TOMMIE BRAYLER | Kiss Him Or Die Trying

INTRO 1:

Parker had bought the book from an antique shop near the bus station, which should have been enough of a warning on its own.

It sat open on the coffee table in his apartment beneath the yellow spill of a lamp, its cover cracked black leather without a title, its pages swollen at the edges as though it had once been left out in the rain and never fully dried. The room smelled faintly of tea, old paper, and the cinnamon candle Ava had lit because, in her words, “If we are going to inspect a possible cursed object, I refuse to do it under fluorescent lighting.”

Parker sat cross-legged on the floor with the book between his knees, glasses low on his nose, turning each page with deliberate care. He had been quiet for several minutes, which Ava had apparently decided was unacceptable.

“So,” she said from the couch, pink hair spilling over the armrest as she leaned closer, “is it giving ancient forbidden knowledge, or is it giving somebody’s weird grandpa’s diary?”

Parker’s thumb paused beside a page full of cramped symbols. “Both can be true.”

Ava narrowed her eyes at the book. “That is not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.” He traced one of the faded diagrams without touching it. A hand had been drawn in dark ink at the bottom of the page, palm open, fingers spread. Fine black lines branched from the center of it and crawled up the arm toward a shaded shape over the chest.

Ava shifted closer. “That looks like veins.”

“It does.”

“Why does it look like veins?”

Parker turned the page.

The next one was nearly blank except for a warning cut deeply into the paper, each letter pressed hard enough to tear the fibers around it.

DO NOT LET IT TAKE BLOOD.

For the first time since opening the book, Parker stopped looking entertained.

Ava saw it immediately. “Parker.”

He adjusted his glasses, studying the line. “Mm.”

“That is not your normal little ‘interesting’ face.”

“I’m aware.”

“What does it mean?”

Parker did not answer straight away. His eyes moved over the rest of the page, following ink that had bled into the margins in several different hands. Some of it was too faded to read. Some had been scratched out so violently the paper had been gouged through.

Then he said, with the kind of careful calm that made the room feel colder, “It means whoever wrote this had a very specific concern.”

Ava stared at him. “That is somehow worse.”

“It usually is.”

The lamp flickered.

Once.

Twice.

Then the book snapped shut under Parker’s hand.

Ava jerked back against the couch. “Okay. Nope. I have changed my mind. I do not want to know anything else about it.”

Parker looked down at the cover. The faint symbol pressed into the leather seemed darker now, though that could have been the bad light. He lifted his hand slowly.

The book moved.

It slid across the coffee table by itself, not quickly, not violently. Just a slow, deliberate scrape over the wood, as if something beneath it had decided where it wanted to go.

Parker caught the edge too late.

The book tipped.

It hit the floor spine-first, hard enough that Ava flinched, and burst open across the rug.

For a second, nobody moved.

The pages settled on the same drawing Parker had been studying. The black-veined hand. The body. The dark shape over the heart.

Ava’s voice came out smaller than before. “Parker, don’t touch it.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

{{user}} moved first, reaching down toward the fallen book.

Parker’s head lifted sharply. “Wait, just leave it.”

But the page had caught beneath the cover. {{user}}’s fingers closed around the corner to free it.

The paper bit.

It was only a papercut. Thin. Clean. Barely visible at first.

A bright line opened across the side of {{user}}’s finger.

Ava made a soft sound through her teeth. “Ow. That looked nasty.”

One drop of blood gathered at the edge of the cut.

It fell onto the page.

The room went silent.

Not quiet.

Silent.

The refrigerator stopped humming. The rain against the window vanished. Even Ava’s breathing seemed to disappear.

The blood did not soak into the paper.

It spread.

A thin red thread crawled through the page, slipping between the black letters, and the ink began to move toward it. Not smearing. Not bleeding naturally. The symbols loosened from the paper in hair-thin strands, dragging themselves across the page until they touched the blood.

Parker went still.

Ava whispered, “Parker.”

The page darkened beneath {{user}}’s hand.

Then the cut burned.

The black line appeared so quickly it almost looked like a crack beneath the skin, beginning at the papercut and winding over the knuckle in a thin, ink-dark trail. It moved with terrible patience, curling toward the wrist.

Ava slid off the couch and dropped beside the coffee table, staring at {{user}}’s hand. Her usual brightness had drained from her face. “That is moving.”

Parker was already on his knees beside the book, one hand hovering over the page without touching it. His eyes tracked the black line as it crept beneath {{user}}’s skin, then flicked back to the warning carved into the paper.

The book slammed shut.

The sound cracked through the apartment.

The lamp blew out.

For one breath, the room was black.

Then the light sputtered back on.

The book sat closed on the rug.

{{user}}’s hand was still there.

So was the black line.

It had reached the wrist.

Ava looked at Parker, voice thin but controlled. “Tell me that is not what I think it is.”

Parker stared at the mark for a long second, jaw tightening behind his hand.

Then he looked up at {{user}} and said quietly, “I might’ve overlooked that.”

INTRO 2:

For a while, nobody touched anything.

The book remained on the rug between them, closed and innocent-looking in the most offensive possible way. Its leather cover had settled flat again. The lamp above it flickered once every few seconds, weak and yellow, throwing shadows over the room in uneven pulses.

{{user}}’s hand was still lifted slightly from the floor.

The black line beneath the skin had reached the wrist.

It had not stopped moving.

Not quickly. Not enough to make it obvious from one second to the next. But Parker watched it with his glasses pushed up into his hair, eyes narrowed, and after a full minute he reached for his phone, opened the camera, and took a picture.

Ava looked between him and {{user}}. “Why are you taking pictures?”

“To compare it.”

“That is a horrifying answer.”

“It’s also the useful one.”

Parker took another picture thirty seconds later. Then he held both images side by side, his face settling into a stillness that made Ava’s shoulders draw tight.

“The line moved,” he said.

Ava stared at him. “How much?”

“Two millimeters.”

“Parker.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“That is not the same thing as helping.”

Parker exhaled slowly through his nose and crouched beside the book again. “I know.”

The black line curled faintly beneath {{user}}’s skin, dark as spilled ink. It had started at the paper cut, but the edges around the wound were no longer red. They had gone grayish-black, as if the blood beneath the skin had spoiled in a tiny circle around it.

Ava reached toward {{user}}’s arm, stopping just short of touching the mark. “Does it hurt?”

The book opened.

Neither of them touched it.

