For a long moment after Zadkiel left, nobody moved. Nobody spoke. We just sat there in that blood-soaked room, breathing, existing, trapped.
'We're going to die here', I thought, staring at the dark hallway where Zadkiel had disappeared. 'We're going to die in this mansion and nobody will ever find our bodies. Our families will never know what happened to us.'
"Fuck," Diego whispered, and the single word seemed to break whatever spell had been holding us frozen. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
Amara started rocking faster, her breathing coming in short, sharp gasps that sounded like she might hyperventilate. Zara moved toward her but seemed uncertain what to do, her hands hovering uselessly in the air.
But then Priya spoke, her voice cutting through the rising hysteria like a blade.
"We need to take stock of our resources."
Everyone turned to look at her. She'd pulled out her phone and was already scrolling through something, her jaw still clenched but her eyes focused. Practical. Calculating.
"What?" Diego asked, his voice hollow.
"Resources," Priya repeated, looking up at us with those analytical eyes. "What do we have? What can we use? If we're trapped here, we need to figure out how to survive. Starting now."
'Is she serious right now?' I thought, staring at her. ;Kai's blood is still wet on the floor. Levi vanished less than ten minutes ago. And she's talking about taking inventory like this is some kind of camping trip?'
But even as I thought it, I realized she was right. What else could we do? Sit here and wait to die? Wait for another monster to find us?
What she was doing was the logical thing to do, but it didn't make it feel any less eerie.
"My phone still has battery," Priya continued when nobody responded. "Seventy-three percent. What about the rest of you?"
Zara pulled out her phone with shaking hands. "Forty-eight percent."
"Sixty-two," Diego said quietly, checking his screen.
I fumbled for my phone with my good hand, nearly dropping it. "Twenty-three percent." The same number it had been when we were hiking. Was that even up to an hour ago?
Amara didn't respond. She wasn't even looking at us anymore.
"We need to turn them off," Priya said. "Conserve battery. Does anyone have a power bank?"
"Kai did," Zara said, then stopped, her voice catching. "Kai had everything. His backpack..."
The silence that followed was heavy with the same realization. Kai's backpack. His perfectly organized, pre-med prepared backpack with the first-aid kit and supplies and probably a power bank. Sitting in the room where he'd died.
"What about food?" Priya pressed on, not acknowledging the elephant in the room. "Anyone have snacks from the hike?"
Diego reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two protein bars, slightly crushed. "This is it for me."
Zara had a bag of trail mix, half-empty. I had nothing—I'd eaten my granola bar on the trail. Amara might have had something, but she still wasn't responding to anything.
"That's not enough," Priya said, but she was already typing something on her phone. Making a list, probably. "We'll need to ration it. And find more. There has to be food somewhere in this mansion. A kitchen. Storage rooms. Something."
Part of me wanted to be annoyed by Priya, making herself the self-apppointed leader—the same part that was still angry about her voting for me to be sacrificed.
But another part was relieved. Someone needed to think clearly, and I definitely wasn't in any state to do it.
"Try calling someone," Diego said suddenly. "Try 911. Maybe we can get help."
Priya was already trying, her phone to her ear. She waited, then shook her head. "It's not going through. The call connects but there's no ring, no voicemail, nothing."
"Let me try," Zara said, dialing frantically. After a moment, she lowered the phone, confused. "I have full bars. Like, perfect signal. But the call just... dies."
I checked my own phone. Five bars. Perfect reception. But when I tried to call my roommate, the same thing happened—the call connected to nothing, just dead air.
"Text," Priya said. "Try texting someone outside."
We all tried. I sent a message to my roommate, Derek: HELP. TRAPPED. CALL POLICE. The message showed as sent, the little checkmark appearing, but something felt wrong about it. Like it was being sent into a void.
"Text each other," Priya said. "See if that works."
She sent a message to the group chat we'd made for the hiking trip—the one that still had Kai and Levi's names in it. My phone buzzed immediately. Diego's did too. Zara's.
"It works between us," Priya said, her voice tight. "But nothing's getting out. The mansion is blocking external communication."
'Of course it is', I thought bitterly. 'Why would this place let us call for help? That would be too easy.'
"Okay," Diego said, standing up with visible effort. He still had the brass candlestick clutched in one hand, his knuckles white around it. "So what's the plan? We can't stay here. That door—" he gestured to the demolished entrance, "—is gone. We're completely exposed. And there's no guarantee another room with a door would even be enough to protect us."
"We need to move," Priya agreed. "Find somewhere more defensible. And we need to clean up Ethan's blood trail before it attracts anything else."
'The blood trail'. I'd almost forgotten about Zadkiel's warning. I looked down at my arm—Zara's makeshift bandage was already soaked through, dark red spreading across the torn fabric.
"There," Zara said, pointing to some old linens on one of the shelves. "We can use those to clean the floor."
As she moved to grab them, something clicked in my mind. "Wait. Kai had a first-aid kit."
Everyone stopped.
"In his backpack," I continued, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. "He had a whole first-aid kit. Actual bandages. Antiseptic. Everything we need to treat—" I pointed to my blood-soaked arm— "this properly."
"We'd have to go back," Diego said slowly. "To that room. Where..."
Where Kai died. Where the woman-thing had torn out his throat. Where his blood was still pooled on the floor.
The thought made my stomach turn, but Priya was already nodding. "We have to. We need that kit. And the power bank. And whatever else he had that might help us survive."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Zara's voice rose, her hands shaking worse now. "Go back there? What if that thing comes back? What if there are more of them?"
"Zadkiel already killed it. And if there are more, then Diego hits them with the candlestick," Priya said flatly. "Look, I don't like it either. But Ethan needs medical attention before that wound gets infected, and we need supplies. We'll have to leave here eventually. It's worth the risk."
Is it? I wondered. Is Kai's backpack worth potentially dying for?
But I was already standing up, using the wall for support. My arm throbbed with each heartbeat, and I could feel myself getting weaker from blood loss. If we didn't treat this wound soon, infection would be the least of my worries.
"Let's make it quick," Diego said, adjusting his grip on the candlestick. "In and out. Get the backpack and leave. Hopefully find another empty room we can hide in and barricade the door for safety. This place is huge. I think we'll live."
"What about her?" Zara gestured to Amara, who still hadn't moved from her corner.
Priya crouched down in front of her. "Amara. Amara, look at me." When that didn't work, she grabbed her shoulder and shook her, not very gently. "We're leaving this room. You need to come with us. Can you do that?"
Amara's eyes finally focused on Priya's face. She nodded slowly, mechanically, but didn't speak.
"Good enough," Priya said, helping her stand. "Stay close to us."
We gathered what little we had—the protein bars, the trail mix, our phones all turned off to save battery. Diego kept the candlestick. I felt useless with my injured arm, but Zara handed me one of the old linens we'd found.
"For the blood," she said quietly. "We'll clean as we go."
The hallway outside was illuminated by old-fashioned lightbulbs—the kind from the 1920s or 30s, with visible filaments that cast a warm, flickering glow. They hung from ornate fixtures, spaced far enough apart that shadows pooled between them.
The atmosphere was oppressive. Every shadow seemed to move. Every creak of the old mansion made us jump. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Every instinct was screaming at me to run.
But run where? We were trapped. The only way out was through.
We moved slowly, checking each intersection before crossing it. I tried to wipe up the blood drops as we went, but my injured arm made it awkward, and I was leaving smears more than cleaning. Diego had to help me, using one hand while keeping the candlestick ready in the other.