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"You got dumped where by that faraway tree?"
Soren pushed down the questions crowding his head and asked.
Boyd gave a tired, bitter laugh and pointed toward the distant treeline. "Don't even ask. I crawled into the hole and got spat out inside the lighthouse. Walked the whole damn thing top to bottom. Not one useful clue."
Boyd exhaled hard.
"And then?"
Soren pressed.
"Figured if I couldn't find a way out, I might as well come back and try to find you again." Boyd gestured at the monster corpses scattered across the ground, voice still shaky. "But when I finally made it here, those things were acting possessed—packed in tight around the tree hole like they were waiting for something. I didn't dare get close. Just hid in the bushes and waited."
"Then, not long ago, they started dropping in waves. Like someone poisoned the whole damn pack."
Not long ago?
Soren looked down at the bodies. That would've been right when Nico hit the detonator and blew the altar to hell.
"Guess our earlier theory was right," he muttered.
These monsters were the townspeople who'd sacrificed their own children. Now that the ritual was shattered and the demon running the show was dead, they finally got to stay dead.
He glanced up at the distant tree. Who the hell had planted that thing out here in the first place?
Boyd was still rambling about his night. Soren looked at the deepening blood-red sky and cut him off.
"Monsters are handled for now. Let's get back to town and see what fresh hell's waiting."
---
Night had settled over the small town. Inside a two-story wooden house, Jim's family of five huddled together in the living room.
They'd only come out here for a road trip after their youngest son's accident—something to clear their heads. Instead they'd driven straight into this nightmare and couldn't leave.
Jim crept to the window, eased the curtain aside, and peered out.
Tonight was strangely quiet. The monsters that usually emerged from the forest at dusk and prowled the streets were nowhere to be seen.
He let out a slow breath, walked back to the couch, kissed his wife and kids, and told them to get some sleep. He'd keep watch.
Late into the night, a faint crack jolted him awake.
He looked toward the door. The carved stone talisman that had hung there since they arrived had split down the middle.
Jim's blood ran cold. Without that stone, he'd seen what happened to people when the monsters got inside—gutted, torn apart, screaming until their voices gave out.
"Wake up! They're coming in! Out the back door—now!"
He scrambled upstairs on all fours, pounding on doors. His wife and children woke in terror, barefoot, and followed him out into the street.
The road was empty. No monsters. Just a few neighbors who'd heard the noise and fled their own homes. They stared at each other in confusion. Some houses stayed dark and silent, doors and windows shut tight.
A flash of lightning split the sky, illuminating the entire town.
Everyone looked up.
A massive black shadow loomed above the rooftops—four thick, dark limbs anchored at the four corners of town like some colossal lid pressing down over everything.
Jim watched in horror as faint points of colored light began rising from his own body… and from everyone around him. The lights streamed upward, feeding into the shadow overhead.
The shadow swelled as it drank them in.
Soren, Nico, and Boyd had just stepped out of the forest when they saw it too.
"What the fuck is that thing?" Boyd dropped to his knees, clutching his head.
Soren stared at the shadow absorbing the light points. His eyes narrowed.
He felt no life from it. No energy signature. It was like a projection cast over the town—nothing solid, nothing alive.
He glanced at the two people beside him.
Light points were rising from Boyd. Nico's were the same, only hers burned orange. Even Soren felt a thin thread of his own drifting upward.
He didn't feel pain. No weakness. Just… nothing.
But as the lights kept leaving, Nico's excited expression from seeing the giant shadow slowly flattened into blank calm. Boyd's face went slack, fear draining away like it had never existed.
"It's eating emotions," Soren realized.
He remembered Nico's notes. She'd guessed the smiling monsters came out at night to herd people like cattle—not just to kill, but to feed on the fear they created.
This thing hanging over the town was the container that collected it all.
It had probably been up there the whole time. The yellow-robed demon had kept it on a leash, harvesting slowly so the town wouldn't break too fast. Now that its handler was dead, the thing was running on pure instinct—draining everything without limit.
Alessa appeared beside him in her blue dress. She looked up at the shadow, then pointed toward the center of town.
"There?"
Soren asked quietly.
She nodded.
Soren looked at Boyd and Nico, both staring upward with empty eyes. Then he blurred into motion, racing toward the heart of town.
People who'd fled their homes stood in the street like sleepwalkers, heads tilted back, lights streaming out of them. None reacted when Soren passed.
Their faces looked exactly like the smiling monsters that had surrounded him in the forest.
He stopped directly beneath the shadow and handed full control of the Silent Hill domain back to Alessa.
In an instant, a deeper, purer darkness than the one above exploded outward from him and Alessa, swallowing the street, the buildings, the sky itself.
A single weak point of light appeared in the air.
Ground, walls, and houses began peeling away like paper, drawn upward and dissolving into nothing.
Far off, an explosion cracked through the night.
Soren's mouth twitched.
When the full Silent Hill domain dropped, everything inside came out with it.
Including Madison—still furious after everything Alessa had put her through.