Dante DeCervo counted their savings again on a stranger's couch. Two hundred dollars. That would not rent a closet in Detroit, let alone the safe haven they dreamed of. They wanted one place where every kicked-out kid could take off their mask and breathe. Three days ago their mother had thrown them out for being pansexual. She had called it a sin and slammed the door. Now the pentagram on Dante's hoodie felt like the only home they owned. Their phone buzzed. A private message from a stranger online. "Your last stream saved my week. Can you draw my character?" Dante blinked. People had been asking for weeks. Art. They could sell art. Their fingers already knew the shapes. Dante set up their sleek black computer on the borrowed table. Fiery accents glowed along its case. They opened a stream and started to draw a jester figure, purple and gold, a skull for a face. Nightmare Parade, their own strange guardian, seemed to lean over their shoulder as they worked. Viewers trickled in. Then donations. Five dollars. Twenty. A commission for forty. The door opened. Dante's brother stepped in, still in his rumpled trench coat, a detective's badge clipped to his belt. Ozzy DeCervo looked older than Dante remembered, tired around the eyes. "Mom doesn't know I'm here," Ozzy said. He always said that. He was closeted, too scared of her to admit it. He set a paper bag on the table. "Groceries. And this." He pulled out a small stack of bills. Dante's ears flattened. "I don't need charity." "It's not charity." Ozzy nodded at the screen, at the growing donation feed. "It's a match. Whatever you make tonight, I double it. Quietly." Dante studied him. Ozzy hid who he was to keep the peace. Dante refused to. That gap had always sat between them. But right now, his hand was steady, and his offer was real. "Why?" Dante asked. Ozzy looked at the floor. "Because one of us should get to leave." Dante drew for six hours. The commissions kept coming. Strangers shared the stream. By midnight the counter read eleven hundred dollars. Ozzy matched it in cash, then quietly wrote a number on a napkin and slid it over. It was the address of an empty storefront across the city. "Landlord owes me a favor," Ozzy said. "He'll hold it. But only for two weeks." Dante stared at the money and the address. Enough for a deposit. Enough to move forward. The wall that had trapped them was gone. Then Ozzy's phone rang. He glanced at the screen and went stiff. "It's Mom." He silenced it. "She's looking for you, Dante. She found out I've been sending texts." Dante's stomach dropped. The money was real. The place was real. But their mother now knew someone was helping them escape.

The napkin with the address still sat on the table when Dante's phone lit up. A text from Ozzy. "She's coming to me first. Meet me. Now." Dante closed the sleek black computer, its fiery accents fading dark. The safe haven was two weeks and one angry mother away. Nightmare Parade rose behind them, taller than the room, red pentagrams burning in its skull. Ozzy waited in the storefront. Bare walls. Dust on the floor. He gripped a strange walking stick, dark wood with a gold-jeweled handle. A landlord's junk, left behind. He turned it over in his hands like something to hold onto. "She called my captain," Ozzy said. He didn't look up. "Said I've been using my badge to hide you. If she pushes, I lose the job. I lose the favor that holds this place." Dante's ears flattened. "So we lie. Tell her you cut me off." "That's the plan." Ozzy finally met their eyes. "I tell her I was wrong. I beg. She forgives me because I'm the good son." His grip tightened on the cane. "You disappear. I keep the job. The storefront stays yours." "You keep the mask," Nightmare Parade said. Its voice landed flat. "Forever." Ozzy couldn't hear the Stand. But Dante did. And Dante saw the truth in his brother's face. He would spend his whole life pretending, so Dante could stop pretending. "No," Dante said. "There's another way." They took out their phone. They pulled up the recording of last night's stream, the donation feed, the counter climbing to eleven hundred dollars. Proof the money was theirs. Earned. Not stolen with a badge. "Send Mom this," Dante said. "Tell your captain the same. You didn't fund my escape. Strangers did. You only pointed at an empty building nobody wanted. That's not a crime." Ozzy stared at the screen. His shoulders dropped. "She'll still hate you." "She already does." Dante almost smiled. "But she can't touch your job. And she can't touch this place." Ozzy made the calls right there. Dante heard their mother's voice bark through the phone, sharp and cold. Ozzy stood straight. He gave her the facts and nothing else. No begging. No apology. When he hung up, his hand was shaking, but he set the cane down gently against the wall. "Captain's satisfied," he said. "No misuse. No case." He let out a slow breath. "She's done screaming. For now." The threat was gone. The storefront was safe. Ozzy's job was safe. But Ozzy looked at Dante differently now. Like a door had cracked open. "You made me stop lying to her," he said quietly. "Just once. It felt like breathing." Dante's chest tightened. Two weeks to build the haven. And now a brother who had tasted the truth and might want more of it.

The storefront stayed quiet after Ozzy left. Dante had two weeks and no crowd. A safe haven needs people who want to come. So Dante made a plan. They would turn the empty walls into a show. They would sketch the place grand, print the drawing, and sell it to the highest bidder online. One buyer could fund the first month. Proof the dream could draw money meant proof it could draw a crowd. Dante sat on the dusty floor and opened their sketchbook. They drew the storefront as it could be. Black-and-silver walls. Repeating arches. A palace built from sharp angles. The pencil moved fast. Nightmare Parade watched over their shoulder, twice their height, skull tilted. "You drew a door inside the door," the Stand said. Dante looked. They had. Past the first arch, a smaller arch. Past that, another. The drawing folded into itself. Each room held a smaller copy of the same room. Dante kept drawing, and the shapes kept repeating, deeper and deeper, with no end. "Stop," Nightmare Parade said. "It doesn't stop." Dante's hand shook. The pattern pulled at their eyes. Rooms inside rooms inside rooms. Their stomach turned. They dropped the pencil and the page kept seeming to move. The door opened. Ozzy walked in, trench coat open, a folder under his arm. Their brother. The detective who had risked his badge for this place. "You've been here six hours," Ozzy said. He saw Dante's face. "What's wrong?" Dante held up the sketchbook. "I can't finish it. It keeps going." Ozzy crouched and looked. His eyes moved into the drawing and stayed too long. He blinked hard and set it face-down on the floor. "That's not a storefront," he said. "That's a maze." "I was going to sell it," Dante said. "One buyer. Enough to start." They laughed, thin. "Nobody buys a thing that gives you a headache." Ozzy didn't argue. He pulled the folder out and dropped a photo on the floor. A missing child. A boy from his case. "I came because I'm stuck," he said. "I don't believe he ran. Somebody took him." Dante stared at the photo, then at the face-down sketchbook. The repeating rooms. A place that hid things inside itself. "The drawing," Dante said slow. "It wasn't mine. It wanted to be drawn." Ozzy frowned. "You're tired." "No." Dante turned the sketchbook back over. The deepest room held a small shape. A figure, curled. They hadn't drawn it. "Ozzy. Look where it ends." Ozzy looked. His face went flat and still. He recognized the shape. The plan was dead. No buyer, no sale, no proof for the crowd. Dante had two weeks and one less day. But now their brother's missing child sat at the bottom of a drawing that drew itself. The haven would have to wait. Something had reached through the paper, and it knew Ozzy's name was next.