The cover lifted with a low scrape against the rug, pages turning by themselves in a rapid, dry flutter. They flipped too fast to read until the book struck open near the middle and stopped.

The room went cold again.

Parker did not move for several seconds.

Then he leaned in.

The page was different from the one before. The illustration of the black-veined body had returned, but now the body was divided into seven sections, each one marked with a thin line of writing beside it. At the bottom of the page, a dark shape sat over the heart like a stain.

Parker read in silence.

Ava shifted closer. “Well?”

“Give me a second.”

“Parker, I am actively trying not to scream.”

“I appreciate your restraint.”

The notes in the margins were written in two different hands. The first was neat and cramped. The second was frantic, letters dug deep into the page with enough pressure to tear it.

Parker’s eyes moved across them quickly. Once. Twice. Then he turned to the next page.

The first sentence was in English.

Not modern English.

But close enough.

His voice came quiet as he read it aloud. “The blood remembers the wound. The wound seeks the heart.”

Ava swallowed. “That sounds bad.”

“It is bad.”

“Can you maybe stop confirming that every time?”

Parker ignored her, turning the page with the edge of a pen instead of his fingers. The next section had a row of small drawings beneath the text: a hand, an arm, a throat, a chest, and finally a heart ringed in black.

Seven marks.

Seven stages.

Parker’s mouth went flat.

Ava saw it. “What?”

He read the line beneath the drawings, slower this time.

“When the seventh night falls, the blood returns to its owner.”

The words settled into the room.

Outside, rain struck the windows hard enough to rattle the glass.

Ava’s face had lost what little color it had left. “What does that mean?”

Parker did not answer immediately.

He turned the page.

The next illustration was worse.

A body lay flat beneath a blackened sky, its chest split open in the same careful ink as the earlier drawing. Dark roots curled around the heart. A single sentence had been written beside it in faded red.

THE HEART IS NOT A DOOR. IT DOES NOT OPEN TWICE.

Ava’s voice came out thin. “Parker.”

He looked up at {{user}}.

“Seven days,” he said.

The room seemed to shrink around the words.

Ava stared at him like he had said something she could refuse by looking hard enough. “No.”

“The curse starts counting from the moment it takes blood.”

“No.”

“It reached the wrist in less than ten minutes. This isn’t something we wait out.”

“No,” Ava said again, louder this time, grabbing the edge of the couch like she could anchor herself with it. “There has to be something else in there. There is always something else. A ritual, a candle, a cleansing bath, a weird herb, I don’t know. Parker, you are literally the person who collects nightmare books. Find the nightmare solution.”

Parker’s eyes softened for half a second.

Then he looked back at the page.

“I’m trying.”

The book turned another page by itself.

This time, Parker recoiled before he could stop himself.

Ava noticed. “What is it?”

The page was almost entirely black.

Not ink-black. Something darker. The center of it had been left pale enough for a single paragraph of writing, the letters uneven and old.

Parker read it once under his breath.

Then again.

His expression changed.

Not relief.

Something closer to disbelief.

Ava leaned forward. “Parker.”

He did not answer.

“Parker.”

He looked at {{user}} again, then at the dark line creeping beneath their skin.

“There’s a cure,” he said.

Ava let out a breath so sharp it almost hurt to hear. “Okay. Good. Great. What is it?”

Parker did not look pleased.

That was the problem.

Ava’s smile faded. “What?”

He turned the book toward them.

The words sat in the center of the page like a verdict.

Mouth to mouth. Blood to blood. Before the seventh bell, the hated bond must be crossed. Let the marked one kiss the enemy who holds the deepest grievance, and the rot will release its claim.

For a moment, Ava only stared.

Then she blinked.

“Okay,” she said carefully. “I know this is not the important part, but that is the most insane possible thing for an evil book to require.”

Parker rubbed one hand over his mouth.

“It is not asking for love,” he said. “It is not asking for mutual feelings. It doesn’t even say the other person has to understand what’s happening.”

Ava’s eyes shifted toward {{user}}, then back to Parker. “It just says kiss your enemy.”

“Yes.”

“And the book decides who the enemy is.”

“Yes.”

“And if they do not kiss this person before the seventh day...”

Parker looked down at the black line on {{user}}’s wrist.

“It reaches the heart.”

The book’s pages began to turn again.

This time, they stopped on a blank spread.

For several seconds, nothing appeared.

Then black ink bled slowly through the paper.

One letter.

Then another.

A name formed across the page in sharp, elegant strokes.

TOMMIE BRAYLER.

INTRO 3:

By the second day, the black line had reached halfway up {{user}}’s forearm.

Parker had measured it twice before leaving Westbridge, then once more in the backseat of Ava’s car while she drove them across town toward Eastmoor College. He had kept the book wrapped in two grocery bags and shoved into a canvas tote at his feet, as though plastic and denial might make it less dangerous.

“It moved three inches overnight,” he said, comparing a picture on his phone to {{user}}’s arm. “That is faster than the notes suggested.”

Ava gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Could you maybe say one useful sentence before you say something horrifying?”

“That was useful.”

“It was medically upsetting.”

Parker glanced back down at the mark. The dark line had split near the wrist, thin branches curling beneath the skin in delicate black paths. It looked wrong against living flesh. Too neat. Too deliberate.

“We need Tommie to believe this is real,” he said. “Before we discuss the mechanics of getting him to kiss anyone.”

Ava parked across from Eastmoor’s older science building and turned in her seat. “I am not calling it the mechanics. That makes it sound like we are planning a group project.”

Parker looked at her over his glasses. “We are planning a group project. The assignment is preventing {{user}}’s death.”

“That is the least romantic sentence ever spoken.”

“It is not a romantic situation.”

Ava made a face at him, then looked toward the campus.

Eastmoor looked different from Westbridge in ways that did not need explaining. There were no polished brick paths or decorative banners hanging from the lampposts. The buildings were older, crowded together, their concrete stairwells stained by rain and years of cigarette smoke. Cars packed the lot behind the student center. Students moved through the courtyard in loose groups, backpacks slung over one shoulder, coffee cups in hand, most of them looking like they had somewhere to be and no particular interest in getting there.

Tommie Brayler was exactly where Parker had expected him to be.

Not in a classroom.

Not in the library.

He stood beneath the awning beside the old stairwell entrance, one shoulder against the brick wall, a cigarette resting between two fingers. His dark hair was loose around his face, falling over one eye whenever the wind picked up. Cory leaned against the railing beside him with an energy drink in one hand, while Duke sat on the low concrete divider nearby, tearing open a bag of chips with the focused intensity of someone about to perform surgery.

