73 – The Wooden Bridge [2]
Moon and Kai still sat with their eyes shut tight, heads bowed so low their chins dug into their chests. Their knees were drawn up against their bodies, as if curling smaller could make them invisible. The damp air pressed against their skin like cold clinging to every pore. Each shallow breath tasted faintly of metal and rot, as though the air itself had been sitting still for centuries.
And then—without warning—Kai felt it.
A slow, deliberate lick across the back of his neck.
It wasn't quick, not the kind of reflexive animal taste. This was lingering—warm, wet, and cruelly unhurried—ending with the faint scrape of something rough, almost like a cat's tongue, but heavier… too human in intent. The warmth faded instantly, replaced by a crawling chill that sank down his spine and into his gut.
His breath froze halfway in his throat.
Then—nothing. Not the quiet of a night's rest, not the stillness of an empty place. This was the wrong kind of silence—the kind that feels thick, like it's smothering every sound, crushing even the tiny noises your own body makes. The kind where your heartbeat suddenly feels so loud you're sure something else can hear it.
The pond—was gone in that silence. No wind. No ripples of water . No distant animals. Just a heavy, airless pause, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Minutes dragged on like hours. Kai tried to count them in his head, anything to keep the fear from splitting him open. But his mind betrayed him, throwing up images of things crouching just inches away, faces hanging upside down, mouths too wide, watching him. His body shivered .
Moon hadn't moved at all, his forehead pressed to his knees so hard it must have hurt, hands clenched white around his shins. Kai could hear his brother's breaths—short, fast, ragged—as though each one was a fight to keep from making a sound.
And so they stayed. Not daring to lift their heads. Not daring to shift their weight. Not daring to exist too loudly.
Kai didn't know how long it had been when his leg started to cramp. It could have been ten minutes. It could have been a lifetime.
At last, against every screaming instinct, he dared to lift his head—slowly, painfully slowly—until his eyes peeked above his knees.
Nothing.
No shapes in the dark.
No whispering.
No flicker of movement at the edges of sight.
And yet, something about the shadows felt… heavier. As though the darkness itself had gathered.
His neck burned with the memory of that lick, and the urge to glance over his shoulder was a living thing clawing at him. But the rule was there, coiled in his mind like barbed wire:
Do. Not. Look. Back.
He reached out with trembling fingers and shook Moon. The touch was enough to make his brother jerk, eyes snapping open with a soundless gasp.
"They're gone," Kai whispered, though he didn't believe it. The words tasted like a lie. "Let's move."
The ground beneath them seemed to groan as they shifted, as if protesting their decision to leave. And somewhere—deep behind them in that endless suffocating dark—something wet breathed in.
Moon hesitated, raising his head in jerks, scanning the dim expanse the way Kai had—careful, slow, incomplete.
"Really? Gone?"
Kai gave a single, tense nod.
They walked on.
Or maybe they drifted—two hollow shells shuffling forward, each step an act of defiance against the bridge's endlessness. Time had no meaning here. Hours bled together into a single stretched nerve, vibrating with fear. The planks beneath their feet were slick with a clammy moisture, smelling faintly of old rain and something far less natural—like meat left too long in the heat.
The bridge never changed. The same pale ropes swayed against the black void, the same milky fog clung to the air, the same splintered boards creaked underfoot. More than once, they thought they saw something—
A shadow, just at the edge of sight, twitching unnaturally.
A hunched figure standing ahead on the planks, perfectly still—
Gone the moment they blinked.
Moon's terror didn't disappear. It hardened. His mind was so saturated with dread that it had nowhere else to go, calcifying into a brittle, glass-like numbness. He didn't even jump when the next sound came.
The crawling.
It started as a faint drag, like cloth over wood. But then came the scrape—high-pitched, almost metallic, the unmistakable kiss of bone against plank. The sound followed them. Always beneath them. Always matching their steps. Slow when they slowed. Faster when they hurried.
It wasn't footsteps. Footsteps had weight, rhythm.
This had hunger.
They ignored it at first, the way you ignore a faint itch on your skin when you know scratching will make it worse. Eyes fixed ahead. Never down. Never back.
And then—a shape emerged ahead.
A ladder. Wooden, narrow, rising out of the bridge like a spine. Only twenty meters tall. And above it—light. Real light. Not the cold, washed-out glow of the fog, but something warm and golden, spilling down like the promise of safety.
For the first time in what felt like eternity, hope flared in Kai's chest. They quickened their pace.
That's when it appeared.
Not on the bridge—in the air before them. A thin shimmer, like heat waves over asphalt, bending reality itself. The shimmer thickened, pulsed, and then—PING—a translucent screen bloomed into existence.
Only one word burned on it, in jagged, bleeding red:
RUN.
The letters pulsed in time with their heartbeats.
Moon's voice was barely a whisper. "What—"
And then the sound came.
The bridge behind them exploded into noise—a deep, wrenching CRACK, followed by a chain reaction of splintering wood. The planks began to collapse, falling away into the black abyss below. But it wasn't just gravity taking them—something was pulling them down.
Kai dared a glance over his shoulder.
He wished he hadn't.
Beneath the falling wood was not emptiness—it was a mouth. A vast, faceless maw with no eyes, no features, only teeth like blackened gravestones jutting out from endless gums. It wasn't in the void—it was the void. And it was climbing up.
The destruction raced toward them, devouring bridge and rope and air itself.
They ran.
The bridge swayed violently under their feet, each plank vibrating as if in the grip of some immense heartbeat. They weren't fast—by the standards of this world, they were painfully slow, human-slow—but adrenaline drove them just ahead of the collapsing ruin. Every footfall was a gamble; at any second, the board beneath them could give way.
Ten meters from the ladder, Kai's toe caught on a jagged plank.
He pitched forward with a strangled cry, the world tilting sideways. For a single breath, Moon thought he was gone—just gone—swallowed before he could even scream.
But instinct overrode thought. Moon lunged, his hands locking around his brother's arm in a grip that could have crushed bone. He hauled Kai upward, muscles screaming, and together they stumbled toward the ladder.
They didn't climb—they fled upward.
The ladder's rungs were slick, the wood swollen and soft, as though it had been submerged for years. Each step seemed to stretch the distance, the top receding just beyond reach. The air thickened, slowing their movements, dragging on their limbs like invisible tar. The sounds of destruction were right below them now—timbers snapping, ropes shrieking under impossible strain, and that awful, wet inhale.
Minutes became hours.
Kai's arms burned; his palms were raw where splinters dug in. Moon's legs trembled so violently he thought they might simply give out. Their breath rasped in the stale air, their throats dry and aching, every swallow a knife.
And then—light.
They hauled themselves over the top, collapsing onto cold stone. For a long time, neither moved. The only sound was their heaving breaths—and the faint, distant echo of the bridge finally tearing away into nothingness.
When they opened their eyes, they saw it.
Spread before them, bathed in an unearthly silver glow, was a city. Towers of glass and bone, streets paved with veins of faintly glowing stone, windows like staring eyes that reflected no light. The architecture was impossibly elegant, yet… wrong. Angles bent in ways that tricked the mind. Buildings seemed to shift when you weren't looking directly at them.
And every street was empty.
Yet they felt watched.
To be continued…