They walked for hours without speaking, the silence heavy, the boy's quiet sobs the only sound. Harris was gone. The woman was gone. The forest pressed in on them, thick with shadows that seemed to breathe.
Lena's mind replayed the moment over and over: Harris unraveling, the creature's voice filling her skull, the reflections showing her futures she couldn't bear. Each image stuck like glass splinters in her memory.
By the time the sky dimmed toward evening, exhaustion drove them to a derelict farmhouse on the edge of a field. Windows broken. Roof caved. But it was shelter.
Caleb barred the door with a fallen beam while Lena tried to calm the boy. He was trembling, eyes darting to every creak of the old wood. "It's not gone," he whispered. "It's still here. I can feel it."
Lena knelt, forcing calm into her voice. "It's gone for now. You're safe."
But even as she said it, the whisper tickled the edges of her thoughts: Safe? There is no safe.
She clenched her fists. "Stop it," she muttered under her breath.
Caleb looked over, frowning. "What?"
"Nothing," Lena lied quickly.
---
That night, she dreamed again.
She stood in Zone Echo, walls tall and gleaming, people alive, children laughing. For a moment, hope surged.
Then she saw herself among them—another Lena, smiling, leading others, a survivor who had made it.
But as she drew closer, her other self turned, and its eyes were black voids.
"You will never be me," the doppelgänger hissed. "You will fail them all."
Lena woke screaming.
Caleb was already at her side, gripping her shoulders. "Lena! What did you see?"
She stared at him, chest heaving. For a heartbeat, his face flickered—not Caleb's, but Harris's, blood dripping from his mouth, eyes pleading. She blinked, and it was Caleb again.
Her stomach twisted.
The boy stirred in the corner. "She's changing," he said in a small, broken voice. "The rifts are in her."
Lena's blood ran cold. "No. That's not true."
But Caleb didn't answer right away. His eyes lingered on her a moment too long. Doubting. Measuring.
---
The next day, they pushed on, following the highway north. The air grew colder, the sky darker, even at midday. Violet flickers bled into the clouds, pulsing like veins.
Lena lagged behind, her thoughts muddled. Every sound twisted. Every shadow shifted. More than once, she swore she heard footsteps just behind her, though when she turned, no one was there.
At dusk, as they rested in the shell of a collapsed gas station, she caught the boy staring at her. His face pale, lips trembling.
"What?" she demanded, sharper than she intended.
He flinched. "Your shadow. It's wrong."
Lena glanced down. The firelight stretched her shadow long across the cracked tile floor—except it bent at an unnatural angle, its head tilted though hers was straight.
Her breath caught.
Caleb saw it too. His hand moved slowly toward his rifle.
For the first time since the rifts had opened, Lena wasn't sure if she feared the creatures outside more—
—or the doubt growing inside the only people she had left.