Ava ducked lower behind the row of hedges bordering the walkway.

“Oh,” she whispered, staring through the branches. “Okay. That is an aggressively attractive friend group.”

Parker crouched beside her with visible reluctance. “Please do not make this worse.”

“I am not making it worse. I am observing.”

“You are smiling.”

“I can observe while smiling.”

Across the courtyard, Duke looked into the chip bag, then slowly raised his head toward Cory.

“Hold up,” he said, his voice carrying clearly through the thin morning air. “You bought drinks and didn’t get me one?”

Cory took another slow sip from the can in his hand. “You’ve got chips.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It has calories.”

Duke stared at him. “Man, I ain’t lending you nothing next time.”

“You said that last time.”

“And I meant it last time.”

Tommie dragged smoke from his cigarette, watching the two of them argue without moving from the wall. “You two done?”

Duke turned toward him immediately. “No. He’s being selfish.”

Cory’s mouth twitched. “You ate my food yesterday.”

“I sampled it.”

“You finished it.”

“It was a small portion.”

“It was my lunch.”

Duke held the bag of chips against his chest as if wounded. “You see how he speaks to me? After everything I’ve done for him?”

Tommie exhaled smoke toward the rain-dark pavement. “You’ve done nothing for him.”

“That is not true. I gave him a ride last month.”

“You made him pay for gas.”

“It was a long ride.”

Parker watched the three of them for a moment, his expression unreadable. “They are not what I expected.”

Ava glanced at him. “What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Less snack-related hostility.”

“Everybody deserves a hobby.”

“That appears to be Duke’s entire personality.”

Duke shoved another handful of chips into his mouth, then pointed toward Tommie’s cigarette. “Also, you both need to stop smoking.”

Tommie looked down at him.

Cory raised an eyebrow. “You smoke.”

“I’m trying to quit.”

“You said that last week.”

“I am emotionally preparing.”

“That’s not quitting.”

Duke pointed at both of them with the chip bag. “It’s bad for you. Your lungs are gonna look like wet gravel.”

Tommie crushed the cigarette beneath his boot without comment.

Cory looked at Duke. “Happy now?”

“No,” Duke said. “You still didn’t get me a drink.”

Ava pressed a hand over her mouth to hide her laugh.

Then she turned back toward Tommie, and the amusement in her face softened into concentration.

“Okay,” she whispered. “We cannot just walk up to him and say, ‘Hi, ancient blood curse, please kiss my best friend.’ He would think we were insane.”

“He will think we are insane,” Parker said. “We are following him around campus from behind a hedge.”

“That is reconnaissance.”

“That is trespassing-adjacent.”

Ava ignored him. “We need to get him somewhere private. Somewhere he does not feel trapped. We need him to see the marks eventually, but not immediately, because if we lead with the black veins he might assume it is makeup or a prank. And then we need a reason for him to listen.”

Parker glanced at the black line on {{user}}’s arm. “The reason is that {{user}} is dying.”

“Yes, Parker. I know. But people do not always respond well to terrifying information delivered by strangers in a parking lot.”

“We are not strangers.”

“To him, we are.”

Parker looked back toward Tommie.

Tommie had not joined the argument. He stood with his hands in his pockets now, gaze lowered toward the pavement while Cory and Duke continued bickering beside him. There was nothing dramatic about him. No loud movements. No obvious attempt to control the space around him.

Still, people moved around that corner of campus without getting too close.

Even from across the courtyard, there was something shut off about him. Something deliberate.

Ava watched him for a second too long.

Then she nodded to herself.

“He hates being cornered,” she said.

Parker looked at her. “You have gathered that from watching him smoke for six minutes?”

“I have gathered that from his posture. His face. The fact that he is standing where he can see every entrance to that stairwell. Also, he looks like someone who would rather chew glass than be emotionally ambushed.”

Parker considered that.

“That is annoyingly accurate.”

“Thank you.”

“So your plan is?”

Ava’s expression brightened, but only a little. “We make it seem like he has a choice.”

Parker frowned. “He does have a choice.”

“You know what I mean. We do not chase him around screaming about kisses. We talk to him like he is a person. We let him say no first. Then we give him enough information that he starts wondering whether he should have said yes.”

“That sounds manipulative.”

“It is strategic.”

“It is manipulative strategy.”

Ava sighed. “Parker, babe, the book gave us seven days and chose the world’s least cooperative man. We are allowed a little tactical romance.”

“That is not romance.”

“Fine. Tactical interpersonal diplomacy.”

Before Parker could answer, Cory looked across the courtyard.

Straight at them.

He did not squint. Did not look confused. His gaze simply landed on the hedge where the three of them were crouched, and his expression shifted into a small, knowing smile.

Ava froze.

Parker slowly lowered his phone.

Duke followed Cory’s line of sight. “What?”

Cory tipped his chin toward the hedges. “Think we’ve got company.”

Tommie lifted his head.

His eyes settled on the place where {{user}}, Parker, and Ava were hiding.

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then he pushed away from the wall, leaving the cigarette smoke and the argument behind him as he started across the courtyard.

Ava whispered, “Okay. New plan.”

Parker, without looking away from Tommie, said, “We did not have an old plan.”

Tommie stopped a few feet from the hedge, hands still in his pockets, his expression flat enough to make the air feel colder.

“You three planning to stay there all day,” he asked quietly, “or are you going to tell me why you’re watching me?”

INTRO 4:

Tommie did not wait for an answer at the hedge.

He looked at Parker first, then Ava, then {{user}}, his gaze settling there for a beat too long before he turned back toward the stairwell. “You’ve got thirty seconds,” he said, already walking away. “Then I’m leaving.”

Cory pushed off the railing as the three of them stepped out from behind the hedge, the corner of his mouth lifting when he saw the look on Ava’s face. “That was subtle,” he said, taking another drink from his can. “You usually hide behind shrubbery, or is this a special occasion?”

Ava smoothed a hand over her skirt with all the dignity available to someone who had just been caught spying. “We were assessing the situation.”

Duke looked between her and Parker, still holding his chips. “Assessing what situation?”

Parker had the book tucked beneath one arm, its canvas bag folded around it twice. He did not look at Duke. “A serious one.”

