Oliver’s hands rested on the steering wheel, fingers tapping lightly against the worn leather. The ’70 Dodge Charger hummed beneath him, the wide road stretching ahead like a sun-bleached ribbon dissolving into the hills. The air smelled faintly of thawed earth and distant blossoms, a quiet suggestion that winter had finally loosened its grip. Trees stood half-budded, branches etched with the first signs of green, like the world was stirring, but not yet awake. But Oliver’s mind was elsewhere, far beyond the road or the gentle rise and fall of the hills around him. His pale blue eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, glassy and unblinking, as if watching something long gone. He wasn’t really driving. Not here. Not to Providence Falls. He remembered almost nothing of it. A town pulled from behind a fogged mirror: soft voices, the sharp slap of a door, the way his mother had gripped his hand so tight it left little half-moons on his skin, the hurried leaving, and the cold air burning his cheeks. He had been only a child when they left—four, maybe five—and in the years since, the town had become an echo, lodged deep enough that he had learned not to listen. Now, twenty years later, the town called him back—not with words, but with a letter, stamped, official, cold. His father was dead. The house, the one he barely remembered, was now his. Oliver had every intention of making the visit as short as possible—get in, get the paperwork done, sell, and disappear before the past could sink its teeth into him. As the Charger crested a long, sloping hill, the familiar crack of weathered wood and faded paint caught his eye: Welcome to Providence Falls. The letters were crooked and peeling, the sign half-swallowed by vines. Behind it, half-concealed by trees, stood a rough wooden shed and an old, wiry man in denim overalls. And, in the doorway, a deer carcass hung by its hind legs, swaying slightly in the breeze. The skin had been stripped clean—its muscles raw and gleaming, tendons stretched like cords, ribs jutting sharp through the red mess of exposed organs. Flies buzzed thick around the open chest cavity. Its eyes were still—glassy and lifeless. Staring at nothing. The man’s hands were red to the elbows. One held a boning knife, the other gripped the carcass. He looked up as the Charger passed, sharp eyes meeting Oliver’s through the windshield. Just for a second. But that was enough.