The following evening, the camp house felt strangely calm. Dinner had ended, the dishes were piled in the sink, and the living room had turned into chaos. Delilah was making Sloane try a face mask and a karaoke song at the same time, and Riku stood in the kitchen washing dishes with his sleeves pushed up, quietly humming to himself.

Théo stepped out onto the porch with his sketchbook under his arm and stopped at the railing, looking out at the dark forest. The moon hung over the lake, huge and bright. He turned when he heard {{user}} come out behind him.

"I want to walk," he said. "Only for a while. I want to know what this forest feels like at night. I cannot draw something I have not felt."

{{user}} wanted to come along, and Théo only shrugged, as if he had expected it. "Fine. Bring a jacket."

They told the others they would be back soon. Delilah screamed a goodbye through a face mask, Sloane waved without moving her face, and Riku appeared at the kitchen door with a dish towel in his hands, his smile gentle. "Do not go too far. Be careful." His amber eyes lingered on {{user}} a little longer than on Théo before he turned back to the sink.

The path behind the house led down toward the lake, a narrow dirt trail winding between tall pines. The moon painted silver lines across the ground, and their shoes crunched softly on dry needles. Théo walked slowly with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the branches.

"I never sleep well in new places," he said after a while. "Drawing helps. Quiet helps. Dogs help the most, but there are none here."

"There were paw prints near the shed this morning," he added after a pause. "If there is a stray dog out here, I am adopting it."

He fell quiet again, then spoke without looking at {{user}}. "Sloane says I am boring. She is not wrong. But I like hearing her say it. Do not tell her."

A little later he asked, in the same thoughtful tone, "Have you noticed Riku always knows where everyone is standing? He is good at noticing people. It is almost unsettling."

He did not wait for an answer. The trail opened onto the lake, a wide black mirror ringed by reeds and pale stones. The moon floated on the water, and the air smelled of cold mud and pine. Théo lifted his sketchbook and began to draw at once, his pencil whispering across the page.

"Beautiful," he murmured. "Too beautiful. Nothing is this quiet without a reason."

He lowered his flashlight to check the shoreline, and the beam slid over the reeds, over a patch of flattened grass, and over a boot.

Théo stopped speaking.

The flashlight beam climbed slowly. A leg. A hiking jacket. A hand lying open in the pebbles. A body lay half in the reeds and half on the shore, face turned toward the moon, eyes wide and glassy. It was a stranger, someone neither of them recognized. On the side of the neck, small and perfectly round, was a tiny red mark.

Théo's pencil dropped from his hand.

For a long moment neither of them moved. The only sounds were the lake lapping against the stones and Théo's breath turning shallow and quick. His usual cold calm cracked. He grabbed {{user}}'s sleeve hard, knuckles white, his voice low and shaking.

"Do not step closer. Do not touch anything."

He swallowed. His eyes darted along the shoreline, the trees, the black water, trying to reason through it.

"We need to think. The others are at the house. We need to, we have to..." He trailed off, staring at the red mark. His fingers tightened on the fabric. "{{user}}. What do we do?"

It was past midnight when Théo and {{user}} burst into the living room. Delilah was halfway through a laugh when she saw their faces, and the laugh died in her throat.

They told everything. The trail, the lake, the reeds, the boot, the stranger lying on the shore, the small red mark on his neck. Sloane's face drained under her makeup. "Stop. That is not funny. You are messing with us."

"Look at him," Riku said quietly, nodding toward Théo. Théo sat stiff on the edge of the couch, his hands trembling in his lap, his sketchbook forgotten on the floor. Sloane looked and stopped talking.

"Where exactly?" Riku asked. His voice was calm and soft, as if he were talking to a frightened animal. When Théo told him, he nodded. "Then we do not go out there tonight. We call the police at first light."

"I want to go home," Théo said, and for once his voice was small. "I want to leave. Right now. Tonight."

"Okay, wait, wait, wait." Delilah jumped up and spread her arms, wide-eyed but sparkling in a way that did not fit the room. "Think about it! We are living in a horror movie! A real one! Legends, a killer, a mystery! This is going to be the craziest, most unforgettable trip of our lives! If we leave now, we miss everything!"

"A man is dead, Delilah," Théo said.

"And we are going to figure out what happened!" She turned to the others, pleading. "Come on. All of us together. What could happen?"

Sloane hesitated, clutching a pillow. "I hate it, but I am not going home alone." Her gaze slid toward Riku.

"If Théo wants to leave, we leave," Riku said gently, resting his hand on Théo's shoulder. "But it is dark, the road is long, and everyone is tired. We can decide again at sunrise." His eyes moved to {{user}}, asking quietly for agreement.

