The forest was darker than it had been days ago—if time still had meaning at all. What sunlight remained could no longer pierce the thick canopy overhead. The light, what little there was, came from within the forest itself. It bled softly from the undergrowth, shimmered through the bark of ancient trees, and pulsed faintly from the branches of a colossal structure of living wood.
That was where they stood now.
Ryu Saeyoung knelt at the base of the glowing tree, one gloved hand pressed against the cold, pulsing bark.
He said nothing.
The three soldiers behind him shifted uneasily.
"Sir…" began Corporal Nam Jin, wiping sweat from his brow. "The energy readings are off the scale. Whatever this thing is—it's not natural. It's some kind of bio-reactive structure. Maybe even a power source. If we take it apart, we might be able to extract—"
"You're not touching it," Ryu Saeyoung said, calm and absolute.
The other two members of his team—Lieutenant Goh Minseo and Specialist Bae Jihun—exchanged looks behind him.
Minseo was already running spectral analysis from her field tablet. "Commander Ryu, we can't just ignore this. The emissions coming off this tree are matching 89% of our archived solar spectrums. That's impossible. It's like this thing's replicating sunlight."
Jihun added, "It's producing heat, too. Very slight, but consistent. Like a low-level furnace."
Ryu didn't move.
He stared up at the massive tree, its silver-black bark breathing slowly in the absence of wind. Strange symbols—unmistakably artificial—glowed faintly around the trunk. The same sigils that had appeared in pre-Collapse ruins, the ones nobody had been able to decipher.
But Kim Jisoo had been here.
Ryu could feel it in his bones.
And the child. The anomaly. Haru.
They had passed through this place. Not long ago.
He stood, finally, brushing moss from his gloves.
"Log the data," Ryu Saeyoung said. "Do not take samples. Do not cut the bark. Do not disturb it."
Minseo scowled. "With all due respect, sir, this is our first live contact with a naturally occurring light-emitting entity since the solar fade began. It could be the breakthrough we've been waiting for—"
"I said no," Ryu repeated, voice low but dangerous.
Corporal Nam glanced warily at the tree. "It feels like it's… watching us."
"It is," Ryu said.
The soldiers froze.
He turned to face them fully now.
"This tree is not your lab rat. It's not here to be dissected or bottled. It's older than this forest. Maybe older than the Collapse. And more importantly—it let them in."
"Kim Jisoo?" Jihun asked.
"Him and the boy."
"You think they're still nearby?"
"They're not far."
He looked around the perimeter of the clearing. The faint trail of bent grass, broken twigs, and minute thermal traces barely visible on the edges of his scanner.
"They left days ago. Headed southeast."
Minseo frowned. "Toward the lab ruins?"
"Yes."
Ryu tapped his wrist console and pulled up a topographic map. "G-Delta Lab isn't far. If Jisoo is who I believe he is, he would have circled back to recover what he could. Possibly to bury the site."
"You think he's closing it?" Nam asked.
"He's not just closing it," Ryu said. "He's hiding it. Or himself."
Minseo adjusted her gear, reluctantly turning away from the glowing tree. "Why not just let Central extract the tree and everything around it? We need results, Commander."
Ryu's black eyes locked with hers.
"You want results?" he asked, walking past her and into the forest.
"Find me Kim Jisoo."
Somewhere beyond the tree, nearly six kilometers east, Kim Jisoo and Haru stood in silence, watching the last steel door of the lab seal itself shut.
Jisoo didn't speak for a while.
The forest around the facility was darker now. No wind. No birds. Just the faint echo of machines powering down for good.
He keyed the final lock sequence on his RAIN-integrated wristband.
"Core shutdown complete," the AI confirmed in a monotone voice."Remote access disabled. Internal memory wiped. Core protocols sealed."
Haru hugged himself, locket hanging from his neck, and looked at Jisoo with quiet eyes.
"Will it… be okay?" the boy asked.
Jisoo turned toward the sealed lab, his old sanctuary. His prison. The place that kept him alive through the collapse. The place where Ji-won had died.
"It's better this way," he said.
Haru didn't speak.
Jisoo put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "This world's changing. We can't hide in metal boxes anymore."
"Where do we go now?"
Jisoo looked toward the horizon. The sky was darker than ever. No stars. Just the slow decay of the atmosphere above.
