The city had only just begun to believe it could finally sleep again—when morning tore it apart like a scream in a dark room.

First came the siren. Then the news. Two children—a brother and sister—vanished from their own home. Their nanny found dead, mutilated, as if someone had tried to carve the evil right out of her skin.

Within half an hour, the place was crawling with detectives: Karl, Tommy, Sam, and Anna. Outside, the crowd thickened like a hive stirred with a stick—neighbors, reporters, gawkers. The peaceful morning already smelled of ash and dread.

Anna and Sam arrived first. The moment they stepped from the car, flashbulbs exploded around them. Cameras thrust forward, microphones jabbed hard enough to bruise. Voices swarmed:

"Detective! Is it the Heart-Eater again? Or that freak, Gatto?"

"How many more before you actually do something?"

"Two kids! Two kids! What are you waiting for?"

Someone yanked Anna's hair—hard, just to see her flinch. For a heartbeat she was ready to hit back, but Sam touched her shoulder lightly, a small shake of his head.

"Not now," he muttered. "Let them choke on their own noise first."

The house greeted them with silence—not the kind that follows sleep, but the one that lies dead and waiting. The air was metal-heavy, laced with something sour. Blood and disinfectant. A single bootprint smeared down the stairs, bleeding slowly into the floorboards.

"Tell me this isn't that bitch Cassie again," Anna hissed, tugging off her gloves to pull on a fresh pair. Anger was her armor; if she didn't wear it, she'd burn.

Sam glanced over the crime scene photos scattered on the table. "Maybe she hired a psychic this time. Sees it all before it happens." His voice tried for humor, but it came out hollow.

Anna let out a low, humorless laugh. "Nah. More likely she's staging it herself. Gives her great material for those goddamn articles. Selling horror while we bury the bodies."

He wanted to argue, but couldn't. Something twisted inside his chest—a sick suspicion that she might be right. That sometimes evil isn't a monster with a knife, but a journalist with a pen.

"Cassie would piss herself before picking up a blade," he said finally, though it sounded like he was talking to himself.

They didn't speak after that. From deeper in the house came a low hum—voices, plastic crinkling, the soft shuffle of forensic work. Liyah was crouched over something delicate, her gloves glossy under the lamplight, her focus unbreakable.

"Please tell me you've got something," Sam said. It was supposed to sound casual. It didn't.

Liyah looked up. Her eyes were exhausted, but alive—bright in the way only eyes get when they've found a thread worth pulling.

"Fortune might've decided to stop spitting in your faces," she said. "Take a look."

She held up a small plastic evidence bag. At first, there seemed to be nothing inside. Then Anna leaned closer. A hair. One fine, coiled strand. Black.

"A hair?" Sam frowned. Cold fingers of unease crept between his shoulder blades.

"Yeah," Liyah said softly. "Not just dark—textured. Thick, springy. We'll get DNA, but here's the strange part: we found it on the nanny's neck. Like someone leaned over her… and watched her die."

No one spoke. Outside, a reporter's camera clicked—a sharp sound that, for one awful second, felt too much like a knife finding flesh.

Sam stood with his jaw tight, thumb scraping over the rough stubble on his chin. The words came out bitter and dry, like medicine he didn't want to swallow.

"Then you're saying the bastard looked her dead in the eyes while he cut?"

Liyah hesitated, the photograph trembling slightly in her gloved hand.

"Yes," she said quietly. "Her eyes were… removed."

The sound of her voice was thin, brittle—like a cracked window in a cold wind.

Anna stepped closer, leaned over the photo—then jerked back, a wave of nausea rising hard and fast. The woman in the picture didn't look human anymore. She looked like a torn rag doll someone had tried to stitch back together with rusted wire. The lips were split into something that only resembled a smile, the kind born not from joy but from pain stalking its own echo.

"Jesus Christ…" Anna whispered, turning away sharply. "Gato? Tell me that psycho didn't crawl back out again."

Liyah shook her head slowly.

"The style fits, but no—this isn't him. Gato leaves chaos. Flesh, blood, terror—he paints with them. But this... it's too deliberate. Too clean. Feels ritualistic."

