The river looked exactly the same as when they'd fled from it hours ago, except now there was no one there.
Rou stood on the bank, looking upstream and downstream, but saw only water flowing over rocks and the occasional bird picking at something in the shallows.
No bodies either, which meant something had dragged them away or they'd escaped. He touched his hair, pulling at it while he tried to decide which possibility was more likely.
The blood on his side had stopped flowing, the wounds already starting to close in ways that normal wounds shouldn't, probably another effect of whatever that water had done to him.
His torn shirt hung loose, the fabric stiff with dried blood, but the pain was fading to a dull ache that he could ignore.
He started walking downstream, following the plan the businessman had insisted on before everything went wrong. Two days to a settlement, the witch had said, though she'd also said most of them wouldn't survive that long.
The riverbank was muddy in places, rocky in others, forcing him to move between the water's edge and the tree line depending on the terrain. He kept expecting to find someone, maybe the wedding woman's body caught on rocks, or the teenager hiding in the bushes, or even just scattered belongings that would tell him what happened.
But there was nothing. No torn clothes, no dropped phones, no blood trails leading into the forest. Either the creatures had been thorough in their hunting, carrying bodies away to eat elsewhere, or some of the group had managed to escape downstream while he was being chased into the forest.
An hour of walking and the sun was getting lower, the light through the trees taking on that orange quality that meant evening was coming. He'd need to figure out what to do when darkness fell, whether to keep walking or find somewhere defensible to wait out the night.
Water pooled in his footprints as he walked, more than the muddy ground should have produced. He soon realized it was following him, seeping up from the soil to trail behind like he was leaving a stream in his wake.
'What the hell?'
He concentrated on making it stop, and after a few attempts it did, though he could still feel water all around him in the air, the ground, the river beside him.
Another hour and still no sign of anyone. The river curved through the forest, sometimes wide and shallow, sometimes narrow and deep, but always flowing in the same direction, toward wherever this medieval settlement was supposed to be.
He found a spot where someone had definitely been - the bank was torn up, deep gouges in the mud like something had been dragged, but the marks were already filling with water and he couldn't tell if they were human or monster or something else entirely.
No blood though, which meant nothing since the river would have washed it away.
The forest was quiet, all you could hear were birds, insects and wind through leaves, nothing like the sounds that had haunted them earlier. Whatever pack had hunted them had moved on, either satisfied with what they'd caught or searching for easier prey elsewhere.
'I should feel something,' he thought as he stepped over a fallen log that partially blocked the path. 'Guilt for surviving when others didn't, fear about being alone, worry about what comes next.' But mostly he just felt tired and thirsty but when he knelt to drink from the river, the water tasted flat and wrong compared to what he'd drunk from the pool.
The sun kept sinking, shadows growing longer between the trees, and still he walked because there was nothing else to do. No one to find, no way home, no plan except to follow water downstream toward a settlement that might not even exist.
He stopped when the light got too dim to safely navigate the increasingly rocky riverbank, finding a cluster of boulders that formed a natural shelter on three sides. Not perfect, but better than sleeping in the open.
Tomorrow he'd reach the settlement or he wouldn't. He'd find other survivors or he wouldn't. He'd figure out how to live in this world or he wouldn't.
For now, he sat against the stone and watched the river flow, water calling to water in ways he was only beginning to understand.
---
Rou's eyes snapped open in the darkness.
Something was watching him.
'Don't move. Don't even breathe differently.'
The feeling crawled over his skin like cold fingers, pressing against his awareness in ways that had nothing to do with his new sense. This was older, the survival part of the brain that kept ancestors alive when humans were prey.
'Where is it?'
He kept his breathing steady, eyes barely cracked open, scanning what little he could see. The moon gave just enough light to make out shapes - trees, rocks, the river reflecting silver.
Nothing moved, but the feeling intensified, like death itself had taken interest in him.
'Above? No, the feeling's coming from... behind that large tree. Maybe twenty meters.'
His muscles tensed incrementally, preparing to run without obviously preparing. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't like the pack hunters from earlier. Those had been animals, dangerous but comprehensible.
This felt wrong on a fundamental level.
'Three... two... one.'
He rolled sideways and sprinted, not looking back, not waiting to see what emerged from behind that tree. His feet hit the riverbank running, water splashing with each step.
Behind him, no sound. No crashing through undergrowth, no howling, no chittering. Silence that was worse than any noise because it meant the thing was following without effort.
'It's getting closer.'
He could feel it, that death-presence growing stronger even as he ran faster than he'd ever run before. His body moved with inhuman speed, but the thing behind him wasn't human either.
"Shit, shit, shit—"
The riverbank curved ahead, forcing him to either enter the water or go into the forest. He chose water, plunging into the knee-deep current. It responded to him immediately, parting to let him through while maintaining its resistance behind him.
'Still coming. What the hell is this thing?'
He risked a glance back and wished he hadn't. The shape moving along the riverbank wasn't running - it was flowing, sliding between trees like smoke given form, darker than the night around it. Where moonlight should have revealed features, there was only absence.
"Oh fuck that, fuck everything about that—"
Water erupted around him as he pulled it up, forming a wall between him and the creature. The thing passed through it like it wasn't there, the water simply ceasing to exist where the darkness touched it.
'Can't fight it. Can't outrun it. What else, what else—'
The river forked ahead, one branch going straight, the other curving sharply right into rapids. White water churned over rocks, the current violent enough to smash a normal person to pieces.
'This is a bad idea but I am going to do it anyway.'
He dove into the rapids.
The water caught him immediately, his body slamming into rocks with impacts that should have broken bones. But the water was part of him now, cushioning the worst hits, guiding him through channels between stones even as the current tried to tear him apart.
"Fuck, fuck, FUCK—"
A boulder appeared in his path and he managed to flow around it, the water responding to his desperate need, but his control was slipping. Too much chaos, too much speed, too much—
He shot out of the rapids like a cork from a bottle, landing hard on a sandy bank, coughing up water that tasted like his own blood. Everything hurt, his clothes were shredded worse than before, and he could feel breaks in his ribs.
'Is it still—'
The death-feeling was gone. Either the thing hadn't followed him through the rapids or the violent water had hidden him somehow. He dragged himself further up the bank, every movement sending spikes of pain through his chest.
"What... what was that thing?"
His voice came out rough, barely audible over the sound of the rapids behind him. He touched his hair out of habit and his hand came away bloody. Head wound, probably from the rocks.
'Can't stay here. It might circle around, might even be waiting for me to think I'm safe.'
He forced himself to stand, ribs grinding together in ways that made him want to scream.