Tommie stopped beneath the stairwell awning and turned back. Rain drummed steadily against the metal above him. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, hands loose at his sides, his expression already carrying the tired patience of someone expecting to be sold something.

“Well?” he asked.

Parker set the bag down on the concrete ledge beside him and opened it carefully. The old book appeared between them, black leather dull beneath the gray daylight. Duke’s face changed first. The playful irritation slipped out of it.

“That thing looks disgusting,” he said.

“It is,” Parker answered.

Cory glanced at the book, then toward {{user}}. His eyes lingered there, quieting.

Parker opened the cover with the tip of a pen. The pages shifted beneath the metal, restless but still. “Two nights ago, {{user}} got a papercut from this book. Their blood touched the page. It activated something called the Bloodrot.”

Tommie’s face did not move.

Ava stepped closer to Parker, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. “It is real. We know it sounds insane, but it is real. It is spreading under their skin, and Parker translated the warning.”

Tommie looked at the book, then at Parker. “You brought them a cursed book.”

“I brought home an object I believed was old and poorly catalogued,” Parker said. “I was wrong.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Duke muttered.

Parker ignored him. “The curse has seven days. It moves toward the heart. If it reaches it, {{user}} dies.”

The rain seemed louder after that.

Cory’s expression did not change much, but his eyes shifted again toward {{user}}, sharper now. He had noticed something. Maybe the sleeve held too carefully over the wrist. Maybe the exhaustion written into their posture. Maybe the fact that nobody involved looked pleased with their own story.

Tommie let out a slow breath through his nose. “And why are you telling me?”

Parker turned another page. The inked words sat there in a narrow column, black and ugly against yellowed paper. “Because the cure requires lip-to-lip contact with the person the curse identifies as {{user}}’s enemy.”

Duke slowly lowered the bag of chips.

Ava looked at Tommie with the careful, bright expression she used when she was trying not to make something worse. “It named you.”

For a second, Tommie just stared at her.

Then he looked at {{user}}.

The silence stretched. Cory’s drink clicked softly against the railing as he set it down.

Tommie’s jaw shifted once. “It named me.”

“Yes,” Parker said.

“And you came over here expecting what, exactly?”

Parker held his gaze. “For you to understand the situation.”

“No.” Tommie’s voice stayed low, almost bored, but something colder had moved beneath it. “You came over here because you want something from me.”

Ava opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Tommie looked at {{user}} once more, his eyes unreadable. “You’ve followed me across campus with a book full of scribbles, told me you’re dying, and now you want me to kiss you because an old page says I should.”

Parker said carefully, “We are not asking you to believe it without proof.”

Tommie’s eyes cut to him. “You’ve got proof?”

Parker looked toward {{user}}.

The moment hung there.

The sleeve. The black line beneath it. The choice to show him or not remained entirely {{user}}’s.

Tommie waited a few seconds, then gave a humorless little breath of laughter. “That’s what I thought.”

Cory’s gaze flicked between Parker and {{user}}. “Tommie.”

Tommie did not look at him. “What?”

“Maybe listen before you decide they’re lying.”

“I did listen.”

“No,” Cory said quietly. “You heard the part you wanted to hear.”

Duke shifted where he stood, eyes narrowed at the book. “I mean, it is a very bad-looking book.”

Tommie turned his head slightly toward him.

Duke lifted his hands. “I’m just saying. I’ve seen less haunted stuff in horror movies, and those people always die first.”

Tommie looked back at Parker. “Even if I believe you, which I don’t, you’ve still got the wrong person.”

“The book disagrees,” Parker said.

“The book can get fucked.”

Ava flinched a little at the flatness of it. Parker did not.

Tommie stepped away from the wall, slow and deliberate, until he stood close enough that the air between him and {{user}} felt narrowed down to one hard line. His eyes did not leave theirs.

“You’ve got a habit of making problems where there weren’t any,” he said. “Now you’ve brought one to me and decided I’m meant to fix it.”

Parker’s fingers tightened around the edge of the book.

Tommie continued, still looking at {{user}}. “I don’t know what game this is. I don’t care if it’s a joke, a dare, or some strange little setup you and your friends have worked yourselves into. I’m not kissing you because a dusty book told you to, and I’m not letting you use me because you’re scared.”

His voice never rose. That made it worse.

“I don’t owe you a thing,” he said, the words clipped and final. “Not my time. Not my patience. Certainly not that.”

Ava’s face tightened, but she did not interrupt.

Cory watched Tommie for a moment, then looked at {{user}} again. His expression had gone quiet in a way that did not match the teasing smile from before.

Tommie took one step back. “Find someone else.”

Parker’s voice stayed measured. “There is no one else.”

Tommie picked up his cigarette pack from the ledge and slid it into his pocket. “Then you should’ve been more careful with your blood.”

He walked past them without another word.

Duke watched him go, then looked down at the book. “Well,” he said after a long second, “that went horrifically.”

Cory picked up his drink again, his eyes still fixed on {{user}}’s sleeve. “He’ll listen,” he said quietly.

Ava turned toward him. “He literally just walked away.”

Cory took a slow sip, then looked at the closed book resting in Parker’s hands.

“Yeah,” he said. “But I think you’re telling the truth.”

INTRO 5:

By the third morning, the line had reached the bend of {{user}}’s elbow.

Parker had measured it with the edge of a ruler and a look that made Ava hover anxiously beside him, arms folded tight over her chest. “That is not a face I like,” she said when he took another picture for comparison.

“It is the same face I’ve had since last night.”

“No. Last night you had your research face. This is your, ‘I’ve found something bad but I’m deciding how to phrase it’ face.”

Parker slid his phone into his pocket. “It has progressed faster today.”

Ava stared at the black lines disappearing beneath {{user}}’s sleeve. “You make everything sound like a hospital report.”

“That is because we are dealing with a fatal blood curse.”

“Yes,” Ava said, throwing both hands up. “I know. I was there when the evil book ate their blood.”

The apartment was quiet around them. The cursed book sat closed on Parker’s desk, wrapped in two grocery bags, a strip of black electrical tape around the middle as though that would stop it from doing anything. Parker had tried locking it in a drawer. The drawer had opened by itself ten minutes later.

Ava had dragged a chair into the middle of the room and sat down backward in it, chin resting on the top rail as she looked between Parker and {{user}}. Her expression had gone serious in the way it only did when she was working something out.

“We cannot just keep running at him,” she said at last. “Tommie hates being cornered. He hates being told what to do. He hates being watched. And he definitely hates being made into the solution for somebody else’s problem.”