It was decided like that, in a tired hush. Théo went to his room alone.

He did not sleep. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, hearing every creak of the old house, every sigh of wind. He locked the door twice. He checked the window. He listened to Sloane's muffled laughter fade and Delilah's footsteps go quiet. The wooden walls ticked and settled. Somewhere deep in the night, as gray light began to touch the curtains, exhaustion finally pulled him under.

The morning came bright and cold.

Delilah had been up for an hour, banging pots in the kitchen and trying to cook pancakes, which had turned into something closer to charcoal discs. Sloane sat at the counter in a fluffy robe, scowling at her phone. Riku stood by the window with a mug of coffee, quiet and calm, watching the pines.

A door creaked down the hall.

Théo shuffled into the living room slowly, pale as paper, dark circles under his light eyes, one hand pressed to the side of his neck. He winced with each step.

"Good morning, sleepyhead!" Delilah chirped from the kitchen. "Did you dream of dogs?"

"My neck hurts," Théo muttered. "I slept wrong."

Sloane glanced up from her phone, ready with a jab. Then she froze, and her mouth fell open. "Théo. What is that?"

"What is what?"

"On your neck."

He lowered his hand. The room fell dead silent.

On the side of his neck, small and neat and perfectly round, sat a tiny red mark. It looked like someone had pressed a tiny stamp into his skin.

Delilah dropped the spatula. The pancake smoke curled up unnoticed. Her usual grin vanished completely, and she whispered, "That is just a bruise. Right? That is a bruise."

"It was not there yesterday," Sloane said, her voice thin. She was pressed against the counter, hands over her mouth.

Riku set his mug down and crossed the room in a few calm steps, stopping in front of Théo. His amber eyes studied the mark, and his voice dropped soft and steady. "Let me see."

Théo's hand shook. He lifted it to his neck again and touched the red circle, and his fingers came away trembling. He turned his tired eyes to {{user}}, searching for a lie that would make everything normal.

"Tell me it is just a bruise."

The police arrived before noon with a detective in a gray coat and two officers carrying radios and flashlights. They searched the lake path. They searched the reeds, the shoreline and every inch of the forest around the cabin. They checked the house. They photographed Théo's neck, and the detective frowned at it for a long time.

They found nothing. No body, no blood, no boot print, no drag marks. Only a patch of flattened reeds by the water that could have been made by anything.

"Campers, October, a lot of scary stories," the detective said at last, closing his notebook with a tired sigh. "It happens every year. People hear things, see things." He glanced at Théo's neck. "Probably an allergic reaction. Call me if anything else happens." He placed a card on the table and walked out with the officers, and the cabin door clicked shut behind them.

Nobody believed them. Théo stared at the card, jaw tight and eyes cold. "I saw a dead man," he said. "{{user}} saw him too."

"I believe you," Delilah said softly. She sat on the edge of the couch for the first time since the trip began, her hands folded in her lap. She stayed like that for almost an hour. Then she slapped her cheeks lightly, stood up, and forced the old spark back into her voice. "Okay! We cannot sit in here all day. Tonight we reclaim the night! Marshmallows by the fire, the real campfire, with Sloane and me!"

"Why me?" Sloane groaned, but she was already pulling on her coat. "Fine. But I am not holding the stick."

By sunset Delilah and Sloane had gone out to the fire pit with blankets, a bag of marshmallows and a thermos of hot chocolate. They told the others to join them once they were ready. Théo packed his sketchbook in his room, muttering that he would come only to keep an eye on them. Riku stood in the hallway beside {{user}}, tying a scarf around his neck, calm and quiet.

"I will get a sweater," he said with a gentle smile. "Wait for me."

He disappeared up the stairs. The house settled into silence. Minutes passed. Four, maybe five, though {{user}} could not be sure. The clock ticked in the hallway. The wind pressed softly against the windows. Then footsteps came down the stairs again, unhurried, and Riku reappeared in a dark sweater, adjusting his sleeves. "Ready?"

A scream split the evening.

It was Sloane. The scream was high, raw and endless, and it came from the front of the house. A second later the front door slammed open so hard it hit the wall. Sloane stumbled in, her face wet, her hair wild, and Delilah staggered in behind her with marshmallows spilling from her trembling hands.

"He is dead!" Sloane sobbed, grabbing the nearest person. "He is dead, he is dead, he is DEAD!"

"Who?" Théo rushed from the hallway, pale and sharp. "Who is dead?"

"The detective." Delilah's voice cracked. Her eyes were wide and blank. "He was sitting next to the fire pit. I thought he was sleeping. I said hello. He did not move." She swallowed hard. "His flashlight was still on."

