We walked until the forest thinned, until trees turned skeletal against the sky, their blackened branches scratching faint shapes into the pale morning. Two days of silence trailed us out, heavy as the shadows that clung to our boots. Silence, hunger, and the weight of what we'd left behind without time to bury.
Bill led the way, his pace steady, unbroken. The rhythm of his boots and breath was the only language left between us. His back stayed straight even when his shoulders trembled, every step a quiet admission that we were alive, and that being alive still demanded payment.
Julian lagged a few paces behind me, slower, his voice a low hum tangled in fragments of songs that no longer had melodies. Sometimes he laughed under his breath, that same strange, half-mad sound that had followed us through the forest fight. I didn't ask what was funny. Maybe he didn't know either.
The forest had grown too still. Even the wind had forgotten how to move through it. The air smelled of moss and smoke and something older — rot settling into the roots, the scent of a place that had seen too much blood and learned to be indifferent.
We didn't speak. We didn't need to. There was nothing left worth naming.
So we just kept moving. Forward, because backward wasn't an option.
The ground began to change beneath us: soft soil hardening into gravel, the crunch of stone replacing the soft give of earth. The trees thinned further until they gave way entirely to the skeletal outline of wire fences and steel posts.
And then I saw it.
The Hunter Academy.
It rose from the valley floor like the skeleton of a god, built of black stone and glass that caught no light. The walls were tall and smooth, the kind of architecture that didn't ask for admiration, only obedience. Even from a distance, it didn't look alive, it looked awake.
We didn't rush. None of us did. The path ahead felt inevitable — the kind of pull that wasn't movement but gravity. The closer we came, the quieter the world became, until even Julian's humming faded. The gravel road stretched straight and empty between the fences, each lined with coils of wire humming faintly with current. The air trembled with the sound: low, constant, unwelcoming.
When the gates appeared, they were taller than I remembered. Smooth metal, reinforced and cold, without a single mark to suggest human touch. There were no guards waiting, no eyes visible, though I knew there were many. The place watched differently: quietly, through sensors and machines, through air that remembered everything.
Bill stopped first. He stepped forward, gloved fingers brushing the scanner embedded in the gate's frame. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a faint blue light bloomed beneath his palm, and the gates unlocked with a hiss, not a sound of welcome, but of calculation.
The doors parted slowly, metal sighing as if exhaling stale breath.
We stepped inside.
The courtyard spread wide and clean before us - too clean. Not a single leaf, no dirt, no sign that the world outside existed here. The concrete underfoot gleamed faintly under the gray light, smooth and sterile. Above us, the towers stretched into the clouds, their windows thin and dark, reflecting nothing.
Julian tilted his head back to look up at them. "Creepy how neat it is," he said after a long silence, his voice raw, almost laughing. "Like someone bleached the world."
Neither Bill nor I answered.
The air inside the gates was different: thinner, colder, filtered through machines that stripped it of scent and warmth. My lungs fought it at first, resisting the clean taste. It wasn't the air of the living. It was the air of preservation.
We followed the main path deeper into the compound. The only sounds were the echo of our footsteps and the faint hiss of ventilation shafts hidden in the walls. The emptiness pressed against me in a way that felt almost deliberate, as if the Academy was testing how much quiet we could stand before we broke.
The closer we came to the first building, the more my chest tightened. The structure loomed above us: enormous, unyielding, built not to inspire but to contain. Its walls swallowed the light, leaving the edges of everything uncertain.
It wasn't just architecture. It was design made from control.
When we reached the stair that led into the hall, Bill stopped long enough to wipe a streak of mud from his sleeve. The gesture was almost reverent - not pride, not fear, just recognition.
Julian's voice came from behind me, low and dry. "You think they'll even remember we're gone?"
"I don't think so," I said.
He grinned at that, a flash of teeth. "Then it's perfect."
We climbed the stairs together. The door at the top slid open without a sound.
Inside, the air was colder still. Lights flickered overhead in long white strips, the hum beneath them constant and unnerving. The hall was wide, stretching into shadow at both ends. No guards, no instructors, no movement.
I could feel it settling into me already, that quiet discipline the Hunter academy was built to instill - not through words, but through presence.
Here, the walls didn't speak. They listened.
For a moment, I couldn't hear anything except our breathing, three uneven rhythms trying to find the same pace. The hall stretched out ahead, long and pale under strips of white light. The air was cold, sterilized, smelling faintly of metal and rain that had never touched real soil.
Then a voice came from the far end of the corridor.
"You made it."
A man stepped into view. His coat was the color of gunmetal, buttoned high to his throat. His face carried the kind of stillness that only comes from too many years spent commanding people who didn't always come back. He wasn't old, but his eyes were.
