Dio focused. He listened for any creak in the decrepit wooden skeleton of the house, for any shift of air that could come from a furtive breath. A leak from the sink faucet dripped sporadically into the basin. The refrigerator hummed. No sound stood out. The only presence he could sense was Erina's.

"…How do you know?" she tentatively asked, after the silence had deflated from something more dreadful.

Dio turned to aim a withering glance, but it weakened with hastily applied restraint. "I just know," he insisted.

Erina moved as if to stand, but when Dio did glare, she reluctantly settled back into her seat. "How can you tell?"

"Well," he began authoritatively, but then he frowned and looked back outside. The yard was streaked with bald mud. Any remnant footprints were mushy and aimless.

Joseph had attempted to come back inside; Dio had heard his mechanical hand slam against the door— but he had only heard it once. Why had he stopped? Perhaps Giorno, the most level-headed of the group, had pulled him away, allowing the conversation with Erina to continue in private. Despite all evidence to the contrary, his son still expected, if not good, then reasonable things of Dio.

There was also that wildcard Zeppeli. Dio did not know if Joseph would be struck with a strong sense of recognition regarding him. He was not yet sure if the man was meant to be an analogue of the pepper-loving individual from his own time, or of the young Zeppeli that Dio had only seen scant mention of in the Speedwagon Foundation files.

And Johnny was out there, too— he would have immediately understood Erina's sensitivity, and so he would have decided to hold back, if not leave the premises entirely. But even if he had left, and perhaps the Zeppeli with him… then where had the others gone?

"I just know," Dio finally answered, and, as he expected, Erina narrowed her eyes. "I'm very serious," he preemptively defended. "You develop a sense for these things. The back yard is empty. They should have all been crowding around to eavesdrop at the door. That's weird."

"So they've been… vanished?" Erina asked, and her tone was kept sharply inquisitive to distract from her fear. "Spirited away by one of these… Stands?"

"Either they have, or we have," Dio said, always willing to be contrary.

"Could they have moved?" Erina offered, insufferably sensible.

Dio scowled and dipped his head towards the window over the sink, peering out at the siding slats that stretched out to the corner of the house. Would they have relocated to a better place to listen in? Or could they have moved to the front yard, to get out of the messy mud? He passed through the living room door, stalked up towards the entranceway, and peeked through the wooden boards that still barred the windows. The glass was too grimy to let him discern anything outside. He clamped his hand over the doorknob and slowly twisted it. He heard the quiet contraction of the interior spring and the click of the bolt leaving the latch.

He pulled the door open a sliver. One eye glared at the outdoors. There was the front yard, the rickety gate, and beyond that, a street empty beneath the graying dusk.

He slunk back to the living room.

Erina was no longer there.

When his fists clenched, his nails cut small crescents against his palms. Resisting his own growing agitation, he reached out and waved his hand over the empty cushioned chair. His hand passed through air. She had not been made invisible, or anything like that; a rapid look around the rest of the space, including the ceiling, assured him that she had disappeared from the space entirely. He dashed to the end of the room and looked towards the kitchen. The batter splatter mess of his children's cooking still stained the counter, but there was no Erina.

The bare lightbulb screwed into the living room ceiling flickered. Dio glared at it. The Stand user was isolating them. Was the intent to pick them off one by one? To leverage Erina as a hostage? What of Giorno and his other sons?

The wooden floorboards behind him creaked. Time stopped.

He turned, prepared to tear whoever it was into forensically unidentifiable shreds, but he was flooded with relief upon realizing that it was merely Erina. She was coming through the doorway from the front portion of the house, stopped in time mid-step. When time began again, Dio realized how pale her face had become, and he saw the tension held in the way she took another step away from the threshold. But when she noticed Dio, she relaxed a minuscule amount.

"I followed you so that I could look out the window, too," she explained, "but I didn't… see you. Did you… go around the house in a different way?"

"I went through that door," Dio said, and he pointed. "Then, I came right back. I did not see you at all."