Parker leaned against the desk, arms crossed. “That is an accurate assessment.”

“Thank you.”

“It was not a compliment.”

Ava ignored him. “We need to do something normal.”

Parker’s eyebrows drew together. “Normal.”

“Yes. Not another confrontation. Not the book. Not the whole, ‘hi, please kiss my best friend before their circulatory system becomes a haunted sewer system’ approach.”

“That was not how we phrased it.”

“It was the energy.”

Parker looked toward {{user}}’s arm, then back at Ava. “We have five days.”

“And five days is not improved by making him feel trapped.” Ava sat up straighter, pink bow shifting in her hair. “I am not saying we manipulate him into kissing anybody. I am saying we give him a reason to look at {{user}} like a person instead of a problem with an ancient curse attached.”

Parker considered that for a second.

Then he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You have a plan.”

“I have the beginning of a plan.”

“That has never made me feel better.”

“It should. I’m very good at beginnings.”

The shared student district was busy by late afternoon, crowded with people moving between cafés, bus stops, cheap restaurants, and the two campuses that fed into the same few blocks. Ava had found a small coffee shop across from Eastmoor’s parking lot and claimed a table near the window while Parker sat beside her with the wrapped book tucked at his feet.

Tommie was there twenty minutes later.

He came in alone.

No Cory at his shoulder. No Duke arguing loudly over food. Just Tommie in a dark overshirt and black shirt, hair loose around his face, his hands in his pockets as he stepped up to the counter and ordered something without looking at the menu.

Ava went very still.

Then she looked at {{user}}, lowered her voice, and said, “Okay. This is actually ideal.”

Parker gave her a flat look. “Nothing about this is ideal.”

“He is alone. He has coffee. He is not smoking. The universe is practically holding the door open.”

“The universe is trying to kill {{user}}.”

“Parker.”

He lifted both hands. “Right. Sorry. Bad framing.”

Ava reached across the table, nudging a second cup toward {{user}}. She had bought it after watching Tommie order, matching it as closely as she could without making it obvious. “This is not a bribe,” she said. “It is a peace offering. You give it to him, ask for five minutes, and then you let him decide whether he stays.”

Parker glanced at the coffee. “You asked the barista what he drinks.”

“I asked the barista which drink he orders every day. There is a difference.”

“There is not.”

“There is emotionally.”

Tommie collected his cup and turned.

His eyes found {{user}} almost immediately.

They always did.

The expression on his face did not change, but his pace slowed when he saw the second coffee waiting on the table. He stood there for a moment, looking from the cup to {{user}}, then to Ava and Parker.

Ava gave him a bright, perfectly innocent little wave.

Tommie’s stare settled on her.

She smiled wider. “Hi.”

He came over anyway.

Not quickly. Not warmly. He stopped beside the table with one hand wrapped around his coffee cup, gaze lowering to the untouched drink in front of {{user}}. “You lot have got a plan for everything, haven’t you?” he asked.

Ava opened her mouth.

Parker reached beneath the table and lightly kicked her ankle.

She shut it again.

{{user}} offered him the second coffee.

Tommie looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked at {{user}}’s face, his eyes slow and unreadable.

“You asked around what I drink,” he said.

Ava immediately looked at Parker.

Parker looked back at her. “I told you.”

Tommie’s gaze shifted toward them both, and for the faintest second something almost amused touched the corner of his mouth. “You’re not subtle.”

Ava sat up in her chair. “I am extremely subtle. I am just also committed.”

“That’s the opposite of subtle.”

“It is not.”

“It is.”

Parker sighed. “Can we please not litigate this.”

Tommie picked up the second coffee at last, turning the cup slowly between his fingers. He did not drink it. He did not thank {{user}} either.

Instead, he nodded toward the empty booth near the back wall. “Five minutes.”

Ava blinked.

Parker’s head lifted.

Tommie looked only at {{user}}. “You can tell me what you came to tell me without an audience. Properly, this time.” His eyes flicked once toward the sleeve hiding the Bloodrot, then back to {{user}}’s face. “No book. No performance. No friends speaking for you.”

He stepped away from the table and moved toward the booth, taking both coffees with him.

Before sitting down, he glanced back over his shoulder.

“And don’t mistake me listening for agreement.”

INTRO 6:

By Day Four, the Bloodrot had crossed {{user}}’s elbow.

It did not move like a rash. It moved with intention.

The black lines had branched during the night, thin beneath the skin at first, then darker by morning, threading up the forearm in delicate veins that looked almost beautiful until they shifted. Parker had stopped taking measurements aloud. He still took the pictures. Still compared them. Still looked at the book until his eyes went red behind his glasses.

Ava had stopped calling it a plan.

Now she called it time.

Eastmoor’s stairwell smelled like wet concrete and smoke. The upper window had been shoved open despite the rain, letting cold air cut through the stale heat trapped between the floors. Tommie stood near the landing with a cigarette between his fingers, his shoulder against the wall, while Cory leaned over the railing beside him and Duke sat on the steps with a plastic container balanced on one knee.

Duke had apparently brought food.

“Those are mine,” he said when Cory reached into the container.

Cory did not look guilty. He pulled out a piece anyway. “You made too much.”

“I made enough.”

“You made four portions.”

“Exactly.”

Tommie took a slow drag from his cigarette, eyes lowered toward the gray light bleeding through the window. “You two ever get tired of hearing yourselves?”

Duke looked at him. “Do you?”

Cory’s mouth twitched.

Then the stairwell door opened.

All three of them looked up.

Parker came in first, one hand closed around the strap of his bag. Ava followed close behind him, her pink bow bright against the dirty concrete, her expression too still to be normal. {{user}} was between them.

Tommie’s gaze landed there.

He did not move.

Cory did.

The lazy ease went out of his posture almost immediately. His eyes tracked {{user}} from head to toe, caught on the way one hand held the opposite arm, then on the sleeve pulled too low over the wrist.

Duke’s expression changed next. “You look awful.”

Ava gave him a sharp look.

“What?” Duke said, quieter. “They do.”

Parker stepped forward. “We need to talk.”

Tommie looked at him, then back at {{user}}. “You had your five minutes.”

“This isn’t about convincing you,” Parker said.

Tommie’s eyes narrowed slightly. “No?”

The line beneath {{user}}’s sleeve gave a faint, ugly pulse.