Sam frowned, his disbelief wearing thin.

"Ritual? In Pennsylvania? You're serious?"

"Yeah," Liyah murmured, lowering her voice instinctively, as if someone was listening from behind the walls. "Back when I interned in Texas—we studied a case. Cult stuff. They cut out the victims' eyes, said they were 'the windows of the soul.' Thought spilling blood into the earth kept the things beyond the line—whatever the hell they were—pleased."

A cold shiver rolled down Sam's spine. The air in the house seemed heavier now—like breathing through wet cloth.

"Perfect," he muttered. "So it's not enough we've got maniacs running loose. Now we've got devil worshippers too. Other cities get rock concerts—we get guided tours of Hell."

Anna didn't answer. Her gaze had landed on a photo perched crookedly on the dresser. She stepped closer, slow and careful, as if one loud breath could break the world. Two children: a boy and a girl. Both laughing, one of those small, clean laughs that only ever belong to children. The girl's dimple caught a beam of light. In her hand, a pink teddy bear keychain—faded from love and time.

Anna picked up the frame. The faintest scent of vanilla came off the wood. Summer. Ice cream. The quiet warmth of a life that still felt safe. She squeezed the frame until the glass gave a soft, reluctant crack.

"When I find the bastard who did this," she said, eyes still on the photograph, "I'll put a bullet in his skull. No trial. No mercy."

Sam watched her. There was something in her stare now—an emptiness that looked back. He'd seen it before, in morgues, in mirrors after long nights. The kind of stare that belongs to the moment before a soul snaps.

"Maybe it's a good thing we've got those two in town," he said quietly. "Gato. The Heart-Eater. They don't let this kind of filth breathe for long."

Anna spun toward him, anger sharp and alive.

"Really, Sam? You think having a pair of lunatics carving their kind of justice is what saves us? Look around. The bodies haven't stopped. The only difference now is the headlines bleed before the victims do."

He hovered on silence for a beat, shoulders tensing. Then he half-smiled—a tired, cornered thing.

"Maybe they have stopped. A little." A shrug. "Hell, maybe I just need to believe in something that bites back."

Liyah rubbed her hands together, uneasy.

"Guys… maybe don't go there. Let's just focus on the case, okay? Leave the morality talk for someone who sleeps at night."

Anna took a slow step toward Sam, close enough for him to feel the tension humming off her.

"You'd really justify murder, huh? As long as they only kill the 'bad guys'?"

Sam didn't meet her eyes. His gaze drifted to the children in the photo instead.

"Maybe," he said finally, voice low, almost tender. "Or maybe I'm just tired of seeing the worst people live longer than the innocent ones. Whoever did this doesn't deserve death. They deserve to feel everything their victims felt. Second by second. Breath by breath."

The room held quiet for a long, terrible moment.

Then, somewhere outside, another camera flash cracked the air—

a single white pulse that sounded like a scream trying to escape the light.

Karl showed up fifteen minutes later, his coat damp from the drizzle that had started to slick the street. He had that look again—the one that said he'd already seen too much of the world and none of it had impressed him. Tommy trailed behind, talking too loud and moving too fast, the way younger detectives do when they're trying to prove they belong somewhere real.

"Scene cleared for you?" Karl asked, stepping across the threshold. His voice was low, steady, a brick of sound.

"Yeah," Sam said. "If by cleared you mean contaminated by every media outlet in the damn state."

Karl's gaze swept the room. He wasn't really looking at the blood or the body. He was measuring the silence, the small wrongnesses—the tiny notes off-key that tell a story photos never catch.

"Where?" he asked Liyah.

"Living room," she said, leading them back down the narrow hallway. The house seemed to shrink around them. The wallpaper was the color of old tea and something in it smelled faintly of mold, like forgotten prayers.

When they reached the living room, the air shifted. It wasn't temperature—it was pressure. Karl felt it in his ribs, like the house itself was holding its breath.

The blood had been scrubbed—or tried to be. But you can't wash away the geometry of violence. The sun streaming through the blinds caught faint streaks where cleaning fluid had dried, pale traces of horror that still clung to the wall.

Tommy froze halfway in. "What the hell is that?"

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