Erina nodded absently. "So, this is a part of…"

"The Stand, yes," Dio replied, and he bit back an unwarranted told you so.

"I will guess that you did not see them through the window," Erina said.

"I did not."

"Then…" Erina said, and she trailed off, pivoting where she stood to look about the room. The living room had two exits: one opening that led to the kitchen, which in turn led to the backyard and a utility room, and a door that led to a hall containing the first floor bathroom, the stairs leading to the second floor, and the front entranceway. The chair she had been sitting on was adjacent to the couch, with a view of the television and a small sliver of the adjoining kitchen. The door to the front was behind it, and out of view when one was sitting. "…A kind of puzzle," she mumbled. "We are not being met with violence, but with… Why would a Stand accost us, anyway?"

Dio scowled, but he was unsure of an answer. Why would a Stand user attack them? There had been the appearance of his double, which was as bad an omen as any, but why else? He dimly remembered the abrupt explosion he had once suffered, and his double's amusement; there's still that damned serial killer, he remembered with a roll of his eyes. Jotaro had mentioned him upon Dio's request to retrieve Holly, but Dio had a habit of considering the primary reason the Joestars had collected in Morioh in the first place as utterly inconsequential due to his own arrival. And— he rubbed his fingers against his temples, remembering another revelation that he had discarded; the man's ghostly father had acquired the Stand arrow from his double. Was he creating Stand users and sending them after the Joestars in order to protect his son's new identity? Probably. How annoying. "No violence yet," Dio replied. "We don't know how this Stand works. We have to be cautious— hey!" he snapped as Erina began to walk forward. She ignored him and strode directly toward the doorway. He stopped time, reached for her shoulders, frowned, hesitated, and then rallied; he picked her up and put her down several paces away from the doorway.

Time began again. Erina narrowed her eyes at him. "Be careful," Dio hissed. "What is it that you are trying to do?"

"When I walked through that door, I did not see you, though you should have been standing at the front window. And you did not see me, although I followed you. Here, however, we found each other again. I am simply attempting to think as one of these strange spirits would. What rules govern its power? I think it may be the doorway," Erina said, and she nodded towards the pocked wood lining the frame.

"That's a leap of logic," Dio said, "but I like it. Stay put." He sauntered through the doorway and looked back. Erina was gone— from his sight, at least. He walked back into the living room.

Erina was still missing.

His eyes narrowed. He tapped his nails against his palms as he thought. The first time he had noticed the Stand at work, he had walked into the front, he had looked out the window, and then he had returned to the living room, and he had not seen Erina at all during that initial stretch of time. She had not seen him either— not until she had eventually returned to the living room. How long had it taken her to act against his wishes, to rise from her chair and venture into the front of the house? Long enough, perhaps, for him to return to the living room— while she was actually still in it.

And in testing her theory, the same had just happened again.

The light overhead flickered.

Dio hoped that Erina would once again be daring enough to venture onward on her own.

It didn't take long, but he still felt the uneasy ebb of distress turning to relief when she walked through the doorway. "I didn't see you, even though you clearly intended to return," Erina said. "So—"

"It's as if each time we pass through the door, we enter a new version of that room," Dio said.

Erina nodded. "Perhaps Joseph and the others did come inside. But we cannot see them, nor can they see us."

"Nor can we see the Stand user," Dio said, and the corner of his mouth twisted into a sneer. "Not unless we somehow end up in the same version of a room. However…"

He picked up the icing-covered knife from the cake tray. He waved his hand once, getting a gauge for the heft of it, and then he crouched down and smeared the icing on the floor.

When Erina made a face, albeit a subtle one, he quirked his brow. "It's a little messy, but it's another test," Dio said. "We'll walk through the door together. Then, we'll return. If I still have the knife, and this icing is still on the floor…"

"Then we can still affect the rooms, despite passing into different versions of them," Erina said, and she complied; together, and thus remaining in sight of each other, they walked through the door, and then they returned to the living room.

The knife remained in Dio's grip. The icing was still smeared on the floor.

The light overhead flickered.

