The forest begins to thin as we approach the outskirts of the town. The trees are smaller, more spaced apart. The ground is flatter. And through the mist, I can see the silhouette of houses. A church steeple. A water tower.
Flynn stops, holding up a hand. "Something's wrong."
Michael and I freeze.
"What is it?" Michael asks, his voice trembling.
"The... silence," Flynn says, his brow furrowed. "There should be sounds. A dog barking. A rooster crowing. People getting up for work. There's nothing."
He's right. The silence here is different from the silence of the deep woods. This isn't the silence of nature. It's the silence of a grave.
We move forward cautiously, our senses straining. The town comes into view, and the wrongness of it hits me like a physical blow. It's... empty. Not just quiet, but utterly, completely devoid of life. Doors stand open. A bicycle lies on its side in the middle of the street, its front wheel still spinning slowly. A curtain flutters in an open window, but there's no breeze.
It's a ghost town. A place where life has been... erased.
"Gloomin' hell," Flynn whispers, his usual bravado completely gone, replaced by a raw shock. "They hit this place, too."
Michael lets out a choked sob, stumbling back a step. "They... they're all gone."
I can feel it now. The charge in the air is stronger here. A palpable, oppressive sense of dread that hangs over the town like a shroud. The Gloom was here. And it lingered.
And there's something else. A faint, almost imperceptible trail. Not of the pale, off-white goo I'm used to seeing. This is... darker. A shadowy residue, like soot, that clings to the corners of the buildings and the undersides of the windows. It's almost invisible in the daylight, but I can see it. I can feel its... flavor.
It's the same flavor as the glyph. A concentrated, focused negativity. A command.
"They didn't just kill them," I say, my own voice a hollow echo in the dead street. "They... collected them."
Flynn looks at me, his face a mask of confusion and horror. "What are you talking about?"
"I don't know," I admit, my gaze sweeping over the empty town. "It's just a feeling."
We move through the silent streets like trespassers in a mausoleum. The place is eerily preserved, a snapshot of a normal morning violently interrupted. A newspaper lies on a doorstep, the headline screaming about some local political scandal. A half-eaten breakfast sits on a kitchen table, visible through an open door. There are no bodies. No signs of a struggle. Just an absence so profound it's louder than any scream.
I walk up to the abandoned newspaper, toe check the date of the attack. Then I pause. There is an odd patch of darkness at the corner of a nearby building, a smudge of soot that doesn't seem to belong. I kneel, my fingers hovering just above the dark residue. I can feel it pulsing, a faint, malevolent thrum that resonates with the same cold, empty frequency as the glyph.
This wasn't just a feeding frenzy. This was an operation. A harvest.
"Flynn," I say, my voice tight. "Get back."
He turns, a question on his face. Before he can speak, the soot on the wall behind him begins to writhe.
It doesn't flow or drip like the Gloom I've used. It crawls. It stretches and pulls itself together, coalescing from the scattered, shadowy patches. In seconds, it forms a shape. Not a Spidergloom or a Feral. It's humanoid, but crude, a poorly sculpted man made of tar and shadow. It has no features, no face, just a vaguely head-shaped lump of darkness. It moves with a stiff, unnatural gait, a puppet whose strings are being pulled by a novice puppeteer.
Michael yelps and fumbles for his Exorcist Candle, but it slips from his trembling fingers and clatters to the ground. The creature ignores him, its shadowy form lurching directly toward Flynn.
Flynn reacts with pure instinct. He doesn't have a weapon, but he has his fists. He plants his feet and throws a punch, a solid, straightforward haymaker aimed right at the creature's chest.
His fist passes right through it. The shadow-man dissolves for a moment into a swirling cloud of soot, then immediately reforms, completely unfazed.
"What in the blazes...?!" Flynn stumbles back, shaking his hand as if he'd punched smoke.
It's not made of the same substance. The Gloom I've controlled has a physical presence, a viscous weight. This... this is different. It's more like an illusion given a nasty, semi-solid form.
The shadow-man lunges again, its arm elongating into a sharp, spear-like point of darkness aimed at Flynn's heart.
There's no time to think. I act.
I don't know what it is, but if I can sense it, I have to assume...it's some kind of Gloom. And if it is, I can tear it apart with my mind. For just a moment, it seems as if...nothing happens. Like my control of the Gloom up until now has been a fluke of imagination.
Then, with a visible tremble, the figure explodes outward. Not with violence, but like a scattered cloud. The soot doesn't melt; it shatters into a thousand motes of dust that dissipate instantly in the morning air, leaving no trace behind.
Flynn stares at the empty space where the creature was, then at me, his eyes wide. "You... you did that?"
"I think so," I breathe, my own heart hammering against my ribs. "It's different. From the other Gloom." I look around, my senses now fully extended, searching for more of the dark residue. "It's all over the town. Like he left... sentries behind."
"Him?" Michael asks, scrambling to retrieve his candle from the dusty ground. "You mean... the humanoid one?"
"Who else?" Flynn says, his voice grim. He looks around the dead town, a new understanding dawning in his eyes. "This wasn't just a random attack. This was... a sweep. Maybe...even a trap. For Exorcists who escaped." He looks at me. "For us."
The thought is a bucket of ice water. This town isn't just a casualty. It's bait.
"...It doesn't matter." The words, with just a note of trembling in them, are from Michael. His expression is more determined than I've ever seen. "We don't have a choice. We can't make it to another town and back before sunset. We have to get the water from the well here, and any other supplies we can find. Even if there's no way to establish some connection with the outside world."
He's right. The logic is cold and brutal, but it's the only thing we have. Turning back now, empty-handed, is a death sentence for everyone in the crypt.