EPILOGUE
The Phantom
The world spun. My eyes fluttered, shutting and opening seconds apart. Their screams echoed in fragments; gurgling, strained, parting with the final goodbye to life. And me? I could still taste the metallic tang of their throats on my tongue.
In thirty seconds, it was over. The spinning stopped, and the car door creaked open. All I could see was snow, the empty road, and the silence hanging in the air.
They were gone.
I clenched my fist, snapping the bone in my finger to get free from the handcuffs. The crack was sharp, just a short pain slice, but I didn't stop. The cold steel slipped from my wrists as I forced them apart, and I jumped out of the car.
The car lay crumpled against the bark of a tree, its front twisted around it. Bodies had been flung out; one of them split clean apart, shredded by the collision. I couldn't stop myself. A laugh ripped from my throat as I turned away and walked on.
I spun once, checking if it was all just a bad dream, then kept moving.
In front of me came a road sign, its letters marking the stretch as D8. I crossed it, my boots crunching on the frosted road, and the forest rose alongside the road.
Familiar. Too familiar.
The snow fell in lazy, thin at first, then thickening as it was closer to the ground. The flakes touched my face as I stepped off the road and into the woods.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Each step felt familiar, pulling me deeper into the dark. I knew this place.
Eight steps to the thick pine tree. Another ten to the rock with the small, jagged cut running across its surface. I knelt, ignoring the frozen earth against my hands as I dug through the frozen dirt.
There it was—a box, buried just deep enough to stay hidden from everyone, yet shallow enough for me to find.
Inside: a mask, an axe, and a gun. A slip of paper, too, with numbers of a location, a safe house. A place where I could disappear.
I took the mask in my hand. White plastic was cold and stained with dried blood, split into halves: one side white, the other dark red. I didn't flinch. I didn't care. I slipped it on.
It wasn't just a mask. It was a reminder.
I stood slowly, my breath blurring the cold air. The axe was tight in my hand, the gun steadily tucked against my back.
I wasn't Thor Karlsson anymore. That man was gone, a ghost trapped in the past.
I was something else now. A shadow. A ghost. A phantom of what I once was.
And this time, no one could bring me back. No one could make me kneel.
"Every snowflake falls exactly where it's meant to. Even me," I said, my voice lost to the woods as I leaned against the rock.
Memories flashed behind my eyes, like snapshots from an old Polaroid camera. Each image dragged me back to where it all began. Back to the moment I first became who I am now.
The Phantom.
November, 2009
Lana Dahl. The new girl in town.
She always wore tight jeans and a black coat, her hair slicked back into a ponytail that framed her pale face, making it look alive, almost glowing. And those whiskey eyes—God, they made me drunk every time she passed by.
She spent her afternoons outside her house, playing with her younger sister, and building snowmen. But hers were different. She didn't use branches for arms, she'd stick empty gloves in their place. She didn't bother with coal for a smile, either. Instead, she stitched threads into wide grins, like they'd painted their lips with lipstick. And the finishing touch? A pot for a hat.
To someone like me, those snowmen were masterpieces. To someone like her, they were just another game.
I stood on the sidewalk, watching from a distance. She was laughing.
I couldn't help but chuckle, too. Then she turned, her eyes locking onto mine.
"Hey, stranger!" she called out, a teasing grin on her lips. "Do you want to build a snowman?"
I didn't answer. How could I? But something about her pulled me in. Step by step, I walked toward her house, the freshly fallen snow crunching under my boots.
"How do you like it?" she asked, gesturing to the snowman.
"It feels… incomplete," I said back.
She laughed, her sister giggling beside her as they stepped back to let me approach the snowman. Her sister stumbled, falling into the snow.
"Are you okay?" Lana asked, rushing to her side. Her sister winced, holding up her hand. A thin red line ran across her palm, just a scrape from a hidden rock beneath the snow.
Lana frowned but didn't panic. Instead, she gently held her sister's hand and pressed the injured palm to the snowman's chest.
"Better?" she asked.
When her sister pulled her hand back, the bloody imprint was left behind, then she turned to me.
"How about now, stranger? What do you think?"
"Perfect," I said, unable to look away from it.
Her sister tilted her head, studying me. "What's your name? You're always around, like a ghost."
"The Phantom," Lana said, smirking before I could answer. "He's the one who comes at night and takes people who ask too many questions."
Her sister huffed, shaking her head. "You two are weird," she mumbled, trudging off toward the house, leaving Lana and me alone in the snow.
I laughed softly. "She's not wrong," I said, looking at her.
That was the beginning.
After that day, we never parted. She was my Snow, and I was her Phantom. She was my light; I was her dark. My first girlfriend. The first person I let into my heart.
She was the first to know the truth.
That I wasn't whole. That I was split into eight fractured parts, each one surfacing when the world went dark. And yet, she accepted every part of me. Every single one.
She brought me back each time I fell, every time my masks threatened to pull me under. She took my hand and held on tighter than anyone ever had.
Until the day came when I couldn't bring her back.
Not anymore.
PRESENT DAY
A tear slid down my cheek as the wail of sirens echoed in the distance. Without a second thought, I ran deeper into the woods, leaving everything, and everyone behind.
I used to love. I was loved.
And now, somehow, I've found that again.
I love, and I am loved.
But I won't let what happened in the past repeat itself. Not to Bree. Never to Bree.
I'll stop it. Whatever it takes. Even if I have to hunt down every last member of The Family, past, present, or the ones yet to come.
I'm free now. And it's my turn to chase.
One by one, I'll find them.
It's fucking time.