The mural shifted—first subtly, then grotesquely—as the painted goat’s head began to emerge from the wall, dragging wet paint and green ichor with it. The wall cracked like a birthing sac, viscous and stretching. Paint became flesh. Eyes rolled forward from flatness to wet depth. A jaw unhinged, bleating wetly.

And then it screamed.

Star screamed with it—an instinctual, tearing sound of pure, unfiltered panic.

The corpse convulsed in response, spraying bile in every direction like a ruptured pipe. It stung Star’s skin, burned his eyes, filled his nose with mold and rot and decay. He staggered forward blindly, sobbing in terror as he grabbed Glenn by the arm and yanked him away from the oncoming nightmare.

“GO!” Star choked, voice ragged and raw.

The others didn’t argue.

Even Andrea—who’d been so composed, so biting—let herself be shoved backward toward the tunnel. Yasir was already halfway in. Glenn stumbled with Star pulling him, dazed but obedient.

Behind them, the goat’s full head burst free of the mural with a wet slurp, its eyes blind and rolling, its mouth a ragged black hole filled with needlelike teeth. It bleated again—louder, closer, hungry.

They scrambled down the tunnel.

It wasn’t as long this time.

Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe not. Star didn’t care. He felt the bile soaking into the walls behind them, heard the chanting grow distant, then rise again like a wave.

“Mother’s milk will rebirth you…”

Those doors—the same broken ones that had once filled him with unspeakable dread—were now salvation. They slammed into them, bodies working in sync, not even needing to speak. Star felt every inch of that old, heavy steel grind against the floor as all four of them pushed. Glenn. Yasir. Andrea. Himself.

The tunnel behind them throbbed.

The goat screamed again.

And then—THUNK.

The doors sealed shut.

The sound echoed like a judgment. Final. Heavy. Still.

They collapsed in the dark, gasping for air. Covered in bile, shivering, but alive.

For now.