"Something strange? Like what?" Elara's voice was slow, cautious, her brows knitting as she studied Mara.
Mara didn't answer right away.
She let her gaze linger, eyes tracing every flicker of emotion across the girl's face as if she were studying a delicate map.
"Nothing in particular," she finally said with a small smile. "I was just checking in."
Elara tilted her head, still feeling the unease behind the words.
There was something more there—something unspoken—but she decided to let it go. "Oh… right."
"How about you?" Mara asked, shifting the topic. "How are you holding up? It's been a while since we last moved. How old were you then—nine?"
Elara nodded. "Yeah, I was nine back then… and I was kind of scared at first. But Ashen was there the whole way—always making sure I wasn't in a bad mood." A faint smile crept onto her lips. "He told me so many fairy tales, I'm pretty sure he started making some up just to keep me distracted."
Mara kept her smile, listening without interrupting.
"Even these days, when he's hardly around and always out scouting… he still makes time for me every day. So I never feel lonely or left out."
Mara's chest rose with a quiet sigh.
She nodded slowly. "That's good. I want you two to hold on to that, Elara. In a world where everything else has lost its worth, family is the only thing left worth striving for. I want you to always remember that."
Elara nodded, understanding.
Despite her young age, she had seen enough of the world's cruelty to know exactly what Mara meant—how desperation could strip away every trace of humanity.
"Good," Mara said softly. "You can head back to whatever you were doing."
Elara smiled and returned to folding the worn blankets, though her thoughts were already wandering—wondering, as always, what kind of trouble her brother might have gotten himself into this time.
******
"How in the world did you know about the tunnel?!" Jax's voice cut sharply through the echo of their hurried footsteps.
The narrow passage swallowed sound and light alike.
Damp stone pressed close on either side, and the air was heavy with the scent of wet earth.
Their boots slapped against the uneven ground, water splashing from shallow puddles as they ran.
"I don't know—just instincts, I guess," Ashen replied without slowing down.
"Instincts?" Jax's disbelief carried in his voice. "Do you even know where this thing leads?"
"We'll find out soon enough," Ashen shot back as the tunnel bent sharply to the left.
"Any luck on the radio, Uncle Max?" Rill called from the rear.
Max shook his head, still running. "Nothing. Dead silence."
"Great," Jax muttered under his breath.
The group kept moving, each turn of the tunnel feeling like a mirror of the last—stone, shadow, and more bends ahead.
The air grew cooler with every step, their breaths fogging faintly in the dim light of their lanterns.
Somewhere in the darkness ahead, the faint sound of dripping water echoed like a slow, steady clock.
But they didn't dare slow down—not yet.
And still, the tunnel went on.
******
The sound of boots striking concrete echoed endlessly in the dark, each step ricocheting back in dull, hollow waves.
The tunnel swallowed everything else—no birdsong, no wind, no distant hum of machinery.
Just that steady rhythm, footsteps and breathing, and the occasional cough that sounded far too loud in the cramped space.
The air was damp, thick enough that every inhale tasted faintly of rust and mildew.
Overhead, a cracked pipe wept a slow, metallic-smelling drip that hit the floor in irregular beats.
Somewhere deeper ahead, a faint draft teased at the flames of their hand-held torches, whispering that the tunnel didn't end here… but offered no clue of what waited.
Ashen kept to the front, one hand brushing the damp wall for balance.
The concrete felt clammy, almost soft in places where rot had bitten through the surface.
Behind him, the rest of the group walked in a staggered line—Max, silent and tense, his gun ready; Rill, muttering under her breath; and the others trailing in uneasy silence.
They had been walking for what felt like an hour, but the tunnel offered no change in scenery.
Same crumbling walls, same skeletal pipes, same narrow beam of light ahead that never seemed to grow brighter.
Fatigue pressed into their shoulders like an invisible weight. The constant stoop from low-hanging beams made necks ache.
Rill broke the silence first. "Anyone else feel like we've been walking in circles?"
Max's voice came back low, clipped. "We haven't. The floor's sloping down. We're deeper than when we started."
Ashen didn't look back, but he could hear the strain in both their voices.
He kept moving, partly to keep himself from thinking too much about what Max just said—deeper was rarely good.
A sudden crunch underfoot made him freeze.
His torch beam dipped to the ground, catching on a pale shape in the dust.
A small animal skull, bleached white, with teeth worn down to nubs. It was cracked clean through the center.
Nobody spoke.
They stepped around it.
The tunnel curved left, walls slick now with condensation.
The faint draft from before had turned into a more steady breath of air—not fresh exactly, but less stale than the heavy musk behind them.
And with it came a new sound: faint, irregular scraping, as though something ahead dragged across concrete.
Ashen raised his hand, signaling them to stop.
The scraping paused too.
For a moment, they stood still, their breath held, hearts pounding loud enough to feel in their ribs.
Then, slowly, the noise started again—softer this time, retreating deeper into the dark.
"We're not alone in here," Rill's whisper barely reached Ashen.