In Wednesday's vision, the air turned cold—unnaturally so.
Goody Addams stood directly before Wednesday, her expression carved from dread rather than flesh.
"He won't stop," Goody warned, her voice urgent, as if carried forward from the past. "Not until every one of us is dead."
She turned back.
"He's here."
The fog thickened, swallowing the ground, the trees—everything.
Then a figure emerged.
Joseph Crackstone stepped forward, his form bleeding out of the mist like a specter dragged from history. His eyes burned with fanatic certainty.
"There will be no escape," he said, his voice hollow and absolute. "Not for you."
Wednesday gasped.
Her eyes flew open—the vision releasing her all at once.
"Oh," Ethan said quietly. He was closer than she expected, looking down at her. "Did you see it? The truth behind Outreach Day. What it actually represents? What happened four hundred years ago."
Wednesday didn't answer right away.
She became aware of her position instead.
She was in Ethan's arms andThing stood on his shoulders.
Her body stiffened—barely noticeable—before she straightened, extracting herself with swift, efficient movements, as if collapsing into someone else's hold were an inconvenience rather than a vulnerability.
"Yes," she said evenly. "I saw it."
"Crackstone didn't build Jericho," Wednesday continued. "He purged it. Outreach Day isn't a celebration. It's a commemorative lie, constructed on the deaths of countless outcasts."
"That's the real history of Jericho," Ethan said. "Joseph Crackstone wasn't a pious pilgrim or a visionary."
"He was a psychopath."
If anything, he was the greatest psychopath in the entire story—responsible for the deaths of hundreds of outcasts, ordered with scripture in one hand and fire in the other.
"They turned a massacre into a festival," Wednesday said. "Costumes. Fudge. Smiling reenactments. A spectacle designed to make genocide feel quaint."
Her gaze drifted back toward the ruins of the meeting house, remembering the screams her vision had forced her to witness—outcasts burned alive for the crime of existing.
"Tradition," she concluded, "is just violence that's been sanitized by time."
"History is written by the winners," Ethan added quietly. "And in this case, Crackstone won. So the truth was buried."
History was imperial. It didn't concern itself with morality—only outcome. Jericho remembered Joseph Crackstone as its founder, not as the fanatic who ordered a massacre.
Because he won.
And when a man wins, history softens his crimes, polishes his name, and calls him a benefactor instead of what he truly was.
"That," Wednesday said, turning to face Ethan, her eyes sharp and unflinching, "is where I disagree."
She stepped forward, voice precise.
"History may be written by the victors," she continued, "but it isn't immutable. Lies survive only as long as no one challenges them."
A beat.
"And I find this one particularly offensive."
She looked back toward Jericho, toward the festival still celebrating a butcher.
"So let's correct the record."
Movement caught her eye.
Between the broken wooden beams of the meeting house, something shifted. From one of the charred gaps, a large eye opened—unblinking, inhuman, watching.
Wednesday stiffened.
She had seen that eye before.
Ethan followed her line of sight, his expression sharpening as he caught a glimpse of it through the broken wood.
"Oh," he muttered. "So he has been tailing us."
The eye lingered for a fraction of a second longer—cold, aware, calculating.
Then it vanished.
"Follow it," Wednesday said immediately.
She didn't wait for agreement. She took off toward the ruins, boots crunching over ash and debris. Ethan followed as she traced the path the creature had taken into the trees.
Footprints.
Large. Irregular. Inhuman.
Wednesday crouched, examining them closely as they cut through the dirt.
Then she stopped.
A few steps farther on, the tracks changed.
The clawed impressions softened. The stride shortened. The weight distribution shifted.
Human.
Wednesday straightened slowly.
"That monster is human," she said.
Wednesday turned slowly toward Ethan, her gaze narrowing with precision.
"And you said it's been following us," she added. "He has been following us. Which means you already know who it is."
Ethan didn't deny it. He only gave a small, knowing shrug.
"Yeah," he said. "If you want, I can tell you who it is."
Wednesday's expression hardened—not with curiosity, but with irritation.
"No," she said immediately. "I prefer to find out myself."
She stepped past him, eyes fixed on the trail where the human footprints disappeared into the woods.
"Answers given are never as satisfying as answers earned," she continued. "And confessions are unreliable. Evidence isn't."
Ethan watched her for a moment, then smiled faintly. "You really don't like shortcuts."
"I don't trust them," Wednesday replied. "They usually lead somewhere I didn't choose."
"And when I expose the monster," she added, "I want it to be because it couldn't hide anymore—not because someone handed me the truth."
Ethan let out a quiet breath, watching her disappear a few steps ahead into the trees.
"That's Wednesday for you," he said, glancing at the small hand perched on his shoulder. "Don't you agree, Thing?"
Thing didn't hesitate.
He nodded firmly.