"We move," he said. "There's something out there we haven't seen yet. Something the Others fear. We felt it back at the tree."
Haru's fingers gripped the edge of Jisoo's coat. "Do you think we'll find it again?"
Jisoo looked down at him.
"No," he said quietly. "I think it'll find us."
Back at the glowing tree, Ryu Saeyoung crouched in the moss and ran his hand across a strange indentation in the soil.
A footprint.
Small. Child-sized.
Fresh.
Then another—larger, heavier.
Jisoo.
He stood, slowly.
His voice came out like thunder beneath still air.
"We're close."
And this time, he wasn't letting them slip away.
.
The sun hadn't risen in days. Maybe weeks. But Kim Jisoo no longer tracked time by light.
He measured it by breaths.
By moments of silence between movement.
By the long hours of packing, repacking, scanning the perimeter, and calibrating the RAIN wrist-unit to monitor the shifting EM field surrounding the dead zone of his lab.
The last of his equipment was sealed in modular crates, camouflaged beneath forest floor moss, their location marked only in his mind. His hands were blistered, his shoulders sore. But he moved with precision.
Because they couldn't stay here.
Because the Others were closing in.
Because the air felt… wrong again.
He was halfway through binding a case shut when he heard Haru's voice behind him.
"Jisoo."
The voice was soft. Measured. But unusually serious for a child.
He didn't turn around immediately. "Yeah?"
"I want you to drink my blood."
Jisoo froze.
The metal clasp slipped from his fingers and clanked against the side of the case.
His breath stopped mid-exhale. He turned slowly.
Haru stood there, arms loose at his sides, hair messy, eyes wide and glassy from exhaustion—but serious. Intent.
Jisoo's instincts screamed. A deep, sharp alarm that rang in the core of his being. Not the kind of scream that meant a monster was nearby. Not the kind that saved him in alleys and stairwells and escape routes.
This was different.
It was danger, yes.
But not mortal.
Not external.
It came from within.
Jisoo's voice was lower than usual, uncertain. "What… did you just say?"
Haru didn't flinch.
"I want you to drink my blood."
Jisoo's hand moved instinctively to the knife at his belt, not out of threat—but grounding. Something familiar to hold onto while everything else slipped sideways.
His jaw tensed.
"Why?" he asked, his voice flat but tight.
Haru stepped forward, eyes flickering in the dim light of the forest.
"I don't know exactly," he said honestly. "But I feel it. Something inside me says it's important."
Jisoo didn't answer.
He was still staring at the boy—searching for any sign of delusion, infection, pressure. Some hint that the child was being manipulated by the Others. But Haru looked… calm. There was no black in his eyes. No trembling. No distorted smile.
Just tears.
Tears that slowly filled his eyes, welled up, and slipped down his cheeks in silence.
"I dreamed of it last night," Haru said softly. "You were on the ground. Dying. And something was calling to me. Telling me to save you."
Jisoo's eyes narrowed.
"You've been hearing voices?"
"Not like the Others," Haru said quickly. "Not like that. It was like… it was still me. But also not."
Jisoo felt his pulse pounding now. His brain raced.
He stepped closer, crouched down, meeting Haru eye to eye.
"Have you ever done this before? Offered this to anyone?"
Haru shook his head.
"I've never wanted to. Never thought about it. But now I just… know it's right."
Jisoo stared at him.
The child's lips trembled—but his expression was sincere.
"I'm scared, Jisoo," Haru whispered. "But I want to protect you. You've always protected me. I think… maybe something in me is meant to protect you too."
Jisoo's hand dropped from his knife.
His expression softened. Slightly.
But still, his brow furrowed deeply, concern etching into every line of his face.
He had faced monsters.
He had outlived them.
He had seen shadows move through concrete and black-eyed smiles crawling across the faces of people he once trusted.
But this?
A child—no, this child—asking him to cross a line he didn't even know existed?
It shook him more than the darkness ever had.
"You don't know what it'll do," Jisoo said.
Haru nodded. "No. I don't. But I think it's something… important. Something pure."
They stared at each other.
For a long time.
And in that pause—beneath the ruined sky, surrounded by the thick silence of a breathing forest—Jisoo saw something in Haru that he didn't quite understand.
Something older than the boy's years.
Something newly forming.
And his instincts?
They were still screaming.
But for once, he didn't know if they were screaming to stop—
—or to finally begin.