He looked at us one by one, assessing rather than greeting. "Group Nine," he said, as though confirming a note in his mind. "Another three survivors."
Bill straightened instinctively, shoulders drawn back, his discipline returning like a reflex. Julian tilted his head with a faint grin, the picture of someone pretending not to care.
The man's gaze lingered on me a moment longer before he spoke again."I'm Instructor Albert. You'll address me as sir until told otherwise."
He turned sharply, his boots striking the floor in precise, steady beats. "Follow me."
We did. There was something in his tone that didn't invite choice.
As we walked, his voice filled the corridor.
"This is the Hunter Academy. I imagine you've already guessed what kind of place this is, but allow me to correct whatever illusions you still have."
We turned a corner, the hallway opening into a long gallery of glass panels. Behind the glass, I saw movement: rows of figures, each moving in sync, their footsteps echoing like a single, shared heartbeat. Their uniforms were spotless. Their faces still had that unbroken, untouched look of youth.
Albert stopped, glancing briefly at them. "Block One." His tone softened slightly, almost out of respect. "The youngest recruits begin here. They're taught obedience, precision, loyalty. They believe in the order we build. They still think rules are the same as safety."
The students beyond the glass turned as one at the sound of a whistle, their faces eerily blank. The perfection of their movement made my stomach twist.
Albert started walking again. "They'll learn soon enough that belief alone doesn't keep anyone alive."
The corridor bent left. The air shifted: cooler, quieter. Through another glass wall I saw older trainees, their faces leaner, sharper. Some were sparring, their movements clean and brutal, others sat motionless on the floor, eyes closed, listening to an unseen voice in the room.
"Block Two ." Albert's steps slowed. "This is the Hunter Academy's center. The ones here have already seen the edges of the world and refused to fall. Block Two teaches endurance. Not the strength to fight, the strength to remain human after the fight is over. They learn to hold the line between discipline and madness."
Julian snorted softly. "Sounds like a fun place."
Albert didn't turn. "Fun is not part of the curriculum."
Bill said nothing. His silence was steady, heavy with something like respect.
We kept walking. The next stairwell led downward, into colder air and dimmer light. The walls here grew thicker, reinforced with metal beams. Cameras followed us with quiet mechanical whirs.
Albert's voice dropped lower. "And below all of this lies the last block."
We reached the bottom landing. A door of dark steel stood there, sealed with heavy locks. A single red light blinked above it in slow, steady rhythm.
"Block Three."
The words hung in the air for a long moment.
"They are the discarded," Albert said at last. "Murderers, smugglers, defectors — the ones too dangerous to execute and too useful to ignore. They're given a choice: reform or rot. Some learn to serve. Most do not."
A sound echoed faintly from beyond the steel door — something metallic dragged across stone, followed by a laugh that didn't sound entirely human.
Julian's grin flickered. "And they live down there?"
"Live is generous," Albert replied. "They exist. And that's enough."
He didn't linger. We climbed back up the stairs, leaving the sound and whatever made it behind.
As we walked, he spoke again, his words carrying through the narrow space between us. "The Hunters Academy's structure is simple. Block One builds obedience. Block Two builds control. Black Three reclaims chaos. Each produces Hunters in its own way. The difference is what's left of the person afterward."
No one answered. There was nothing to say that didn't sound small.
We emerged into a broader corridor lined with steel doors and high ceilings. At the far end stood a massive set of gates engraved with three words: ASSIGNMENT HALL B.
Albert stopped there, facing us. "This is where you're divided. You don't choose where you belong. The Hunter Academy decides that for you."
Julian's grin returned, lazy but sharp. "And if we don't like its decision?"
Albert's mouth curved, not into a smile, exactly, but something close to the idea of one. "Then you're welcome to turn around and walk back into the home."
The silence that followed was answer enough.
He pressed his palm to the scanner beside the door. The lock released with a deep, mechanical click, and the gates slid open.
Inside, the hall was vast. Rows of recruits stood waiting beneath a high ceiling of glass and steel. Their shadows stretched long across the polished floor. At the front of the room, a screen glowed faintly, the scroll of numbers moving down its surface like falling rain.
Albert gestured for us to enter. "Stand with the others. Listen carefully. When your number is called, step forward. Don't speak. Don't question. Move where you're told."
He paused, his gaze resting briefly on me again. "Remember this: wherever the Academy sends you, it's because it has already seen what you are capable of. Whether that becomes your strength or your ruin is entirely up to you."
Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps fading into the hum of the hall's machinery.
We stood in place, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, the light above too bright, the air too still. Somewhere deep within the walls...
And in that silence, one thought kept circling my mind: "We hadn't walked into safety. We'd walked into the next surviving test."