The days following the surf competition hung heavy and grey, the sky a permanent, bruised purple. Tasia’s public accusation had poisoned the air. Whispers followed Frankie everywhere—in the grocery store, at the post office. A ghost in her own town, haunted by the stares and the gossip. Cheat. Fraud. Freak.

  But a deeper fear now took hold, a colder dread with no connection to high school drama. The image from the stakeout burned in their minds: the bound vagrant shoved into the dark mouth of the cave. Blackmane fed. He grew stronger. And his servants walked their streets.

  The Jetty Crew appeared everywhere. No longer just obnoxious bullies at the pier. They became sentinels. They stood on street corners, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses even on the greyest days. They drove past Frankie’s house at all hours, their car a low, rumbling threat. They watched. They waited. A pack of wolves circling, their master’s will a leash around their necks.

  Frankie and her friends maintained a high alert. Their conversations took place in hushed, paranoid tones. Every shadow looked like Jax. Every unexpected noise was a harbinger of doom.

  One evening, Ted closed up the library. His part-time job, a quiet gig, had become another source of anxiety. The towering shelves of books no longer offered comfort; they resembled tombstones, row on silent row. He remained the only one left in the building; the silence broken only by the soft hum of the fluorescent lights and the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of his own nervous heart.

  He locked the front doors and headed toward the back exit when a frantic movement in the alley outside the library’s side window caught his eye.

  Someone hid out there, in the shadows between the library and the building next door.

  Ted froze, his heart leaping into his throat. Them. It had to be. Jax. Come to finish the job. Come to deliver another of the Captain’s warnings.

  He ducked down behind a row of shelves, peering through the glass.

  Not Jax.

  A kid. A younger member of the Jetty Crew, a boy named Leo who couldn't have been more than sixteen. His face, illuminated by the faint security light in the alley, presented a mask of pure terror. Ashen, his skin a pasty, unhealthy grey. His hands trembled so hard he seemed to vibrate. And on his neck, just above the collar of his t-shirt, two small, dark, track-like marks stood out.

  The kid saw Ted looking, and his eyes went wide. He pressed himself back against the brick wall, as if trying to disappear into it. Then, with a look of desperate resolve, he darted to the back door and rattled the handle.

  Ted’s mind screamed at him to run. To call the police. To hide. A trap.

  But the look on the kid’s face was not menacing. A look of pure, animalistic fear. The fear of a mouse that just realized its place in a cage with a snake.

  Against his better judgment, Ted walked to the back door and unlocked it. He opened it just a crack. “What do you want?”

  “You have to listen to me,” Leo whispered, his voice a frantic, high-pitched squeak. He looked over his shoulder, up and down the dark alley, his eyes wide and darting. “Please. Let me in.”

  Ted hesitated for a heartbeat, then opened the door wider. Leo slipped inside, and Ted immediately locked the door behind him.

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  The kid was a wreck. Drenched in a cold sweat that smelled of fear. He could not stand still, pacing back and forth in the narrow hallway, his arms wrapped around himself.

  “They’re watching,” he whimpered. “They’re always watching.”

  “Who’s watching?” Ted asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “Jax. All of them.” Leo looked at Ted, his eyes pleading. “You guys were right to be digging. This is so much bigger than Jax. It’s him. The Captain.”

  The name, spoken aloud in the silent library, seemed to make the air grow colder.

  Leo talked, the words tumbling out in a panicked, disjointed rush. Turned a few days ago. Jax had offered him power, a place in the inner circle. Leo, desperate to belong, had accepted. He had not known the terms of the agreement. He described the cave, the constant, gnawing hunger, the cold settled deep in his bones, a cold no fire could warm. He spoke of Blackmane’s growing influence, a voice in his head getting louder every day, drowning out his thoughts.

  “He’s planning something,” Leo said, his voice cracking, tears welling in his eyes. “Something big. He’s not just trying to survive down there. He’s trying to get out. For good.”

  “How?” Ted asked, his fear momentarily forgotten, replaced by a reporter’s urgent need for information.

  “I don’t know all of it,” Leo sobbed, shaking his head. “He needs something. Something to break the curse that’s holding him there. Jax said… he said the Captain needs a key.”

  “A key?”

  “I don’t know what it means!” Leo insisted. “But he’s getting stronger. He’s turning more of us. Building an army. You have to…”

  He stopped.

  His head snapped toward the alley-facing window. His frantic, panicked energy vanished, replaced by a sudden, absolute stillness. A stillness of pure, mortal terror.

  Ted followed his gaze.

  Two figures stood in the alley, just outside the window. Bathed in the sickly yellow glow of the security light.

  Jax. And another, bigger member of the Jetty Crew.

  They did not move. They just stood there. Watching. Their faces were pale, predatory masks.

  Leo let out a small, whimpering sound, like a dying animal. “No,” he breathed. “No, please.”

  Ted grabbed Leo’s arm. “Get back. Away from the window.”

  But it was too late.

  With a sound of shattering glass, the window exploded inward. Jax moved, a blur of motion too fast to track. One moment, he stood outside. The next, he stood inside, in the hallway, surrounded by a shower of broken glass.

  Leo screamed, a high, thin shriek of terror. He tried to run.

  He did not even get two steps.

  Jax descended upon him. No fight. No struggle. With brutal, impossible speed, Jax's hands seized Leo's head. For a split second, Ted saw the pure, white terror in Leo's eyes, and then a violent twist. Just a sudden, sickening crunch of bone, a sound like stepping on a nest of dry twigs, wet and final.

  Leo’s headless body slumped to the ground, a puppet with its strings cut. Jax glared at the boy’s head in his heads. Leo’s eyes, wide with a final, silent surprise, stared ahead back, soulless.

  Ted could only stare, his mind refusing to process what he had just seen. The speed. The violence. The casual, brutal finality of it.

  Jax straightened up. He looked down at the body of his former crewmate with an expression of pure, cold indifference. The body dissolved into ashes, Leo's head included. Then he looked at Ted.

  A cruel, thin smile stretched his lips. His voice, when he spoke, was a low, chilling whisper, laced with that archaic, formal cadence that was not his own.

  “The Captain doesn’t like loose ends,” he said.

  Then, as silently as he had entered, he stepped back out through the shattered window and vanished into the darkness with his companion.

  Ted was left alone. The smell of ozone and burnt hair filled the air. He realized he hadn't taken a breath since the window exploded. His lungs burned, but he still couldn't breathe."

  The horrifying truth crashed down on him, heavier than any tombstone.

  This was not a game. This was not a mystery to be solved.

  This was a war.

  And anyone who tried to help them would be silenced. Permanently.