Night had settled thick over the forest, pressing in from every side until the trees felt closer than they had any right to be. The moon was barely visible through the canopy, its light torn apart by branches and leaves so that it reached the ground in thin, broken strips. The air carried a damp chill, clinging to skin, seeping through fabric. Every breath tasted like rot and earth
They had not spoken in several minutes
Adrian finally broke the silence, "We need to stop soon. Just for a minute"
Vera did not look at me when she answered, "Stopping is how people die"
"That is not fair" Adrian said quietly
I kept my eyes on the path ahead, though there was barely one left to follow. "We cannot keep walking blind either. If we stumble into something we are done"
"Like Lukas stumbled?" Vera shot back
The words landed hard. Adrian sucked in a breath
"I am not doing this again," I said, my voice steady even if my chest felt tight, "We need to focus"
"On what?" Vera snapped, "On who you think should run slower next time?"
The forest answered before I could
A faint sound drifted between the trees. Not quite laughter. Not quite breath. It moved, circling, slipping between trunks, brushing against our ears like something warm and unseen
Adrian froze. "Did you hear that?"
"I heard it," Vera whispered
The sound came again, clearer now. A low murmur that almost formed words
Run
The voice did not belong to any of us. It carried a warped echo, like something trying to imitate speech without understanding it.
Run faster
A soft chuckle rippled through the dark, closer this time. Closer than it should have been
Too slow
My skin prickled. It felt like breath at the back of my neck, like something leaning close enough to taste the air we exhaled
Vera stepped nearer to Adrian, her shoulder brushing his. "Do not listen to it''
Another whisper, almost playful, ''I wonder who I should take next... hahaHAHAH''
The voice sounded stretched, like wet fabric pulled too thin. It did not echo properly. It simply existed, sliding between trunks, brushing against their ears
Adrian's breath hitched, "Stop"
The whisper giggled again, higher now
"Not you. Not yet"
Vera clenched her fists. "Shut up!"
A pause
Then, closer
"So brave. So loud. You shake when you speak"
Leaves rustled to their left. No shape. No movement. Just sound
"I like it when you run," the monster continued, almost thoughtfully. "Your hearts beat so fast. I can hear them. Thump thump thump"
Something snapped behind them
Adrian turned sharply, "Soren…"
Another laugh, low and breathy
"One of you smells different tonight"
Silence followed that
Heavy silence
The whisper did not fade this time
It thickened
The trees ahead of them trembled, bark splitting with a wet sound that did not belong in any forest. Something shifted between the trunks, something too large and too wrong to be a shadow. The darkness peeled back just enough for them to see it
It was not a creature standing in the clearing. It was a mass
A towering amalgamation of torn flesh and bone fused together without order or mercy. Limbs jutted at unnatural angles, some too long, some broken and bent backward. Fingers twitched where they should not exist. A ribcage protruded from one side, half exposed, slick and glistening. Another arm dragged uselessly across the ground, the hand still clutching what looked like a strip of leather stained black with old blood
Faces were pressed into it. Not cleanly attached. Not whole. Embedded
Sofia's face hung slack along one swollen shoulder, her eyes open and glassy, mouth stretched too wide in a parody of a smile. Lukas' features were twisted near the centre of the mass, jaw hanging at a crooked angle, skin split and dark. Their expressions were wrong. Not dead. Not alive
Watching
The entire thing pulsed faintly, as if it breathed through every mouth at once
Adrian stumbled backward. "No…"
The mass shifted forward, dragging itself with a chorus of wet tearing sounds. Bone scraped against bone. Skin stretched and split where it moved
When it spoke, every mouth opened
"I wonder who I should take next… hehe"
The voices overlapped, layered, Sofia's tone braided with Lukas', threaded with something deeper and older beneath them both
Vera's voice broke, "That's not them"
The creature lurched again, and more faces seemed to push up through its surface, half formed, half melted together. Teeth chattered. Eyes rolled in different directions
"You left us" it hissed
"You ran"
A jagged arm lifted, fingers pointing, trembling
"Join us"
The words rose into a shriek, raw and tearing
"Join us. Join us. JOIN US!"
The forest shook with the sound. Blood seeped slowly down the creature's fused bodies, dripping into the soil beneath it. The smell hit them then, copper and rot and something sweetly wrong
It took another dragging step
"Run," I shouted, taking charge into the wilderness behind me
And then it lunged
'It is not them'
That is the first thing I force myself to think
Not Sofia. Not Lukas. Not the way they laughed or argued or breathed. Those faces pressed into that mass are only meat shaped into memory. Only bait. It wants us to hesitate. It wants us to see what we lost and freeze long enough for it to take more
Still, my stomach twists
Sofia's eyes are wrong. Too wide. Lukas' jaw hangs loose like a broken hinge. I remember him shouting, remember the weight of his body hitting the ground, and for a split second the image overlaps with what stands in front of us
'Did I make that?'
The thought slips in before I can stop it
'If I had not tripped him, would that face be there now? If I had just kept running instead of using him, would this thing be smaller?'
My chest tightens
'It's all pointless. All of these stupid regrets and thoughts are all pointless. Everything I have done so far has been for a reason and no matter how much I dwell on the past, I can't change it so I will focus on what I have been doing so far. Surviving. Even if the end is inevitable, even if I know I am only prolonging my death, even if I know in the end I won't be able to escape I will fight and I will struggle to live, even if everything is against me, even if it means that I will only breathe for a second longer'
'For this is my will to live'
As we ran branches clawed at my arms as I forced my way through the undergrowth, boots slamming against uneven earth, lungs already burning, the air slicing in and out of my chest like broken glass. To my left I could hear Vera's breathing, sharp and ragged, but she did not run near me, she angled herself wide, deliberately keeping distance, keeping Adrian between us as if I were as much of a threat as the abomination behind us
It would have been laughable if it were not so dangerous
The ground dipped suddenly and Adrian stumbled, catching himself on a tree trunk, and Vera grabbed his arm before I could reach him
"I've got you," she snapped, not even looking at me
As if I would not
The creature crashed somewhere behind us, a chorus of overlapping voices shrieking, branches splintering under its weight, the sound of wet flesh dragging across bark closing in
''Join us''
The words tangled with the rhythm of our footsteps until I could not tell whether the pounding in my ears was my heart or its pursuit
"Stay together!" I called
"Don't tell us what to do!" Vera shot back
She pulled Adrian slightly ahead, pushing him to run faster, her hand firm at his back, every movement edged with distrust, every glance thrown over her shoulder at me sharp and accusing as if she expected my foot to lash out again
Maybe I was thinking about it
Adrian's pace faltered and I could see the exhaustion setting in, the way his shoulders sagged, the way his strides shortened despite how hard he tried
Vera noticed too and her grip tightened
"You're not falling behind," she told him fiercely
The forest thinned ahead, revealing jagged shapes of rock rising through the trees, a cave mouth yawning in the distance, black and waiting
Behind us the monster howled and the sound split into many voices at once
Too slow
Vera pushed Adrian forward again and shifted slightly behind him now, placing herself between him and the noise without hesitation
A shield. Not me. Never me
I watched the way she positioned herself, the way she refused to let me close the distance between us, she would rather face the thing herself than trust me at her back
Another crash echoed closer and the ground trembled beneath our feet
Vera did not look at me again
She moved ahead, always careful, always holding herself between danger and the rest, and I felt the weight of it, the way this place twisted even the smallest kindness into a risk, and somewhere deep down I knew that not thinking of herself first might be the thing that did her in