Aryan stood with the girl hanging upside down before him, arms crossed, his expression perfectly composed despite the chaos of the night. A dull ache pulsed in his right shoulder, a reminder of the earlier scuffle. The adrenaline was still there, coursing through his veins like fire, but it had crystallized into something colder, more controlled
Something that would have been foreign to the person he'd been just hours ago.
"If I get you down," Aryan said flatly, his voice carrying none of the uncertainty that had plagued him earlier, "would you try to hunt us again?"
The girl looked at him for a moment, blood slowly rushing to her inverted face, making her pale skin flush with an almost feverish intensity.
For a moment, Aryan felt a strange flicker of familiarity. He couldn't place it, and he didn't have time to dwell on it, because in the very next moment, the girl laughed.
The sound was dry, amused... not hysterical or desperate like someone in her position might be expected to sound. Like the whole situation was some elaborate joke only she understood. It echoed strangely in the jungle, bouncing off the trees and seeming to multiply in the darkness. The sound made the hair on Aryan's arms stand up, a primal reaction to something fundamentally wrong with her response.
His eyes narrowed to slits, but his expression remained unchanged, carved from stone. He turned to Varun for backup, the movement deliberate and clearly staged as part of whatever bluff he was running.
Varun, catching Aryan's rhythm despite his confusion about the sudden shift in tactics, nodded grimly.
"Yeah, because we're not exactly in the mood for round two of 'dodge the arrows in the dark.'"
His voice carried a bitter edge that hadn't been there before their night of terror.
This time, the girl laughed again—louder, more genuine. The sound had a razor's edge to it that made both men shift uncomfortably, their hands instinctively moving toward the arrows they have picked up from the ground.
"Oh, this is quite rich," she mocked lightly, her voice carrying that same amused tone that seemed to dismiss their entire ordeal as entertainment. "The great hunters, negotiating with their prey."
Her smirk was visible even hanging upside-down as she scanned them both with those pale, predatory eyes that seemed to catalog every weakness, every hesitation.
"You won't kill me. You can't. Not even if you wanted to."
Aryan raised a brow, his calm facade never wavering even as something cold settled in his stomach.
"You seem awfully sure about that."
Varun frowned, his exhaustion giving way to irritation as he was clearly provoked by her unshakeable confidence. "You're awfully confident for someone hanging like a sack of roots."
She didn't even blink at it. If anything, her smirk widened, transforming her face into something almost feral in the moonlight.
"I've seen your type before," she said, her voice carrying absolute certainty, the kind that came from hard-won experience. "Soft hands. Hesitant eyes. Not made for killing." Her gaze locked onto Varun's with laser intensity.
"You're already second-guessing this whole thing, aren't you? Wondering if maybe you've made a mistake?"
Varun's jaw clenched, his hands balling into fists at his sides. "You don't know anything about us."
"Oh, I know enough." She swayed slightly in the snare, but her voice remained steady and controlled. "I know you spent the whole night running here and there, instead of fighting. I know you're both still thinking there's some way out of this place that doesn't involve blood. And I know that even now, with me helpless and hanging here, you're not planning to kill me."
The accusation hung in the air like a challenge, and Aryan felt something cold settle in his stomach because she was right, and they all knew it. The truth of it was written in their posture, their hesitation, their inability to simply end this threat while they had the chance.
"Maybe we don't want to kill you," he said quietly, his voice carrying a weight that surprised even him. "Maybe that's what makes us different from you."
"Different?" Her laugh this time was sharp, almost bitter. "Are you serious? You think mercy makes you noble? In this place?" She gestured as best she could while inverted. "Look around you. This isn't your world anymore. The rules that you know, that you grew up following, is already breaking apart. Am I not wrong, right?"
Her voice grew harder, more insistent, cutting through the night air like a blade. "The world you know is gone. However much you try to convince yourself otherwise, however much you want to deceive yourself into thinking you can hold onto who you were—the facts can't be changed.
In this lawless land, If you can't change, you won't survive. Not with that tone you have. Not with that hesitation in your eyes."
She paused, letting her words sink in before continuing with brutal honesty. "You're still thinking like the person you were back home. Still trying to be the good guy, the great moral one. But good guys don't last long here. They turn into corpses with clean consciences."
The words hit harder than Aryan wanted to admit, striking at the very core of his identity. He thought about the whispers that had plagued him, about the way this place seemed designed to strip away everything civilized, everything human.
Now he was sure about one thing, he was not on Earth anymore. And the worst thing, he can't do anything about that, until...
"So what is your suggestion?" he asked, his voice still level despite the turmoil beneath. "We kill each other until only one person is left? That's your grand scheme for survival?"
"My plan is simple, don't die," she replied simply, matter-of-factly. "Whatever it takes. And so far, that's meant staying ahead of everyone else who's had the same bright idea you just had."
Varun stepped forward, his patience clearly wearing thin, his earlier fear transforming into something more dangerous. "So if we let you down, you'll just go right back to hunting us?"
She studied him for a long moment, and for the first time, something like genuine consideration flickered across her features. The mask of predatory confidence slipped just slightly, revealing something more complex underneath.
"Probably," she admitted with startling honesty. "Unless you've got a better idea."
The admission was somehow more unsettling than any threat would have been. At least threats could be dismissed or challenged. But this casual acceptance of her intentions, delivered without malice or anger, felt like staring into an abyss that reflected uncomfortable truths about survival and human nature.
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the gentle creaking of the vine supporting her weight. The forest around them was eerily quiet, too quiet, as if even the normal sound of the night had been muted by some unseen presence.
Aryan found himself thinking about his mother and Kaya again, about the person he'd been just half day ago. Would they recognize him now? Would they understand the decisions he was making, the terrible mathematics of survival that this place demanded?
"There has to be another way," he said, more to himself than to the others, but the words carried hope despite everything.
The girl's expression softened just a fraction, revealing something almost human beneath the predatory exterior. "Maybe there is. But I haven't found it yet."
"And we're gonna find it, no matter what it takes. For that we need to move," Aryan said finally, a new resolve settling over him. "All of us."
The girl's eyes sharpened with interest. "Are you making me an offer?"
"I'm making us all an offer," he replied, his voice gaining strength. "A temporary ceasefire. Until we figure out what this place really wants from us."
She was quiet for a long moment, swaying gently in the snare like a macabre pendulum. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its mocking edge, replaced by something that might have been respect.
"You're either very brave or equally stupid."
"Probably both," Varun muttered, but there was less hostility in his voice now.
"And if I agree to this... ceasefire?" she asked, her tone carefully neutral.
Aryan met her gaze steadily, his decision crystallizing with each word. "Then you will be free from you shackles and see if three people can solve this tangled puzzle faster than one."
The girl studied him intently, as if trying to read something deeper in his expression, searching for deception or weakness. "You really think there's some grand puzzle to solve here? Some way out that doesn't involve eliminating the competition?"
"I think," Aryan said carefully, choosing his words with precision, "that we've all been assuming we understand the rules of this place. But what if there is something we're doing wrong? What if there's something we're missing because we've been too busy trying to kill each other to notice?"
The silence that followed was heavy with consideration. Even Varun seemed to be weighing the possibility, his earlier bravado replaced by genuine thought as he processed the implications.
"One week," the girl said suddenly, her voice cutting through the contemplative quiet. "I'll give you one week to prove your theory. After that..." She shrugged as best she could while hanging.
"After that, we go back to the way things were. deal?"
"Yes yes, Deal," Aryan replied without hesitation.