The door held.
Silence took a long breath—then settled on them like ash. Dust spiraled in the beam of Kaai's dying fire, fell soundless to the concrete. He could still feel the last impact in his bones, a phantom tremor humming along his ribs, but the world beyond the steel was quiet. Too quiet.
Cold crept in.
Not a breeze there was no draft in this sealed box just a leeching chill that crawled out of the walls, drank the heat from his skin, numbed his fingers first, then his thoughts. When he breathed, it came out in pale ghosts that hovered and slid down the metal like spilled milk.
Across from him, the girl stood with her back to the door, sword angled low, hair dimmed to a thin, steady silver. The glow painted a thin halo on the floor, enough to keep the corners from becoming mouths. Her eyes never left the seam where steel met frame, as if the next breath might punch through it.
Kaai sank to a sit, back to the opposite wall. The concrete bit through his clothes. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. He pressed his palms together, forced them still. 'Not dead. Not yet.'
The building answered him with a distant groan—metal settling, or something heavier leaning on the mall's bones.
Then the night began.
The silence after the pounding ceased was almost sentient.
It breathed with them — a low, oppressive rhythm that filled the safe room until every heartbeat sounded like terror.
The steel walls pressed inward, unyielding and cold. The air was stale, tasting of old dust and rust, like the breath of a tomb.
Kaai sat with his rifle resting across his lap, head tilted against the wall, every nerve still singing from the chase. His hands wouldn't still. The tremor had nothing to do with cold.
Across from him, the Ediron girl crouched, sword resting by her knees. Her silver hair drifted weightlessly, a faint halo of dying light. Her eyes were half-lidded, not in rest, but in watchfulness — a predator pretending at calm.
Minutes slipped by, dissolving into something slower, heavier.
The air thickened, pressing on Kaai's chest until even breathing felt disobedient.
Exhaustion crept in, gentle, deceitful. His eyelids grew heavy, and he let his head sag forward.
Just a second. Just a moment's peace—
Whispers.
Soft, sibilant, threading through the air like cobwebs catching his thoughts.
At first, he thought they were his own breath echoing wrong. Then he realized — the words came back out of sync, as if repeated by a mouth he couldn't see.
The girl's eyes snapped open, irises burning pale. Her hair rose in a violent ripple.
The shadows stirred.
They did not move — they shivered, pulsing as though the room itself had learned to breathe.
"What is this" Kaai asked. Voice trembling
Only the sound of the dark rearranging itself.
The floor trembled, subtle but rhythmic, like the heartbeat of something beneath them.
The air folded, bent, and before Kaai could blink reality tore like paper stretched too thin.
He opened his eyes and the world was… wrong.
The safe room was gone.
He stood once again in the mall — but stretched, warped, infinite.
The aisles ran endlessly in both directions, repeating like mirrored glass. Each shelf bore the same arrangement: the same cans, the same faded labels, the same tilted price tags.
Kaai turned a slow circle.
Everywhere he looked, the world repeated itself — reflections chasing reflections until space itself lost its meaning.
He moved, and the echo of his footsteps returned a second late.
The sound was his, but not.
The girl followed in silence, her glow the only constant. Yet even that shimmer bled and doubled — one light, then two, then three — all pulsing to a rhythm he couldn't match.
Then he saw them.
In a distant aisle — two figures. Himself and the girl. Walking in sync, mimicking every motion a heartbeat too late.
When he raised his hand, the echo raised theirs — but the reflection smiled.
Kaai froze.
His throat worked, but no sound came out.
He tried again, still no words came out.
Something dripped.
A single sound at first — drip… drip… drip — faint and rhythmic, like a leaking ceiling. But there was no ceiling above, only the fractured skylights fading into endless black.
The girl's sword shimmered weakly, her glow paling like a dying star.
Then came the scrape.
Wet. Slow. deliberate.
Shapes emerged from between the shelves — melting together, separating, reforming. Flesh bending like wax, limbs branching where they shouldn't.
They whispered.
"Kaai…"
"Stay… with us…"
"You left us…"
He stumbled back, pulse screaming in his ears. The words — they weren't strangers. They were voices he knew.
'Uncle Jo…?' he thought.
The nearest creature tilted its head, mouth stretching into a human smile sewn with black thread.
The girl lunged, blade blazing white, and sliced it cleanly in two.
But the halves convulsed — each wound opening like lungs inhaling. The pieces grew, splitting, reforming.
Kaai fired.
The bullets spun midair, warping off course, curving into the shelves. The echo of each shot folded in on itself, too loud, too near.
The lights above flickered.
Each flash unveiled new horrors closer: limbs disjointed but crawling, eyes set in wrong places, mouths that smiled upside down.
Kaai's breath fractured. He couldn't tell where the nightmare ended and he began.
The next flicker devoured everything in black.
When light returned — the creatures were inches away.
The darkness shivered—then split open.
Kaai fell through it, not down but inward, into a storm of broken moments.
Each memory rose like a shard of glass, gleaming with grief and slicing as it passed.
He saw the hospital first.
White walls, white sheets, white light—so bright it burned through the tears in his eyes.
His father lay there, chest open, monitors wailing.
A voice echoed above him: "Compatible heart donor located—immediate transplant."
But the donor wasn't a stranger.
It was him.
Kaai's father had smiled, even as the sedatives dimmed his eyes.
"It's fine, kid. One day, you'll live for both of us."
Then the world had gone sterile and red.
Beeping. Silence. A new heartbeat pounding inside Kaai's chest that was never his to claim.
He gasped as the memory twisted.
The funeral—small, quiet, full of stares that never left him.
"He killed his father to live."
"Monster."
"Ungrateful freak."
The words followed him everywhere—hallways, alleys, dreams.
Then home:
His mother on the couch, bottle in hand, mascara running down her cheeks.
"You should've died instead."
"He gave you his heart, and you gave me nothing."
She cried " just a painful reminder of what you took from me"
Kaai's hands shook. The smell of liquor and stale air returned like a ghost pressing its lips to his ear.
Then came Uncle Jo—strong arms, a warm laugh, the last good thing left.
He'd promised,
"You're not alone, kid. I've got you. Always."
But that promise faded like smoke in the rain.
An empty chair. A door that never opened again.
Kaai screamed—but no sound left his throat.
The world around him bled to black mud, swallowing the fragments of his life.
And in the mire, a body waited—broad shoulders, rough hands, still.
His father.
Kaai dropped to his knees, mud splashing up his arms.
The man's chest was motionless. His skin pale, cracked, lifeless.
Kaai's hands trembled as they brushed the coat sleeve — the same one he'd worn that day.
"Dad…"
The word left him like a confession.
He waited for warmth, for forgiveness—something.
Instead, the corpse moved.
The head tilted. The eyes opened—not two, but twelve, blooming like wounds.
"Wake up."
Kaai's breath hitched.
"Wake up."
The voice came again, layered, human and not.
Mud erupted around the body, black hands clawing upward, dragging him down. Kaai fought, screaming without sound, swallowed by the darkness.
Then, in one flash of white, the world turned inside out
and he woke.
Yet the world still screamed in whispers.