Clayview the town on one butte. Sometimes you have to use all of your meter for a page you've been looking forward to. Now I will rest for ten thousand thousand years. If you would like to awaken me from my slumber, consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon, where I just posted a BUNCH of art including the designs for the Forges on this page, or making a one-time donation on Ko-fi. Thanks for reading!

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[Transcript]

        Swimming colors. Faint flashes of summer heat. Soft seaside air. The blurry faces of children the age of his host, the boy he’d possessed in the woods—or was it by the shore? Forge marveled at the speed of their burgeoning bond. Even stoking the flames of the boy’s spectral awakening, he’d been prepared to wait for weeks, for months until his powers could be shared... until this Johnny could become the source of fuel that would restore him. And yet, overnight, as if a wave of supernatural accelerant had been poured on the pyre, the boy’s spectral spark had been brought to the very brink of ignition.

        So be it, Forge thought gravely. He would take any advantage he could claim, however inexplicable, however grim and double-edged. His enemies were many in the world beyond his host. There was justice to be done. She needed him.

        Yes. The Angel, agreed a voice of sourceless faith inside his mind, gently sealing other roads that once directed his devotion.

        A helmet, reforged in the dark, sealed tight around the blackened bones his rage had burned to ash. The half-real space that Forge inhabited was a chance to reinvent himself. Here, his body was as pliable as molten steel. As he restored himself, he would imagine himself stronger, harder, fiercer... as a GRUDGE again, if it meant that, this time, he would be able to—

        KTONG! The sound of his own hammer struck a chord in the resonant hollow of his heart.

        “Grrggh...!” Forge clutched at his armored chest. Why did his own resolve torment him so? If it was due punishment justly delivered, then why did it feel as though he was forgetting some lesson the pain was insistent he learn...?

        Forge’s eyes reopened to a fleeting flash of clarity: his host’s point of view, momentarily sharp... and in his sight, a face he faintly recognized.

        “I’m not surprised you’re well-adapted to the ice age, Johnny. That’s the benefit of having vintage genes,” quipped Maxwell Puckett, prodding back the burning bully with his baseball bat. “But you cannot hunter-gather in convenience stores unless they’re not my dad’s.”

        That child! No, it couldn’t be! And yet Forge couldn’t find how to deny it. The memory was branded on his soul. He’d seen Max once before... soon after he’d arrived too late to save his mother’s life.

        Forge let her name escape him, knowing well that it would sear him as it left.

        “June...”

[J: Hm? What’s up?

F: You were wandering again. You missed the sign. Dead end. There is no road ahead. This must be our destination.

J: ...

J: Didn’t I promise you the world, Forge?

J: This is just the latest pit stop.]

        Impossible. The family she’d left behind was worlds away from Bayview. What cruel coincidence had brought them here, and Forge to stand before them? No—forget the pain it caused him to remember how he’d failed her. Doorman and the Angel had forewarned him... Bayview hadn’t changed the way June wished it would so many years ago. It was still a haunted battleground, its pleasant peace a thin facade. If her family was here, they were in danger... surrounded by insidious archvillains like—

        Vice Principal DuNacht, detention hag of Bayview Biddle School, loomed into view to punctuate his panic like a crooked question mark.