Her thoughts were interrupted when something caught her eye—something that made her heart skip a beat. Natalie’s zip-up hoodie had slipped down her arm, revealing bare skin beneath her sleeveless tank top. And on her shoulder was a symbol, a circle with an X slashed through it, burned into her flesh as if she had been branded.
A memory flashed through Y/N’s mind—the gas station, the man who had attacked her, the same symbol carved into his arm. Her stomach churned with a mix of fear and determination. Maybe now, she could finally start piecing things together.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her heart pounding. “Hey, Natalie,” she began, her voice a little shaky. When Natalie turned to look at her, Y/N gestured toward the mark on her shoulder. “That symbol… where did you get it?”
Natalie glanced down at the scar, and Y/N could see her demeanor change in an instant. She went from neutral to uncomfortable in the blink of an eye. Y/N felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t meant to hit a nerve.
“I’m sorry,” she quickly added, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I didn’t mean to—”
Natalie cut her off with a small, resigned smile. “It’s fine. I was branded by Slenderman. It’s called the Operator symbol. It marks me as one of his… workers.”
Y/N’s stomach twisted. The way Natalie said it, so matter-of-factly, made it all the more horrifying.
Toby, who had been unusually quiet, tilted his head to the side, his eyes narrowing as he studied Y/N’s reaction. His head twitched, a nervous tic she had noticed whenever he seemed deep in thought. “Have you seen it before?” he asked, his voice strangely calm.
Y/N nodded slowly. “Yeah. A man attacked me at a gas station. He asked me about my dreams and then… he showed me his arm.” She pointed to Natalie’s shoulder. “He had that same symbol. He called it the devil’s mark.”
Natalie and Toby exchanged uneasy glances. Clearly, they knew something—something they weren’t sure if they should tell her.
“Well,” Toby started cautiously, pulling a hatchet from its sheath and running a gloved hand over the blade in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring but only succeeded in making Y/N more nervous, “it’s possible that guy was one of the people who survived Slenderman’s influence. People like us, who got away—or thought they did.”
Y/N’s brows furrowed. “But how did he know about my dreams?” There was a note of desperation in her voice now. She was so close to understanding, yet the pieces weren’t quite fitting together.
Natalie sighed, her gaze softening as she looked at Y/N. “Slenderman’s reach is long, Y/N. He can find his way into people’s minds, twist them, control them. If that man had the Operator symbol… he was probably marked like the rest of us, trapped in Slenderman’s web. Your dreams might be more than just dreams—they could be his way of reaching you, preparing you for… something.”
“Something?” Y/N echoed, her heart hammering in her chest. “Preparing me for what?”
Toby looked away, his grip tightening on the hatchet. “We don’t know,” he admitted, his voice quieter than before. “But whatever it is, it’s not good.”
There was a heavy silence after that, the weight of Toby’s words hanging in the air. Y/N felt a chill run down her spine. As much as she tried to stay grounded in reality, it was getting harder to ignore the truth creeping in from the edges of her mind.