By the time the sun rose, the forest had fallen behind us.
The world didn't look broken.just indifferent. Cars hummed on distant roads, smoke curled from chimneys, and the air smelled of rain and gasoline.
It was strange how normal it all seemed, as if the place we'd escaped had never existed.
Reav walked beside me, her bare feet silent on the cracked floor. She kept glancing up at the sky like she expected it to split open.
"It feels wrong," she murmured. "Too calm."
I nodded. "Maybe the world just moved on without us."
We followed the road until it led into a small town tucked between the hills. Brick houses. Streetlights. The murmur of morning life. Some stared,others didn't looked twice at us.two strangers, dirt-streaked and hollow-eyed, swallowed into the rhythm of things.
We found a park bench overlooking a quiet street. The air was cool; the ground still damp from the night's rain.
I sank down, exhaustion washing through me. Reav stood for a moment before sitting beside me, folding her arms like she wasn't sure what to do with them.
For a while, we didn't speak. The sounds of life,barking dogs, bicycles, a door closing felt almost unreal.
Then Reav said quietly, "They built that place under the forest. Hidden. You'd never know unless you were meant to."
"Who were they?" I asked.
Her eyes darkened. "Not gods.Just monsters wearing the skin of Humans. Just people who wanted to know what silence sounds like when you force it to scream."
The wind stirred. I stared at my wrist, at the mark still glowing faintly under the skin.
I breathed out slowly. "And you?"
Reav smiled, a fragile curve of lips. "I was their trial before you. I failed. But failure comes with freedom."
A car rolled past. Two children walked by, laughing.
The sound felt like another language.
Reav tilted her head. "What will you do now?"
I looked toward the rising sun, its light spilling across rooftops and glass. "I have priorities first find my home then find out who they were. What they wanted. Why us."
"And if you do?"
"Then I'll make sure they never do it again."
Reav nodded, gaze soft but distant. "Then we start there."
We stayed on the bench as the town stirred to life. People passed, not seeing the ghosts among them.
For the first time, the silence between us wasn't haunted. It was a kind of truce.
Somewhere beneath the calm—under concrete and memory.the truth waited.
We would find it.
Together.