The bike roared to life beneath him, familiar vibration grounding his thoughts. Toji pulled out onto the road, the café shrinking behind him, Tyler's words still crawling under his skin like static.
A presence watching him. Nightmares. The man in white.
Toji didn't believe in coincidence. Never had. Not after his childhood. Not after everything he'd survived.
He took the long way back—instinct more than choice—cutting through the back roads where the trees leaned too close and the shadows pooled thick and stubborn. The wind bit through his jacket, sharp enough to hurt, and he welcomed it. Pain kept you awake. Pain kept you honest.
Halfway down the road, the feeling hit.
That old pressure between the shoulder blades.
Not fear.
Awareness.
Toji slowed, eyes flicking to his mirrors. Empty road. No headlights. No movement in the tree line. Still, his grip tightened on the handlebars.
"Get it together," he muttered.
But the silence didn't lift.
It listened.
By the time the gates of Nevermore came into view, dusk had fully collapsed into night. The school stood the way it always did—looming, aloof, pretending it wasn't watching its students the same way a predator watches a herd.
Toji parked and killed the engine.
The quiet rushed in all at once.
He stayed seated for a moment longer than necessary, scanning the grounds. Nothing moved. No white figure. No teeth-filled smile carved into the dark.
Still—
His pulse hadn't slowed.
Inside, the dorm corridors were unusually subdued. Students were already holed up, preparing for the Poe Cup tomorrow. Costumes, strategies, rivalries simmering under forced calm.
Toji passed them without a word.
When he reached his room, he stopped short.
The door was ajar.
Not wide open.
Just enough.
His body reacted before his mind caught up—hand shifting, stance lowering, breath controlled. He nudged the door open with his foot.
Empty.
No disturbance. No sign of a struggle. Nothing missing.
Still wrong.
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, locking it this time. The room felt colder than it should've been, shadows stretching a little too far along the walls.
Toji sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands.
Tyler wasn't wrong.
Something had changed.
Whatever they'd killed in the forest hadn't ended there. It had echoed. Sent a signal. And now something older—something patient—was paying attention.
His jaw tightened.
"Fine," he murmured. "Look all you want."
Outside, unseen, the wind rattled the windows—not violently, not urgently.
Almost amused.
And somewhere far beyond the school grounds, something with too many teeth smiled in the dark, already counting down to tomorrow.
---
Sleep did not come easy.
When it did, it came wrong.
Toji dreamed of snow—thick, soundless, smothering everything it touched. He stood barefoot in it, the cold biting deep enough to hurt bone, yet he couldn't move. Every breath fogged the air, and with each exhale the world seemed to lean closer, as if listening.
Then the snow began to crunch.
Slow. Deliberate.
Not footsteps—chewing.
He didn't turn. He already knew.
A presence loomed behind him, tall enough to blot out what little light the dream allowed. He felt it before he saw it: pressure, hunger, attention sharpened to a blade.
A voice slid into his head, soft and wet.
You looked at me.
Toji woke with a sharp inhale, fingers digging into the mattress like it might disappear beneath him. His heart pounded hard enough to hurt. For a moment he didn't know where he was—only that the room felt watched.
He sat up slowly.
Nothing there.
The window was shut. Curtains still. Shadows unmoving.
Still… the air felt wrong. Charged. Like the seconds before a storm breaks.
He checked the clock.
3:17 a.m.
"Great," he muttered.
He swung his legs over the bed and stood, pacing once, twice, restless energy buzzing under his skin. Tyler's face flashed in his mind—not joking, not dramatic. Genuinely shaken.
It started after we killed the Wendigo.
Toji rubbed a hand over his face.
"Don't spiral," he told himself quietly. "Not now."
Tomorrow was the Poe Cup. Chaos, crowds, noise. If something was watching, that was the perfect cover.
The thought didn't comfort him.
Morning arrived gray and heavy, clouds pressing low over Nevermore like the sky itself was waiting. The campus buzzed with nervous excitement—students in half-finished costumes, rival teams eyeing one another like knives wrapped in smiles.
Toji moved through it all on autopilot.
He barely registered Xavier shoving a garment bag into his hands.
"You sure you won't reconsider the makeup?" Xavier asked, trying—and failing—not to grin.
Toji deadpanned. "If I come out looking like a haunted mime, I'm blaming you."
Xavier laughed, then stopped when he saw Toji's expression.
"…You good?"
