Like that evening arrived and the police and the people around the house left, but they wrapped yellow tape around the periter warning it was a murder site with no entry.
But there are always people who don't care about these things.
And the first among them was Wednesday.
She slipped under the tape, Ethan following behind her, Thing already ahead of both of them, having slipped through from the mont the last officer turned their back.
The house was dark and slled of blood, still fresh enough that Ethan caught it imdiately. The number 5 on the wall caught what little light ca through the windows.
Wednesday moved through the ground floor without touching anything, her eyes going across everything slowly.
She stopped at the wall and looked at the number.
"Five," said Wednesday, her eyes fixed on the number. "Why did whatever killed these people leave this. It isn't a murder count, only three people died here. So is it a signature."
"Maybe," said Ethan.
He looked around the room slowly. Blood on the walls, on the floor, guts scattered across the ground, blood splattered across the ceiling. Whatever had been here hadn't been in a hurry.
These three poor souls had been traumatized before death.
"But why?" Wednesday said, her gaze moving across the room, never settling. "Is the murderer simply a psychopath who enjoys torture, or is the torture ant to extract sothing?"
Ethan glanced around, his attention on the patterns rather than the objects.
"Maybe it's coincidence," he said. "Maybe whatever did this just found the house randomly."
Wednesday didn't stop.
"Coincidence implies lack of intent," she said. "This does not."
"Maybe," she added after a second, "but until that's confird, it's an assumption."
"Help search," she said. "There should be sothing here that explains why this house was selected."
Ethan nodded, already moving. He was curious too—about what the hell that black thing was. The thought of the shapes that had escaped the ritual site the previous day surfaced in his mind.
Is this one of those things?
There were similarities. Both were black, shifting, without any fixed form. If that was true…
His expression tightened slightly. If those things had co from what he'd started, then this—this ss, these deaths—wasn't entirely separate from him.
His mood soured.
As he moved along the wall, his eyes caught a frad picture. He stopped and pulled it closer. The image showed an old structure, worn stone and narrow windows.
At the bottom, a na was written.
Saint Cartha's Monastery.
"Hm… Saint Cartha?" Ethan muttered, staring at it. "Feels like I've heard that sowhere."
"Ethan, co here," Wednesday's voice called from the upper floor.
"Coming," he replied, slipping the photo into his hand before heading up. He stepped into the bedroom and paused. The room was in disarray—furniture disturbed, drawers left open, as if sothing had been searched in a hurry.
Wednesday stood near the wardrobe, her attention fixed inside it.
"Do your thing," she said, pointing to a hidden safe behind the clothes.
Ethan stepped forward, placed his hand on the tal door for a mont, then tore it open like paper. The lock gave way without resistance. Inside were stacks of old docunts, with a silver cross resting on top.
He picked up the cross and stepped aside.
Wednesday took the papers and began going through them.The pages were old, marked with symbols and notes. Then she stopped.
There, drawn across one of the pages, was an inverted pentagram. At its center was the head of a goat, detailed and deliberate, with the number five written beside it.
Ethan glanced at it. "Does this family have so kind of church background? First a monastery photo, now a cross in a safe." He turned the cross slightly in his hand. "And this looks like silver."
His gaze shifted to a photo on the wall. A family of four—mother, father, son, and a younger daughter.
"Wednesday," he said, more serious now, "the dead count is three, right?"
"Yes," she replied, her eyes still on the symbol as the aning settled in. The inverted pentagram, the goat's head—the sigil of Baphot.
"Then one family mber is still alive," Ethan continued. "Do you think that person might know what did this?"
Wednesday closed the file and placed the papers into her bag. She stepped beside him, her gaze resting on the family photo.
"They don't just know," she said calmly. "They're involved."
"And yesterday."
"You ntioned seeing a pentagram carved into the ground. Was it inverted, with a goat's head at the center?"
Ethan frowned slightly, thinking back. "Yeah… it was. Looked exactly like that. Does it an sothing?"
"A standard pentagram can serve multiple purposes—protection, containnt, even balance," she said calmly. "It depends on orientation and intent."
Her gaze lifted to et his.
"This is not that."
"An inverted pentagram with a goat's head is the sigil of Baphot. It is not symbolic in a passive sense. It is used in rituals tied to summoning, control, and in so cases, offering."
"So we can be sure the thing that did this is definitely a demon?" Ethan asked, not fully convinced.
"Yes," Wednesday replied, her tone calm and certain.
***
A/N: It's decided—the next world will be .
And on Patreon, the Wednesday arc is about to end, with The Boys arc starting next.
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