The rain hadn’t stopped for three days.

It poured over the city like a slow funeral march, sliding down the tall courthouse windows in streaks of gray. Outside, umbrellas moved like insects along the steps. Inside, the air was heavy, charged with the kind of silence that falls right before lightning strikes.

At the defendant’s table sat Ethan Carter, twenty years old, hands cuffed in front of him. His wrists bore the red dents of restraint. His eyes — once green and full of light — were now dull, bruised by sleepless nights and betrayal deeper than bone.

Across from him, Madison Lane sat stiffly, face unreadable. Her long blond hair was perfectly brushed, her blouse wrinkle-free — as though she were at a job interview, not testifying in a murder trial.

To her left sat Logan Myers, legs crossed, smiling slightly. As if the trial were beneath him. As if he had already moved on.

Jason Reed wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. He kept his head down, hands folded tight in his lap, his foot bouncing under the table.

Dylan Brooks sat furthest from the rest, stone-faced. But Ethan saw the twitch in his jaw. The silent war inside him.

They were once inseparable. Five shadows always cast together — partying, studying, surviving college life.

And now, here they were.

Four of them condemning the fifth.

The courtroom doors creaked open as the judge entered. A man in his late sixties, sharp eyes behind old glasses, worn down by decades of disappointment.

“All rise.”

The jury was already seated. Twelve faces Ethan hadn’t looked at once since the trial began. It didn’t matter. Their minds had been made up long before the opening statement.

The defense barely tried.

No witness. No testimony. Ethan had refused to speak.

“Why won’t you fight back?” his lawyer had begged him just the day before. “They’re railroading you.”

But Ethan knew the truth wouldn’t save him. Not when they had already decided to survive by turning on him. If he screamed, it would sound like guilt. If he cried, it would smell like blood.

So he remained silent.

The judge’s voice broke through the courtroom like a final nail in a coffin.

“Ethan Carter, you are hereby sentenced to ten years in state prison for the murder of Benjamin Walker.”

Thunder cracked somewhere far beyond the stone walls.

No one spoke. No one wept.

Ethan turned his head — slowly, deliberately — and looked at his former friends.

And they looked away.

All except one.

Madison met his gaze. Just for a second. Just long enough to see the question buried in his eyes:

Why?

She blinked, and then turned her head, lips tight. The kind of guilt that looks too much like pride.

Outside the courthouse, Logan lit a cigarette and joked with a local news crew.

“I always said that kid was off,” he laughed, hands shoved in his pockets. “You never really know someone, do you?”

Dylan leaned against a railing and wept quietly into his hands.

Jason walked straight down the steps without speaking a word.

And Madison?

She watched the prison van pull away through the fogged-up window of her parked car. The lights blurred in the rain. She started the engine, hands trembling, and whispered under her breath:

“He’ll never come back.”

But deep down, she wasn’t sure if that was hope…

or fear.

Inside the prison van, Ethan sat in silence, staring forward.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t rage.

But he remembered everything.

The circle. The blood. The silence of the night Ben Walker died.

And most of all…

The way they had turned on him like wolves sensing weakness.

He closed his eyes, letting the rain’s rhythm pound through the steel roof.

Ten years.

Ten years later, that curse would come collecting.

One by one.

...****************...

The sky above Kingstown was a slate gray canvas, weeping rain over the city. The storm hadn’t let up since the day Ethan Carter walked free — or vanished, depending on who you asked. The streets pulsed with cold and rumor. Something unspoken had returned. Something that had waited in the shadows for ten long years.

Jason Reed never saw it coming.

They found him at dawn — sprawled like a broken doll behind the old performing arts building of the university, his limbs stiff and spread in a ritualistic pose. His eyes, once sharp and full of smug confidence, now stared blankly at the sky. Around his body, six flickering candles sat half-melted into the concrete, placed at precise points around a crude blood-drawn circle.

Inside that circle, a message screamed in silence.

"Et tu, Judas?"

It wasn’t just a murder.

It was a calling card.

A judgment.

“Victim’s name is Jason Reed,” Officer Marris said, scanning her tablet. “Thirty, marketing director. Former Kingstown student.”

Detective Marcus Hale’s expression hardened. “What year?”

“Ten years ago. Graduated the same year as—”

“Ethan Carter,” Hale finished for her, his voice dropping like gravel.

Marris looked up. “You remember the case?”

“Everyone remembers that case,” Hale said. “The ritual killing of Benjamin Walker. The one with the salt circle, the blood symbols, the candle staging. The kid who got ten years.”

“Carter was released last month. No forwarding address. No contacts. Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Hale's brow furrowed. “Someone always leaves a trace.”

“Not him,” she said. “It’s like he disappeared the moment he stepped out.”

Hale knelt back down beside the body, staring at the flickering candles around Jason’s corpse. Everything about the scene was hauntingly familiar. Too familiar.

But it was too perfect. Too clean.

“Maybe it’s not Ethan,” Marris offered quietly.

“Maybe,” Hale muttered, standing up. “Or maybe someone wants us to think it is.”