It was not bright. It did not glow like something out of a movie. It just tightened beneath the skin, black veins contracting sharply enough to make the hand around the opposite arm clench.

Ava saw it.

Her breath caught.

Parker took one step closer, voice clipped despite himself. “It’s spreading faster.”

Tommie flicked ash onto the concrete. “That meant to mean something to me?”

“It means they have three days.”

“Parker,” Ava said softly.

“No.” He looked at Tommie. “You don’t get to stand there and make this sound ridiculous because it makes you uncomfortable. It is moving toward their chest. It gets there, they die.”

The stairwell went quiet.

Duke stopped eating.

Cory looked at {{user}} again, more carefully this time. “Show him.”

Parker’s head turned toward him.

Cory met his eyes. “He won’t take a book seriously. He might take that.”

Tommie’s face did not change, but the cigarette burned down between his fingers untouched.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then {{user}} yanked the sleeve back.

The black lines had spread past the elbow. They curled up the arm in thin branches, too dark against living skin, disappearing beneath the edge of the shirt. One line moved while they watched, drawing itself another fraction of an inch higher.

Duke stood up slowly.

“Yeah,” he said under his breath. “That’s not makeup.”

Tommie stared at the marks.

The smoke from his cigarette drifted between them. His eyes followed the lines upward, took in the discoloration around the original cut, the strange ink-black branching under the skin.

His jaw shifted once.

“That started from a paper cut,” he said.

Parker nodded. “The book took their blood.”

Tommie looked at the wrapped shape in Parker’s bag. “And you brought it here.”

“I brought evidence.”

“You brought a problem.”

“I already brought the problem home. I’m trying to keep it from killing my best friend.”

That landed harder than Parker probably intended. Even Duke looked away for a second.

Tommie crushed the cigarette beneath his boot.

Then {{user}} moved.

There was no warning this time. No carefully arranged coffee. No five-minute conversation. No room for Ava to find the perfect sentence or Parker to translate another page.

{{user}} crossed the narrow space between them, caught the front of Tommie’s shirt, and went for him.

Tommie reacted before anyone else had time to breathe.

His hand closed around {{user}}’s wrist. The other caught their shoulder, stopping the momentum hard enough that their back met the wall beside the window. The stairwell door rattled behind them.

His face was close.

Not gentle. Not furious in any loud, wild way.

Still.

“Don’t,” he said.

{{user}} tried again.

Tommie’s grip tightened, controlled but unyielding. He turned his head aside before their mouths could meet, his eyes cutting back to the black veins disappearing beneath their sleeve.

“You think because you’re sick,” he said quietly, “you can take whatever you want?”

Ava made a small, frightened sound. “Tommie, they’re running out of time.”

“I know what they’re doing.”

“No,” Parker said, stepping forward. “You know what the book requires. That is not the same thing.”

Tommie looked at him.

Parker did not back down.

“They are desperate,” he said. “There is a difference.”

For a moment, Tommie’s expression stayed blank.

Then his eyes dropped to {{user}}’s arm again.

The dark veins pulsed once beneath the skin.

His hold loosened.

Not enough to invite another attempt. Just enough that he was no longer pinning {{user}} against the wall.

Cory pushed off the railing. “Tommie.”

Tommie did not look at him.

Cory’s voice stayed low. “They’re telling the truth.”

Duke folded the lid over his food container with a sharp snap. “I don’t know what that thing is,” he said, staring at the mark, “but it looks like it wants to eat them alive.”

Tommie’s gaze lifted to {{user}}’s face.

His voice was flat when he spoke, but it had lost the easy dismissal from yesterday.

“How long has it been there?”

INTRO 7:

By Day Five, the Bloodrot had crossed {{user}}’s shoulder.

The black lines had climbed beneath the sleeve during the night, branching across the upper arm and curling beneath the collarbone in thin, dark roots. Parker had stared at them for too long that morning before wrapping a scarf around {{user}}’s neck and saying, very carefully, “This is not for warmth.”

Ava had not made a joke.

That was how bad it had become.

The old end of Eastmoor sat behind the newer classroom buildings, where the brick had darkened with rain and the windows were either boarded up or painted over from the inside. Most students avoided it after dark. The halls smelled like dust, wet plaster, and old smoke. There were classrooms nobody used anymore, a shuttered gymnasium, and a back stairwell Tommie’s group had apparently claimed years ago.

Parker led the way through the corridor with the cursed book heavy in his bag. Ava stayed close beside {{user}}, one hand hovering near their elbow without touching.

“You do not have to keep pretending you’re fine,” she said quietly.

Parker glanced back over his shoulder. “They are not pretending. They are walking.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know.”

The voices reached them before the stairwell did.

Duke was arguing about a movie through the half-open door.

“I’m telling you, the ending was lazy. You cannot spend two hours building a monster and then kill it with a fucking chandelier.”

Cory’s voice followed, amused. “It was symbolic.”

“It was stupid.”

Tommie said something too low to catch.

Duke immediately snapped, “Don’t sit there agreeing with him. You haven’t even seen it.”

Parker pushed the door open.

The stairwell was dim, lit by a gray strip of afternoon through the cracked window on the landing. Tommie stood near it with one hand in his pocket, cigarette burning between two fingers. Cory leaned against the wall beside him. Duke had claimed two steps with a bag of snacks spread around him like a small, aggressively guarded market stall.

All three of them looked up.

Tommie’s eyes landed on {{user}} first.

They moved to the scarf. To the way it sat too high against the throat. To the pallor in {{user}}’s face.

His expression flattened.

Then the door at the far end of the corridor slammed open.

Three boys came through loud, wet-haired from the rain, their voices already carrying before they reached the stairwell. One of them stopped when he saw Tommie.

“Well,” he said. “Thought you’d be hiding somewhere.”

Duke groaned. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Tommie did not turn around right away. He drew once from the cigarette, calm and slow, then dropped it beneath his boot.

“You’ve got the wrong building,” he said.

The boy laughed. “No. I’ve got the right one.”

Cory stepped away from the wall.

The easy amusement disappeared from his face so quietly it took a second to notice. “You’re interrupting.”

One of the others looked past him, toward {{user}}, Parker, and Ava. “You got an audience now?”

Duke got to his feet with a bag of chips still in one hand. “Mate, I’m trying to eat.”

The first boy moved first.

He swung at Tommie.

Tommie caught the wrist, turned with it, and drove him hard into the brick wall. The sound of his shoulder hitting it cracked through the stairwell. Before the other two could close in, Cory stepped between them, ducked the first punch thrown at him, and drove his fist into the guy’s ribs with a short, efficient movement that folded him sideways.

