The truck rolled through a hushed valley, its wheels crunching over scattered debris and dry bones. The sun hung low and red, like a blistered eye watching from behind smoke-thick clouds. There was no wind. No birds. No insects.
Just silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that comes before a scream.
Rui leaned against the window, one hand resting on her blade, the other clutching a half-eaten energy bar she hadn't touched in hours. Her eyes scanned the ridgelines, the twisted power poles, the unmoving shapes in the grass.
Something was wrong.
Again.
Beside her, Li Wei drove with a surgeon's precision—never looking away from the road, never relaxing his grip. Every movement was calculated. Every breath shallow.
But Chen Yu?
Chen Yu sat in the back, his face pale, knees pulled up to his chest, muttering into his coat sleeve.
"He spoke through me," he whispered. "Didn't just wear my voice. He walked through it."
Rui looked back at him. "You're not possessed."
"That's what a possessed person would say."
"True," she admitted. "But you're too annoying for an ancient horror to control for long."
He snorted, but it didn't sound real.
They came upon a ghost town by dusk.
The kind that looked untouched.
No burned buildings. No shattered windows. No rotting corpses sprawled across sidewalks.
It was too clean.
"Trap?" Rui asked.
Li Wei didn't answer. He parked the truck near an old clinic with boarded windows.
Chen Yu climbed out, swaying slightly. "What do you think? Radiation leak? Secret Ascendancy lab? Another cult that drinks rainwater and sacrifices goats?"
Rui scanned the rooftops. "Or something worse."
They explored street by street.
The silence followed them like a jealous pet.
Shops were still stocked. Bicycles leaned gently against walls. A hot cup of tea sat on a diner table—stone cold, but not dusty.
It was as if people had vanished mid-breath.
Then they reached the church.
Of course there was a church.
Inside, the pews were cracked but clean. Candles had melted into puddles on the floor. On the wall behind the pulpit, a phrase had been carved:
"DO NOT LISTEN. DO NOT SPEAK. DO NOT THINK."
Chen Yu tilted his head. "My old school motto."
Rui frowned. "This is different."
Li Wei stepped to the pulpit and brushed the edge of the altar.
Then he stiffened.
"What is it?" Rui asked.
He didn't respond.
She stepped forward, touched his shoulder—and he snapped out of it with a gasp.
"Something tried to… pull me in."
They returned to the truck in silence.
Chen Yu climbed onto the roof, knife in hand, muttering numbers.
Rui confronted Li Wei by the hood. "This place is wrong. It's not like the last cult town. It's… hollow."
Li Wei nodded. "Like something used to live here. Something that doesn't move. Something that waits."
Rui looked toward the fading sky.
"Then why are we staying the night?"
Li Wei didn't answer.
The light dimmed in slow, deliberate gulps—until the air itself seemed drained of color. Stars refused to shine. The wind died completely.
Inside the truck, Rui tried not to sleep. She was leaned back in the passenger seat, blade across her lap, ears straining against the quiet.
Li Wei hadn't moved for nearly an hour. He sat still behind the wheel, engine off, radio untouched, eyes closed—but not resting.
Meditating.
Listening.
And Chen Yu?
He hadn't spoken since sundown.
Not a joke. Not a whisper. Not even a mutter.
He sat on the truck's roof, knees drawn in, arms hugging himself tight.
His mouth moved.
But no sound came out.
Rui climbed out quietly and looked up at him.
"Chen?"
He didn't look at her.
"Chen Yu."
Still nothing.
Then, as if his mouth finally remembered how to function, he whispered, "They're here."
Rui's spine locked.
"Who?"
"They're not people."
She climbed up beside him and sat in silence. He finally turned his head slightly, eyes dark.
"There's a war going on here," he said. "But it's not loud. It's quiet. It's inside people. Inside their minds. Like a hum you can't unhear once you notice it."
Rui nodded slowly. "Li Wei felt something too. At the church."
"Yeah," Chen Yu said, voice trembling. "Because something in this place doesn't want us to speak. Doesn't want us to think. And the moment you try to understand it—it finds you."
He looked out over the town again.
"Don't try to understand it, Rui. Don't even try."
Hours later.
Li Wei opened his eyes.
Rui watched him from across the truck. "Where were you just now?"
He didn't answer at first.
Then he said, "I was talking to someone."
"Who?"
"My mother."
Silence.
Rui exhaled. "She's dead."
"I know."
"Was it a dream?"
Li Wei looked at her. His eyes were dry. Focused. "No."
Chen Yu walked into the street alone.
He left his knives behind. No weapons. Just a stick of gum in his mouth and a bottle of water in his hand.
He walked to the center of the square, looked around at the abandoned buildings, and then sat down cross-legged like a child playing at war.
"Alright," he said aloud. "You win."
He waited.
And then he laughed.
Because that was the first mistake.
The world noticed.
Li Wei and Rui felt it instantly.
A pressure. A sensation like something slithering between their ears. Not painful. Not physical.
Just wrong.
"Where's Chen?" Li Wei asked sharply.
Rui pointed.
They ran.
In the center of the town square, they found him—laughing hysterically, eyes wide, pointing at something only he could see.
"There's a choir!" he shouted. "And they're all me!"
Li Wei grabbed his shoulders. "Chen Yu!"
"I'm winning!" Chen cackled. "They're trying to show me my worst memory, but joke's on them! I don't remember it!"
"Shut him up," Rui said.
"What?"
"Shut him up! It's using his thoughts as a door!"
Li Wei slapped Chen across the face—hard.
The laughter stopped.
Chen Yu blinked.
Then vomited blood onto the street.
They carried him back to the truck. His skin was clammy. His breath shallow. Rui checked his pupils—dilated, but responsive.
"His mind is fighting itself," she said.
Li Wei stood outside the truck, staring back at the town.
"They called it a war," he said. "But there's no weapons. Just silence. Isolation. Madness."
Rui looked at him. "Then how do we fight it?"
He clenched his fists. "We don't."
She frowned. "What?"
"We don't fight it. We anchor."
That night, Li Wei lit a fire.
Against every instinct.
Every rule of stealth.
But it worked.
They huddled around it, all three. And Li Wei forced them to talk—about anything.
Rui spoke of a river she once swam in.
Chen Yu—dazed—muttered a limerick about zombie goats.
Li Wei told them a memory he'd never shared before:
The day his father broke his back falling from the rice barn. And how his mother stitched him together with her hands shaking the whole time but never stopping.
Rui listened. Chen Yu cried.
And above them, in the town's dark ruins, the silence grew angry.
They ignored it.
By morning, the pressure was gone.
Not entirely.
But enough.
Chen Yu looked better. Not normal. But alive.
Li Wei packed their bags without speaking.
Rui wiped ash from her boots and muttered, "Let's never come here again."
Chen Yu nodded. "Agreed."
But as they drove away, Rui glanced once more at the town behind them.
And saw something that hadn't been there before:
A figure in the church window.
Smiling.
And mouthing words they couldn't hear.