Théo shoved past them and looked out the door. {{user}} followed. Beside the cold fire pit lay the detective in his gray coat, collapsed against a log with his notebook open in the dirt. Marshmallows lay scattered around him like pale stones. His head had fallen to one side, and on the side of his neck sat a tiny round red mark.

"Nobody saw him come back," Delilah whispered. "He said it was a prank. He said it was nothing."

Théo gripped the doorframe, knuckles white. "Call someone. Now."

Riku stepped to Sloane's side and wrapped a steady arm around her shaking shoulders. "Breathe," he said softly. "Breathe, Sloane. We are here." Over her head, his gaze found {{user}}, calm and warm, and he asked the question as if it were nothing at all.

"What do we do now?"

By morning the camp house no longer felt like a vacation. It felt like a cage.

The living room was gray and silent. Sloane sat curled on the couch in a blanket, her makeup untouched for the first time since the trip began. Théo stood by the window with his arms crossed, jaw tight, his hand drifting again and again to the mark on his neck. Riku leaned against the wall with a cup of tea he had not touched.

"We leave today," Théo said. "Now. This place is not safe."

"I have been saying that for two days," Sloane said hoarsely. "I want to go home. I want my own bed. I want my mom."

"It is the sensible choice," Riku said gently. "Leaving is wise."

"No." Delilah stood in the middle of the room with her fists clenched. Her eyes were red but stubborn, and her voice trembled. "If we run now, the killer wins. We came here to have fun, and I am not going to let some creep in a mask ruin it. We stay. We find out who is doing this."

"A man is dead, Delilah!" Sloane snapped. "Two men!"

"Then we do it together!"

"Delilah." Théo's voice cut through, and it was not cold. It was tired and quiet. "This is not a game."

"It is not a game, it is a mystery, and..."

"Delilah." He crossed the room and stopped in front of her, and his sharp eyes softened. "I am scared. Please."

The room went still. Delilah looked up at him, at the pale tired face, at the small red circle on his neck, and her fists loosened. Her lip wobbled. She stared at him for a long moment, then dropped her gaze.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. We go."

They packed in silence. Duffel bags, suitcases, Théo's sketchbook, Delilah's speaker, Sloane's cosmetics bag. By the time the sun began to sink, orange light was spilling over the lake and the cars waited at the end of the gravel road with their trunks open. The wind had grown cold, and the pines creaked.

"Last bags," Riku said, wiping his hands. "I will get them from the porch. Stay close to each other."

He walked back toward the house, and the group worked in silence around the cars. Delilah closed a trunk with a thud. Sloane clutched her bag to her chest, shivering. Théo was checking the backseat when the porch lanterns, all of them, flickered at the same time and died.

Everyone went still.

At the edge of the treeline, where the gravel met the dark, someone was standing.

It was a tall figure in a black coat, perfectly motionless. Its face was hidden behind a smooth pale mask with dark hollow eyes, and there was no expression on it at all. The mask caught the dying light and turned it a dull silver. For a heartbeat there was no sound. Then, slowly, the figure began to hum, the same bent and rising sound from the night around the fire.

"No," Sloane breathed. "No, no, no..." Her scream tore through the clearing.

The figure moved fast, much faster than anything that tall should. Delilah dropped her keys. Théo stepped forward without thinking, putting himself in front of {{user}} and the girls, his hand lifted. "Get back," he said, his voice cracking. "Everyone get back."

The figure's gloved hand closed on his shoulder. The mark on his neck seemed to burn red in the twilight. Théo twisted, shoved {{user}} hard out of reach, and the masked figure dragged him backward toward the dark trees. He fought. His hand clawed at the gravel. His sketchbook fell open in the dirt, a half-drawn lake glowing on the page. He reached for {{user}} once, his light eyes wide and terrified.

Then the dark closed over him.

There was a sound, a short, awful one. Then nothing at all. The humming faded into the trees.

When the figure stepped back into the light, it carried nothing. The pale mask turned slowly toward {{user}} and tilted, as if studying {{obj}}. It stayed there for a long breath. Then it walked backward into the pines and was gone.

Sloane screamed Théo's name over and over. Delilah dropped to her knees on the gravel, her hands over her mouth, shaking silently. A few steps away, in the dirt, lay Théo's open sketchbook, and beyond it, still and quiet at the edge of the gravel, lay Théo himself. The tiny round mark on his neck was the only color left in his face.

Footsteps crunched behind {{user}}. Riku ran across the gravel, breathing steadily, a bag still in his hand. He dropped it and caught {{user}}'s shoulders, his amber eyes calm and warm and fixed on {{user}} alone.

"I am here," he said softly. "Look at me, {{user}}. Breathe."