The silence after pain was worse than the pain itself.
Lucas remained on his knees, breath short and uneven, his arm hanging limp, blood dripping into the snow. Naomi barely stirred, her body trembling from the remnants of the poison. Harlan watched them with that cold, inhuman calm while Rhea filled the syringe with the makeshift antidote. Eli, still wounded, kept his rifle leveled at Lucas's chest, finger taut on the trigger.
"Serum's ready," Rhea announced, holding up the vial.
"Who lives, boss?"
Harlan let out a rough, short laugh, savoring it.
"Neither. Not yet. I want to see if the hero bleeds more from fear or from guilt."
Lucas glared at him, teeth clenched, body trembling on the edge of collapse.
The snow hit his face, melting against the fever heat beneath his skin.
And through the wind came a distant sound… something that didn't belong to the frozen calm.
Then—gunfire.
Three shots. Then four more. Distant, sharp cracks cutting through the air.
Harlan's head snapped toward the sound, his body sparking with alarm.
"What the hell was that?" he growled.
Eli narrowed his eyes, scanning through the storm with his thermal vision.
"Our people," he muttered. "The rear team… they're fighting something."
Rhea frowned.
"Something? What kind of something?"
"I don't know… but it's fast. Really fast." His voice wavered. "And our men are dropping."
Harlan cursed under his breath and turned to Rhea.
"Stay with the girl. If anyone gets close, kill her."
"And the other one?" she asked, glancing at Lucas.
"I'll handle him," Harlan said.
But chaos doesn't wait for orders.
The moment tension coiled between them, Naomi opened her eyes.
Her vision was blurred, her body burning from within, but she saw her chance—
Rhea, distracted, the vial in her hand, her back turned.
Naomi moved.
With the last surge of strength she had, she lunged.
Her hands closed around Rhea's throat, nails digging in, twisting flesh.
Rhea screamed, raw and startled, thrashing. The syringe fell, shattered in the snow.
"Lucas!" Naomi screamed, her voice breaking. "Run! Don't look back!"
Lucas froze. His heart clenched. His body refused to move.
"No! I'm not leaving you!" he roared, trying to rise.
Naomi met his eyes—blood and tears mixed on her face.
"Run!" she repeated, voice cracking but steady. "Live, damn you! Make it mean something!"
The air froze between them.
Lucas saw her clutching Rhea's neck, both women struggling in the stained snow.
Naomi's eyes—pleading and commanding at once.
His jaw locked. His teeth ached from the pressure. He shut his eyes a moment.
When he opened them, his aura erupted.
The air trembled.
The ground split beneath his boots.
A faint orange light wrapped him like flame under glass.
Harlan blinked—and Lucas was gone.
He ran.
Every step tore him open a little more, blood tracing a red line behind him through the white storm.
The howl of the wind swallowed his sound, but Harlan felt it, lightning coiling across his body.
"You won't escape!" he bellowed, surging after him, Eli close behind, rifle up and ready.
Behind them, Naomi screamed as Rhea broke free.
The poison-wielder staggered back, gasping, her eyes bloodshot, her neck streaked with crimson welts.
"Stupid girl…" Rhea spat.
She lifted her pistol, hands shaking with rage and exhaustion.
Naomi was still on her knees, smiling faintly now, eyes lost in the falling snow.
"Lucas…" she whispered. "Run."
BANG!
The gunshot cracked the silence once.
Naomi's body fell sideways, her blood blooming red against the white.
Lucas heard it—far off, but clear.
He didn't need to turn.
His soul told him what the sound didn't need to.
He kept running, blind through wind and tears and fury.
Harlan chased him like a living storm, sparks marking every stride.
The blizzard swallowed them both, roaring them into oblivion.
---
The wind screamed through shattered buildings, dragging snow like living ash.
Lucas ran, each step a knife in his wounded arm. His throat burned with every breath, but stopping meant death.
Behind him, Harlan's shouts and the electric hum tracked him through the storm.
He ran north by instinct—toward the mountains. But then he heard it again: gunfire.
Closer now, louder. And beneath it… a roar.
Not human.
He turned toward the sound without thinking.
"That way," he told himself.
Either an exit—or a trap.
His body moved on pure will. Snow kicked up in plumes behind him, his faint aura flickering as he fought to contain it.
Harlan's glow flashed in the distance, a streak of blue lightning cutting through the storm.
Eli followed farther back, rifle steady, eyes bright with thermal light.
The roar came again—so deep it shook the ground.
Lucas knew that sound. That vibration that crawled up through bone.
He'd heard it once before—in the forest.
The bear.