"Well, well, well," Dio said, and he twirled the knife between his fingers out of habit; a cake-cutting knife, however, was far larger than a typical throwing knife, and so he mostly managed to fumble it from one hand to the next. "All we must do now is find whatever room the Stand user is likely to be hiding in and start stabbing."

"Not if Joseph and the others may have come inside," Erina stated.

Dio scowled.

"Could they be seeing a floating knife?" Erina asked. "Even if you could approach this Stand master, it would not be very subtle."

"It depends on how pedantic this Stand is," Dio grumbled. "I seem to disappear when I move into a 'new version' of a room. As do my clothes and my other belongings. Does this knife now count as a part of me?"

She shrugged. "We could find out."

With a nod, Dio stepped through the doorway. After a moment, Erina followed. "It looks quite haunting," she explained. "And dangerous. If the others can see that, then we don't want to alarm them."

"Well, I'd rather have a knife," Dio said. "Is it any less threatening if I hold it like this?" He switched his grip on the handle and held the knife low against his thigh before ducking through the doorway.

"I don't know," Erina said after following him through, and she lifted her wrist to rub at her eyes. "I— pardon me. It seems so dim in here."

Dio furrowed his brows and looked around. His vampiric lifestyle featured extensive night vision. He could now notice how that night vision was doing most of the work. The windows to the outside were fairly dark, a natural effect of the sun setting and the world settling into night, but the light within the room itself… The room was lit by a bare bulb, and he had noticed the yellow filament glare that it emitted before. It did flicker on occasion, but it did not ever seem to dim before. Now, though, as he looked around, the room was washed with hints of gray.

What was happening, really, each time they walked into a room?

He imagined the space between two mirrors, and what the power to pass through those reflections would actually do— to walk into endless iterations that were identical, yet degrading into a dim nothing…

He suddenly felt very grateful that Erina had been so daring. If he had passed through another doorway in an attempt to find her before she had caught up to him, they could have gotten lost in iterating offsets of the same room, isolated and confused as the world got darker.

"No more doors," Dio declared, and he tossed the knife back onto the table. "If we would have went around searching for Joseph and the others, then we would have only ensnared ourselves further into this trap." He nodded towards the kitchen. "The Stand is indeed pedantic. It does not consider that opening into the kitchen to be a door; I didn't disappear when I went in there, now, did I?"

"No," Erina agreed. "But how are we to find the source of this Stand if we can only remain in the kitchen or the living room— Oh, dear," she said with resignation; Dio had brought forth The World and had gleefully instructed his Stand to kick a hole through the wall. Drywall shrapnel pelted the floor.

"Sorry, Okuyasu," Dio said. "Josuke can fix this, anyway."

"But— again, why are we being attacked?" Erina said, raising her voice to be heard over splintering wood.

"The serial killer thing," Dio said, and he waved his hand dismissively.

"I thought, well, his skill was to... Joseph said that he could detonate things," Erina said. "Isn't this something else entirely? Or could he have many skills, like you?"

Dio sneered. "Oh, please. I'm surprised that cowardly slug of a man can handle one Stand, let alone—"

Well, his father did have the Stand arrow, didn't he?

Had they tried unlocking additional Stand powers? Did they even know to do so?

Would his double tell the man about the possibilities, just for a laugh?

Then, for just a moment, Dio felt an inward frustration: He has blown me up twice. I can't keep writing the man off just to soothe my own ego.

"No," he eventually said, and he returned his thoughts to his first theory. "I think he has been creating other Stand users, and then instructing them to attack us."

She blinked. "And what cause would they have to follow through with his request?" she asked. "Is giving someone a Stand like passing along vampirism? Do they become his thralls?"

"No," he replied. "He could be giving them money, though."

"That's it?" she asked.

Dio shrugged. "I mean, that's worked for me before. When, you know, the thralldom doesn't take."

Erina still did not look convinced.