He turned slowly, eyes narrowing at the empty shadows between the buildings.

There was no evidence Ethan had been there. No fingerprints. No CCTV. No sightings.

And yet…

Somewhere, a silence was watching them.

Across town, Madison Lane sat frozen on her couch, the news blaring through her phone speaker.

“Breaking update: Local businessman Jason Reed was found dead early this morning on the campus of Kingstown University. Sources confirm a ritualistic crime scene and note connections to the infamous Carter case from ten years ago—”

Madison turned the phone face-down, breath caught in her chest.

She hadn’t seen Ethan in years — not since the day they watched him taken away. She had told herself it was over. That prison had changed him. That time had buried the truth.

But the truth had claws. And it was digging itself out of the past.

Meanwhile, in a motel on the edge of the city, a figure sat in darkness.

The only light came from a flickering candle and the soft hiss of a cassette recorder spinning to life.

“Day 1. One down.”

The voice was calm. Male. Cold.

“The blood has returned to the circle. The betrayers will fall. Justice is balance.”

He clicked the recorder off and leaned forward, revealing a faded photograph taped to the wall: five young faces smiling in front of the college dorms.

A red “X” now slashed over Jason’s.

Four more remained.

...****************...

The wind whispered through the cracked windows of Madison Lane’s apartment, tugging at the edges of an old, half-curtained photo on her wall — a photo she hadn’t dared look at in years. Her fingers tightened around the phone in her hand. Still no response.

She had tried calling Dylan, Logan--three times already. Nothing.

It wasn’t like them to go dark. Not after what just happened.

The news hadn’t said much — just enough to freeze her blood.

Jason Reed, dead. Ritual killing. Candles. Circle.

Madison stared out into the rain-soaked street below. The city looked blurry, distant. Her reflection in the glass — pale, anxious — stared back at her like a stranger.

She turned and opened her old keepsake box, the one she had sworn to never touch again. Inside lay the remnants of a memory she wished she could erase: a torn photograph of five college kids — herself, Jason, Logan, Dylan — and in the middle, grinning with quiet intensity… Ethan Carter.

And beside them… Benjamin Walker.

The boy they had killed.

Her hands trembled as she picked up the photo. The edges were curled and stained from years of guilt.

Ten Years Ago – Kingstown University

It was a humid October night.

The old abandoned faculty hall, deep behind the chemistry building, smelled of wet stone and burnt wax. Madison remembered the sound of dripping water from a broken pipe above. The flickering candlelight made shadows dance like ghosts around them.

Benjamin stood blindfolded in the middle of a chalk-drawn circle. “This is a prank, right?” he laughed nervously. “Some kind of frat dare?”

Tyler was pacing behind him. Dylan clutched the corner of his hoodie. Logan stood too still.

And Ethan…

Ethan had the book.

The ritual book they found in the back of the forbidden archives, bound in cracked leather and written in strange ink that bled when wet.

Ethan didn’t speak that night. He didn’t flinch. He just began reading from the text. Madison could still hear the syllables — they didn’t sound like words, but something more primal. Older.

Benjamin’s laughter turned to confusion. Then pain.

A scream.

Then blood.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.

But the circle held. And the boy inside it fell.

Present Day

Madison blinked hard, pushing the memory back down. The guilt had faded over the years — but it had never truly left her. She still remembered the trial. The fear. The lies.

They all pointed fingers at Ethan. Said he orchestrated it. Said they were pawns. That they didn’t know the ritual was real.

And Ethan had stayed silent.

He never defended himself. Never fought back.

Ten years in prison for a murder they all committed.

And now, Jason was dead. Killed in the same pattern. Madison’s heart pounded as she opened her phone again.

Still no replies.

She tried Dylan. Straight to voicemail.

Logan. The call rang once, then dropped.

Something was happening.

And Ethan… Ethan hadn’t been seen since the day he was released. No public record. No social media. No news coverage. He had simply vanished.

Or someone had made him vanish.

Downtown Kingstown – 11:48 PM

Detective Marcus Hale lit a cigarette he wouldn’t smoke. Just something to keep his hands busy as he stared at the taped-off area where Jason Reed’s body had been found.

The body was gone now, but the image lingered.

The candles. The circle. The message: "Et tu, Judas?"

He had seen the photos from the old case. He had studied the reports during his early years on the force. He even remembered the courtroom sketches of Ethan Carter — young, intense, silent.

Everyone said he was dangerous. A manipulator.

But Marcus had always felt something was off. The details were too clean. Too orchestrated.

And now, ten years later, the same pattern had returned — precise and purposeful.

He knelt near the bloodstain, brushing the ground gently with gloved fingers. The rain had mostly washed everything away, but something caught his eye — a faint carving beneath the blood’s edge.

A symbol.

He pulled out his notebook and quickly sketched it: a circle enclosing an eye, slashed with a cross. It looked like something out of a cult archive.

He stood, unease crawling under his skin.

This wasn’t copycat work.

This was ritual.

And this time, it wasn’t about guilt — it was about vengeance.

...****************...

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