They left the hunting lodge before dawn.
Jakob clung to Stanley’s back as they rode out on a stolen motorcycle, engine muffled with cloth to keep from drawing attention. The forest swallowed their path. Cold air sliced their faces. Orla didn’t look back once. Whatever had followed them through the trees—whatever Clara had become—it was no longer bound to their past.
It was hunting them now.
Sasha said nothing the entire ride. Her silence was a storm waiting to break. She rode behind Orla, eyes locked ahead, lips pressed thin. Whatever unspoken line had broken between them wasn’t going to heal soon.
By nightfall, they reached the outskirts of a forgotten town—a graveyard of crumbling buildings and boarded windows, wrapped in silence so thick it made Orla’s skin crawl. They found a half-