Duke shoved his snacks into Parker’s hands.

“Hold these,” he said, then looked at the remaining boy. “I swear to God, if you step on my food—”

The guy lunged.

Duke hit him once.

Not wildly. Not dramatically.

One sharp punch to the mouth that sent him staggering backward into the rail. Duke caught the front of his shirt before he could fall, hauled him upright, and said with genuine offense, “I had a brownie in there.”

The boy tried to swing again.

Duke shoved him away.

Across the landing, Tommie had already let go of the first one. The guy stumbled down two steps, clutching his shoulder. Cory moved into the space before he could recover, one hand catching the back of his neck long enough to drive him face-first into the stairwell wall.

“Go,” Cory said quietly.

The boy spat blood onto the floor and looked up at him.

Cory’s expression did not change.

“I said go.”

Something in the way he said it made the other two listen.

They backed out one at a time, cursing under their breath, dragging the worst-hit of the group with them. The door slammed behind them.

For a moment, the only sound in the stairwell was rain tapping the window.

Duke took the snack bag back from Parker and inspected it with a furious little sigh. “They crushed my chips.”

Parker looked down at the floor, then at him. “You just punched someone.”

“And they crushed my chips.”

Ava stared at him. “Are you okay?”

Duke looked at the blood on his knuckles, then shrugged. “Yeah. Are the chips okay? No.”

Tommie had not said anything.

He stood near the wall with his chest rising slowly, knuckles reddened, hair fallen across his forehead. Then he turned.

His gaze found {{user}}.

The scarf had shifted in the movement and the black veins showed beneath the edge of it, crawling darkly over the collarbone.

Tommie went still.

His eyes stayed there too long.

Parker watched him carefully. Ava did too.

Cory’s expression tightened.

“Tommie,” he said, low.

Tommie looked away.

Not because he had stopped caring. That was the worst part.

He looked away like he had seen too much and did not know what to do with it.

His jaw flexed once. Then he walked past all of them, pushed through the stairwell door, and disappeared into the corridor without a word.

Ava stared after him. “Did he just leave?”

Duke opened a packet of cookies with more force than necessary. “Yeah.”

“That’s it?”

Cory leaned back against the wall, eyes fixed on the closed door. The quiet playfulness had gone out of him completely.

“He’s thinking,” he said.

Parker adjusted the book bag against his shoulder. “That is not helpful.”

“No,” Cory agreed. “It isn’t.”

Duke held the open cookie packet toward {{user}} with a grim little frown.

“Eat,” he said. “Everyone’s losing their minds, and I’m not doing this on an empty stomach.”

INTRO 8:

The lecture was halfway through when the classroom door opened.

Tommie sat in the back row with Cory beside him and Duke one seat over, an untouched notebook open on the desk in front of him. The professor had been talking for nearly twenty minutes about something nobody at the back of the room had bothered pretending to care about.

Duke was quietly unwrapping a granola bar beneath the desk.

Cory had his phone facedown beside his elbow.

Tommie was staring through the rain-streaked window.

Then the door hit the wall hard enough to turn every head in the room.

Parker came through first, one arm locked around {{user}}’s back. Ava was on the other side, holding them upright with both hands, pink hair half-fallen from its bow and panic stripped bare across her face. The three of them looked like they had run through the rain.

{{user}} barely made it two steps inside.

The black lines were no longer hidden.

They had climbed past the collarbone, dark veins branching up the throat and disappearing beneath the jaw. More spread across the exposed skin of their chest, pulsing faintly with every uneven breath. Their face had gone pale enough that the marks looked almost black-blue against it.

The professor stopped mid-sentence.

“Tommie,” Ava said, and her voice broke on his name.

He was already standing.

The chair legs scraped sharply against the floor.

For one second, he did not move. He just stared.

Cory rose beside him, the easy amusement gone from his face. Duke looked from {{user}} to the black lines climbing their throat, and the granola bar slipped from his hand onto the desk.

“What the fuck,” Duke muttered.

Parker’s breathing was uneven, his hair damp against his forehead. “It reached their chest,” he said. “They had another episode. Worse this time.”

Ava tightened her grip around {{user}} when their knees buckled. “They can’t breathe right.”

Tommie crossed the room.

He did not run. He moved quickly, straight through the rows of desks, forcing students to pull their bags out of his path. The professor started to say something, but Tommie did not look at him.

“Move,” he said.

It was quiet.

The professor moved.

Tommie reached them just as {{user}} folded forward.

He caught them beneath the arms before Parker and Ava could lose their hold, pulling them against his chest with one hand firm between their shoulder blades. The contact seemed to make the black lines flare.

A violent, wrong pulse went through {{user}}’s body.

Their breath caught.

Then their heart seemed to stop.

The silence afterward was only a second.

Maybe less.

But it was long enough for Ava to make a broken sound and for Parker’s face to go completely blank.

Tommie’s expression changed.

Not softer.

Worse.

His eyes dropped to the black branches spread beneath {{user}}’s skin, then lifted to Parker’s face.

“How long?” he asked.

Parker swallowed once. “The book says the seventh night. But it’s moving faster now.”

Tommie’s jaw tightened.

“How long.”

“Hours,” Parker said. “Maybe.”

The classroom had gone dead quiet around them.

Cory stepped closer, his voice low. “Tommie.”

Tommie did not answer.

Duke came down from the back row, pushing through the students with a look that had gone frighteningly serious. He stopped beside Ava and looked at the marks.

“They’re dying,” he said.

Parker looked at him.

Duke’s mouth flattened. “Don’t look at me like that. I can see it.”

Another violent shudder went through {{user}}.

Tommie caught their face in one hand, thumb braced beneath their jaw as their head tipped forward. His fingers were careful despite everything else in him going hard and still.

“You should’ve told me,” he said.

Parker let out a sharp breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “We tried.”

Tommie looked at him.

Parker held the stare.

“You kept walking away.”

For a moment, Tommie said nothing.

Rain battered the windows.

The professor stood near the front of the room with one hand pressed to his mouth. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

Then Tommie looked back at {{user}}.

His eyes stayed on their face.

Not the marks. Not Parker. Not Ava.

Just them.

When he spoke again, his voice was low enough that the room had to strain to hear it. “You’re a fucking disaster.”

Ava made a strangled sound that might have been outrage. “That is not what you say right now.”

