if those things ever cared about them. Justice bends to money, mercy to convenience. So why keep believing in it? Why not take it into their own hands? What else do they have left to lose?"
She looked down at Rowan's body, her voice turning quieter. "I cannot live with the future his success would bring. He needed to die because I refuse to live under that consequence."
Then she looked at me.
"Tell me, Enid… what would you have done if he had succeeded? Could you have lived with the consequences?"
[Flashback Ends]
I smiled faintly, remembering her words.
What would I have done if their plan had succeeded and I had lost Perseus's love?
My fingers tightened around his head, claws sliding out slowly.
Terror filled his eyes; his mouth opened, trying to form something that sounded like a reason.
There was nothing left to say.
A sharp crack broke the quiet. Warmth spilled across my hand and a dark pool spread beneath him. His eyes rolled back, the last breath rasping out like a small broken thing.
I kept my hand there a moment longer, feeling the tremor fade beneath my palm.
The answer was simple.
The moon only glows when kissed by the sun.
************
Author's Note:
Big thanks to Anselius and Opresiet for the support! Thanks to you, I can officially afford two pizzas. Hehehe
Also, huge thanks to AinzVorrNix for inspiring me to write the Sexton POV scene.
From now on, I'll be uploading every three days instead of every two. With university starting, work piling up, and friends finally back from vacation demanding my attention, I don't have as much time to write and I'd rather take it slow than rush chapters.
And now, after seeing how talent and reward rarely meet, I finally understand why some authors make a Patreon, post a few future chapters, stack cliffhangers to attract more subscribers… and then vanish with all the money. What a cruel, fascinating world, heheh.
That's all for now!
If you want to support me somehow, the links are below. :)
https://ko-fi.com/ulixe
https://paypal.me/Uliixe (Yes, with two i's hahah)