"Stand users also tend to be terribly egotistical," Dio said. "Especially the fresh ones. They want to test their own power. Push themselves beyond where their limits lie. They enjoy fighting, and, in some cases, killing. So," he concluded with a shrug, and he frowned when he could see the clear look of 'well, I still believe in the inherent goodness of humanity' upon Erina's face. "I've seen it happen time and time again. It's like people just give in to their ape instincts when they first get their Stand. In fact, I've seen better behaved apes. With Stands. Given a new and unknown power, people reach for all their deepest desires, without knowing if they can then truly grasp them. Those desires are often ugly, and come at a cost to others."

"Joseph said that when Jotaro got a Stand, he locked himself away in jail for fear of hurting other people," Erina grumbled.

"Well, isn't he just special. I also heard that his Stand stole him all sorts of fun toys while he was locked up. Now, if we're done debating, be sure to bring that with us," Dio said, and he waved back towards the remains of the cake. "I need to send somebody a message."

The hole in the wall was now large enough to duck through. After Dio lunged across the gap and into the next room, he looked back at Erina. The rules of the Stand had been circumvented. Despite her still-held misgivings, he saw her give him a faint smile.

When they walked up the stairs to the second floor, Dio noticed something amiss. There were small scuffs of fresh mud along the outermost edges of the steps.

Giorno and the others had come inside, Dio realized, and to their eyes, Dio and Erina would have disappeared. Had they begun to search the house? Had they looked in every room? Had they separated from each other, so as to better cover more ground? How many doorways had they passed through in their efforts? Had they lost track of one another, and so only searched all the more?

What happened, he wondered, when the dimming light faded away entirely? Would the Stand user sneak up on them while they were lost in the dark and pick them off one by one? Dio almost hoped that they would try it. He would happily snap the attacker in half even if blindfolded. He was confident that at least a few of the others could hold their own, as well— Giorno, obviously. Joseph, probably. Rikiel and Ungalo? Questionable.

However, it was still possible that the Stand held some other latent effects. If the uncanny reflections of rooms hid something terrible in the dark…

He decided not to worry about it. Instead, he thought of Okuyasu.

The young man had been very upset after Dio's offered rent. Perhaps in his desire for privacy and calm, he had retreated upstairs to his room— or, to the room that his father appeared to prefer. Hopefully, he had remained in that room for all the evening. If that was true, then he would still be in the 'original' version of the world— and he might have a chance of finding and defeating the Stand user. Dio could use the remaining icing to write a message to him, and the Hand could easily cleave non-door holes through the wall, enabling him to travel with ease. Then, all they would have to do would be to hone in on where—

Dio reached the top of the steps and he heard a terrible sound. The toilet had flushed.

Okay. So, if that was an oblivious Okuyasu taking care of business, then Okuyasu had left his room, had gone into the bathroom, would now leave the bathroom, and would then return to his room. Four opportunities to pass through doorways. Four different iterations of the rooms. Perhaps more. They could still communicate via frosting-message, but Dio doubted that anything useful would come of it.

As the sink faucet turned on, Dio motioned for Erina to set down the cake tray. He knelt down, scooped up some icing, and spelled out a message that was easily visible from the bathroom door. STAND STAY PUT. With a sneer, he flicked leftover icing from his fingertips. Then, he paused, tilted his head, and wiped his hand directly on Erina's shoulder.

"On yourself, as well," she said, immediately understanding his intent; with a sigh, he allowed Erina to stain his shirt with a pink glob. "And— perhaps we could find the others with it, as well. If the Stand's rules allow it."

"Worth a shot," Dio said, and as the bathroom door opened, he threw a fistful of icing.

The icing smacked into something in mid-air. Then, it swiveled, and smeared as if Okuyasu had put his hand to it in order to see what it was.

Great. So even if they became separated in different 'reflections' of the rooms, they were still inhabiting the same physical space, and so they could keep track of one another. Dio allowed himself to relax one iota, but he immediately tensed again. This was all well and good, but they were still no closer to finding the Stand user.

Two loud thumps sounded from the room to their left. Erina jumped. Another set of loud thumps followed, as if two heavy balls had hit the wall, and then the floor. That Zeppeli, Dio thought. If he was throwing out his weapons, then clearly he was attacking something— something in that room—

He saw Okuyasu's icing smear start to travel towards the door.