It loomed out of the mist like a living mountain.
Its hide was armored in blackened bone plates, steam billowing from its maw like furnace smoke.
Each step made the snow groan beneath impossible weight.
Its eyes—two burning coals—locked on them with feral hunger.
Harlan froze for half a heartbeat, stunned.
"What the hell…"
But Lucas was already moving.
He ran straight at the monster.
Harlan's instinct screamed.
"He's insane!" he shouted, lunging after him.
The bear charged with a deafening roar, snow exploding around it.
Human fury met primal rage.
The air became chaos—roars, gunfire, crackling storms of light.
Eli crouched low and fired.
Each round hit, uselessly flattening against the beast's hide.
It barely noticed, the metal vanishing into its steaming flesh.
Lucas saw it coming—the beast ahead, Harlan behind.
A single mistake and he'd be crushed between them.
But he didn't see death.
He saw a door.
He pulled in every ounce of energy he had. Closed his pores, his aura, his breath.
Everything drew inward—tight, silent, invisible.
The orange glow snuffed out.
His skin shimmered once—then vanished.
The air swallowed him whole.
The bear struck.
Its paw smashed the earth where he'd stood a heartbeat before, sending snow and stone flying.
Harlan spun, barely dodging as the creature barreled past.
He rolled through the snow, electricity crackling off his soaked coat.
Eli shouted and fired again, spent shells flashing.
The recoil threw him backward; the bullets did nothing.
The bear swept its paw once more, smashing a car aside like paper.
The wreck spun and crashed down, crushing one of Harlan's wounded men beneath it.
Lucas, unseen, slipped through the chaos.
No footprints. No heat.
A ghost in the storm.
Behind him, hell raged—Harlan dodging and striking, Eli shouting, the beast tearing the world apart.
Lucas ran.
He didn't look back.
He couldn't.
Each roar sank into his bones, each scream burned into memory.
Naomi… forgive me…
The wind closed around him.
The forest opened ahead.
For the first time since it all began, Lucas didn't think about fighting.
Only surviving.
---
The blizzard offered no mercy.
Lucas climbed into the mountains, staggering. His arm still bled despite the crude bandage, pain keeping him conscious—barely. Every breath cut like glass, the snow dragging at his legs.
He moved for one reason only: keep moving.
Stop, and freeze to death.
His mind was blank except for flashes—Naomi's face, her voice through the storm, the echo of that gunshot buried in his chest.
Guilt gnawed, but instinct carried him on.
The wind slapped him when he crossed a clearing. He recognized the ridge ahead—the same spot where he'd dropped his pack before running to her.
He stumbled toward it, and there it was, half-buried in snow, crusted in ice.
He fell to his knees before it, trembling. Dug it out with bare hands and held it close like a relic of sanity.
"I made it…" he whispered, voice raw. "I made it…"
He slung it over his shoulder and kept walking, never once looking back.
The peaks loomed before him. He knew crossing them in this state was madness, but he didn't stop.
The storm howled, yet it became his ally—the wind erased his trail, hiding him from pursuit.
His body moved on instinct alone.
A faint shimmer of aura kept him warm inside, driving him past human limits.
Each step stole more from him; each climb cost another heartbeat of strength.
But he pressed on.
Hours passed—or days. The sun never showed.
The mountains stretched endless, broken by cliffs and ice-slick ridges.
His breath came ragged. His vision blurred.
His aura dimmed, piece by piece, like a candle sinking into wax.
Still, he kept going.
When he finally crossed the last ridge, the storm softened—almost merciful.
The forest greeted him again, silent and silvered in frost.
Lucas walked until he found a hollow between stones, a natural pocket blanketed in snow and dry branches.
There, he let himself collapse.
He pulled out what little he had: bandages, alcohol, an old needle, a strip of cord.
He cleaned the wound with a hiss that vanished into the wind. The bullet had passed clean through, no bone shattered.
He stitched it slowly, mechanically, one breath at a time. Each pull of the thread stole a gasp.
Then he wrapped it tight until the bleeding stopped.
His whole body ached. His skull throbbed like a drum.
Even air felt heavy.
He leaned against the stone and closed his eyes.
The forest was utterly silent.
"Naomi…"
Her name slipped out like breath.
For a moment, he thought he saw her there—smiling softly, eyes warm enough to melt the snow.
A tear slid down his cheek and froze before it could fall.
Exhaustion took him whole.
His body couldn't go any further.
He sank sideways, breathing shallow, and sleep pulled him under.
The storm raged outside, but inside that hollow, Lucas rested.
For the first time since his journey began, the world left him in peace.
If only for one night.