Toji hesitated. Just a fraction too long.
"Yeah," he said. "Just didn't sleep."
Xavier studied him, then nodded. "If you start seeing clowns with too many teeth, that's when we worry."
Toji's stomach dropped.
"…What did you say?"
Xavier blinked. "It was a joke, man."
Toji forced a breath. "Right. Yeah. Funny."
He walked away before Xavier could ask anything else.
Across the quad, Enid stood near the steps, clutching her phone with both hands. Her eyes were red—not crying now, but recently. When she saw Toji, she froze, then lifted her head like she'd made a decision.
She crossed the distance fast.
"Hey," she said, voice soft but steady. "Can we talk? Like—really talk?"
Toji nodded. "Yeah. Of course."
They moved to the side, away from the others. For a moment neither spoke.
Then Enid said, barely above a whisper, "You told me the truth… about your mom. About everything."
He swallowed. "I didn't mean to dump that on you."
"I asked," she said quickly. "And I'm glad you told me. I just—" Her voice wavered. "I couldn't stop thinking about you being that young and carrying all of that alone."
Toji looked away. "I'm not alone now."
She watched him closely. "You don't believe that."
He didn't answer.
Enid hesitated, then reached out—not touching him, just close enough that he could pull away if he wanted.
"I had a nightmare too," she said. "Last night A man in White. Smiling wrong."
Toji's blood went cold.
"…Did he have too many teeth?"
Enid's breath caught.
"Yes."
They stood there, the noise of the campus fading into something distant and unreal.
Whatever was coming wasn't just after him.
It was circling.
And the Poe Cup—loud, theatrical, crowded—was about to give it exactly what it wanted.
An audience.
---
The bell rang.
Not loud—Nevermore's bells never were—but sharp enough to slice the moment clean in half.
Students poured across the quad in a rush of color and noise, laughter cracking the tension like thin glass. Costumes brushed past them. Masks smiled too wide. Feathers, sequins, painted faces. The world pretending it wasn't afraid.
Toji and Enid stayed where they were.
"Okay," Enid said, forcing a breath, voice trembling despite the smile she tried to wear. "Okay. So. That's… not great."
"No," Toji agreed. "It's really not."
She hugged her arms around herself. "I thought it was just stress. Poe Cup nerves. Then you said the teeth thing and—" She shook her head. "I don't believe in coincidence like that."
"Neither do I."
They stood there a second longer than was comfortable. Too much unsaid. Too much pressing at the edges.
Finally, Toji straightened. The stillness inside him—the thing Hester had once noticed, the calm that came before violence—settled into place.
"Listen to me," he said quietly. "If anything feels wrong today—anything—you don't brush it off. You come find me. Immediately."
Enid frowned. "What about Wednesday?"
Toji paused. He chose his words carefully.
"She can handle herself," he said. "But I'll keep an eye out."
That wasn't the full truth, and Enid knew it. She didn't argue anyway.
They split after that—Enid pulled away by friends, by obligations, by forced cheer. Toji watched her go, then turned toward the quad with a sense of grim clarity.
The campus looked different now.
Not dangerous—hunted.
He noticed the blind spots first. The spaces between buildings where sound died too fast. The shadows that didn't line up with the light. A man in white passed between two towers and vanished, though Toji knew damn well there was nowhere to turn.
His jaw tightened.
"Not today," he murmured.
The Poe Cup prep hall buzzed with manic energy. Edgar Allan Poe quotes plastered the walls. Ravens carved from black paper stared with judgmental eyes. Someone recited rules loudly near the podium, but Toji barely listened.
He felt it again.
That pressure.
Like fingers brushing the back of his thoughts.
You're louder now, the thing seemed to say.
Blood does that.
Toji stopped walking.
His reflection stared back at him from a polished glass case—dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, face too composed for someone his age. For half a second, the reflection smiled.
He didn't.
The smile vanished.
Good.
He exhaled slowly and kept moving.
Whatever this was—man, curse, echo, or hunger—it wasn't some half-forgotten ghost story. It was real. It had watched them kill the Wendigo. It had followed Tyler home. It had slipped into dreams and worn fear like perfume.
And it had chosen its timing perfectly.
A festival of masks. A day of theatrics. A night where screams would be applauded.
Toji's hand curled slowly into a fist.
"Big mistake," he thought, cold and certain.
Because monsters liked crowds.
But so did hunters.