"No," Dio called out, though he figured that Okuyasu would not be able to hear him. "Read the message just stay still—"

Okuyasu, unheeding, strode through the doorway to the room. The icing turned. He was looking around and clearly seeing nothing out of the ordinary— except for two carved metal balls still spinning against the baseboard.

Why hadn't the Zeppeli picked them back up? The spin was gradually slowing. One finally caught some friction against the floorboards and rolled idly towards the corner of the room before stopping.

Whatever had attacked him— had it won?

Dio hated the paranoid panic encroaching his thoughts. He far preferred being the one with the unknown Stand power in need of puzzling together. He felt the panic grow as Okuyasu turned to leave the room again. At first, Dio reached out through the doorway and tried to hold the space that must have been Okuyasu back— but his hands passed through air, made immaterial by the logic of the Stand. They could not physically affect one another directly, only by proxy, by throwing icing or by…

As the icing-blob traveled obliviously over towards Okuyasu's room, Dio dashed over and pulled the door shut.

He noticed that. The icing stopped, then looked around. Finally, blessedly, he saw the message that Dio had smeared onto the floor— and, perhaps, their own icing marks, as well as the floating cake tray that Erina had picked back up.

Okuyasu's icing blob drifted downwards. Some of it was smeared onto the floor. Dio read a wobbly K. The icing then remained low, as if Okuyasu was now sitting.

Good— though Dio had a suspicion that Okuyasu would soon get fidgety and try to figure things out on his own.

"I have an idea," Dio said. "Something a little more effective than throwing icing around. My sons bought cake mix for their failed birthday endeavor."

"We could put it on the ground to see footprints," Erina suggested. "Or toss it into the air, to see what it covers."

The trip back down was uneventful. Dio clambered through the hole he had made in the wall. "Be careful coming back through," he said to Erina. "That beam splintered—"

He ducked, acting purely on vampiric instinct; the cake knife was flailing wildly through the air. It zipped past his head in a wide swing. Then, whoever was holding it must have leapt back, or had been pushed. The couch jolted and moved out at an angle as someone fell against it.

"Wait," he called back to Erina. "Stay back."

Something spattered his face. He did not flinch. It was a familiar warmth, and it came with the smell of iron. Someone had been cut. When the knife swung again, a streak of red flew off of it and striped the floor.

After a moment, the knife fell. The room was silent. Nothing moved.

He had to figure this out quickly. He slipped into the kitchen and looked around. The cake mix was a scattered mess. There did not seem to be a closed bag remaining. Something else would have to do, then. A bag of rice. A cup of water. Anything that could mark their assailant and allow Dio to destroy them. He wouldn't be able to attack them directly, but if he could get a hold on that dropped knife—

"You said that new Stand users fight in order to prove themselves," Erina said softly from the other side of the hole in the wall.

"Just wait," Dio said as he threw the abandoned batter in a wide arc across the living room, hoping to catch whoever the attacker was while they were still in there. The batter landed in a wide-reaching mess, but it did not land on any invisible human form. The attacker had already fled. Into the kitchen with Dio, or out with…

"They would have nothing to prove against me," Erina murmured, and Dio froze. There was a terribly familiar intent to those words.

"Don't move," he hissed, and he ran back to the hole in the wall. "Don't you dare try anything—"

She was already gone.

Dio felt his rage begin to boil. He climbed through the hole and glared at his surroundings. Erina could have gone through the living room doorway. Or the bathroom. Or the storage closet. Or the front door, if she had been quick enough. His fingers twitched.

If she was harmed, if everything fell apart now because of one stupid Stand user…

He stepped through the doorway, then stepped back out, and then in again. The motion, ridiculous and brief, only steeled his resolve. The room gradually dimmed.

Dio would gladly meet the Stand user in their own domain. He would gladly fight in the dark and face whatever terrible thing must lay in wait there. Let them try. He would tear them apart.