Billy's gone.
Ruby Buckley's world ended with him.
But Hawkins isn't done with her yet.
When strange deaths begin again, Ruby is pulled into the heart of the storm. Between shadowy nightmares, the town's newest outcast, and someone she was never s...
( songs for the chapter ) when it's cold i'd like to die // moby
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Ruby blinked her eyes open.
For a fraction of a second, there was nothing, just the dull throb behind her eyes, the kind that pulsed with her heartbeat, loud and disorienting. She swallowed, tried to focus past it.
And then she saw the ground.
The red came first.
Not bright, not alive, just that wrong, sickly hue that soaked into everything like a stain that would never come out. The warped boards beneath her feet bent inward, splintered and uneven, as though the house itself were breathing.
No.
Her chest tightened.
She was back.
Back inside Vecna's head. Inside the broken, bleeding version of the Creel house, where time didn't move right and nothing ever stayed dead.
A place she had been in three times too many.
Her breath hitched, shallow and quick, panic flaring sharp and immediate. She tried to step back-
And didn't move.
The realization came slowly. Too slowly.
Her feet weren't touching the ground.
Her stomach dropped.
Ruby swallowed, fear thick and metallic on her tongue, and forced herself to tilt her head upward.
The movement made her vision swim, dark spots blooming at the edges, but she pushed through it.
Vines.
Thick, pulsing, slick with something wet and alive, coiled beneath her arms, cinched tight around her wrists. They lifted her like a marionette, holding her weight with obscene ease. She could feel them pressing into her skin, biting, tightening every time she inhaled too deeply.
She whimpered before she could stop herself.
And then she felt him.
Vecna stood directly in front of her.
Too close.
His presence pressed in on her, heavy and suffocating, like the air itself had learned how to hate.
He moved slowly, always slowly, each step deliberate, savoring the space between them as it disappeared.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Her eyes watered as she lifted her head further, instinct screaming at her to pull away. She tried to lean back, tried to put distance between herself and his face, but there was something solid behind her, something unyielding, pinning her in place.