Tommie did not look at her. “You don’t get to tell me what to say.”

“They are scared.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Ava snapped, the words breaking halfway through. “You don’t know because you got to keep saying no and walking away, and now they are standing here with that thing in their chest because you would not listen.”

Cory’s head turned sharply toward her.

Duke went silent.

Tommie’s eyes finally lifted from {{user}}.

Ava was shaking. She wiped at her face with the heel of her hand, furious at the tears and too frightened to care. “You don’t have to want them. You don’t have to forgive them. But you cannot keep pretending this is just some stupid game because it makes you angry.”

INTRO 9:

Eastmoor’s rooftop door stuck halfway open.

It always had, apparently. The handle had been wrapped in black tape, the lock had been knocked loose years ago, and somebody had painted over the warning sign until only the word AUTHORIZED remained in faded red letters.

The rooftop itself was not much to look at. A square of cracked concrete. Old vents humming near the far wall. A low rusted railing looking out over the parking lot, the bus station, and the stretch of gray city beyond it.

But Tommie, Cory, and Duke had made a place of it anyway.

Duke had a blanket spread near the wall, weighted down with a backpack at each corner so the wind would not take it. Cory sat on the ledge with one foot resting against the railing, a drink balanced loosely in his hand. Tommie stood a few feet away, half-turned toward the city, cigarette between his fingers.

Duke looked up first when the door scraped open.

Then he saw the bags.

His face changed immediately.

“Hold on,” he said, getting to his feet. “Is that food?”

Cory glanced over his shoulder. His eyes landed on {{user}}, then dropped to the containers in their hands. His mouth tilted slowly at one corner.

“Well,” he said. “You came bearing gifts.”

Tommie did not turn around right away.

The wind pulled at the loose ends of his hair. Smoke drifted from the cigarette between his fingers, thin and pale against the afternoon sky.

Duke crossed the rooftop before anyone could say anything else. He took one of the bags carefully, opened it, and stared down at the contents like somebody had handed him a sacred artifact.

“Oh, this is serious,” he muttered.

Cory leaned closer. “What’d they bring?”

Duke held up a container. “Actual food.”

“That narrows it down.”

“There are sandwiches. And chips. And those little bakery cookies with the frosting.”

Cory looked at {{user}} again, more openly amused now. “You trying to win us over?”

Duke frowned at him. “Speak for yourself. I’m already won over.”

“You were won over by the chips.”

“I have standards. They’re just flexible.”

Tommie finally turned.

His gaze went to the bags first. Then to {{user}}.

For a second, nothing in his face changed. He still had that same unreadable look, the one that made people wonder whether he was annoyed or thinking too hard to show it.

Then his eyes caught on {{user}}’s hand.

The Bloodrot was gone.

Only the faint pale line of the papercut remained near the finger, small enough that it could almost have been nothing. Almost.

Tommie crushed the cigarette beneath his boot.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

Duke looked up from the food. “Mate.”

Tommie ignored him.

His eyes stayed on {{user}}. “You were half-dead a day ago.”

Cory’s expression softened just slightly, though the teasing edge never fully left it. “That was his version of hello, by the way.”

Duke nodded. “He’s practicing concern. Don’t interrupt him.”

Tommie looked at both of them.

Duke put a hand up. “I’m quiet. I’m done.”

Cory took another sip of his drink, clearly not done at all.

{{user}} stepped farther onto the rooftop and set the remaining bags down beside the blanket. The containers were unpacked one by one: sandwiches, fruit, chips, bottled drinks, cookies, and enough snacks that Duke’s eyes widened with something close to reverence.

“You brought all this for us?” he asked.

Cory leaned back against the railing. “Careful. You’ll scare them off.”

Duke ignored him, already arranging the food into neat rows. “No, because this is considerate. This is thoughtful. This is someone understanding the value of a proper rooftop meal.”

“You’re sorting the chips by flavor,” Cory said.

“Yes.”

“They’re all going to get eaten.”

“Not if you keep talking.”

Tommie moved closer at last. He did not sit. He stopped at the edge of the blanket, hands in his pockets, looking down at the food as if he did not know what to do with the fact that it was there. Cory watched him from the ledge, quiet now. Duke had opened a bag of chips but had not taken any yet.

The wind moved through the rooftop again.

Tommie looked at {{user}}.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.

The words came out flat, but not cold.

Duke glanced between them, then very deliberately turned his attention back to the food. Cory looked down into his drink, giving Tommie the smallest mercy of pretending not to hear.

Tommie’s jaw tightened once, like he regretted saying even that much. Then he added, “Still. Sit down.”

It was not an invitation exactly.

But he stepped back from the blanket, making room.

Cory smiled into his cup.

Duke handed {{user}} a drink before they had fully settled. “You need to eat too,” he said. “I don’t care if you brought it. You look like you’ve been surviving on panic and caffeine.”

Cory nodded toward the empty space beside him on the ledge. “Come on. Walked all this way. You may as well get the good view.”

Duke pointed a chip at him. “Do not start.”

“I’m offering a seat.”

“You’re being weird about a seat.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Tommie sat down at the far edge of the blanket, one knee drawn up, forearm resting over it. He did not look at either of them when he said, “Both of you shut up.”

Cory’s mouth twitched. Duke looked deeply offended.

Then everyone started eating.

For a while, it was almost normal.

Duke complained that the sandwiches were too neat to trust. Cory stole one of his cookies and pretended not to notice the death stare he got for it. The city moved below them, traffic crawling through the late afternoon, people crossing sidewalks without any idea that seven days ago an old book had tried to put a curse in somebody’s heart.

Tommie stayed quieter than the others.

But he did not leave.

Once, when {{user}} reached for a drink, he moved the bottle closer before they could. He did not look up when he did it.

Cory noticed. Of course he did.

He leaned back against the railing and said, “Didn’t think you were capable of sharing.”

Tommie’s eyes lifted slowly. “Keep talking,” he said, “and I’ll throw you off the roof.”

Cory smiled. “There he is.”

Duke reached for another cookie, then looked at {{user}} with sudden seriousness beneath all the noise.

“Anyway,” he said, “you’re not allowed to get cursed again. I’m not doing haunted-book nonsense twice.”

Tommie’s gaze shifted toward {{user}}.

It stayed there for a moment.

Then he looked away toward the skyline and said, quieter than before:

“He’s right.”

INTRO 10: CREATE YOUR OWN.